foreign
[Music]
good evening everybody I'm Piper Miriam
I'm here to tell you a story those that
know me
best know this about me
I have a deep love of Storytelling
you see stories are everything
they are the glue that hold together
this thing that we call reality
we tell ourselves stories about who we
are about what it all means
at this very moment there are hundreds
and hundreds of stories colliding and
competing and passing clean through one
another
without either a protagonist being the
slightest bit aware of their
insignificance
but I digressed I promised you a story
didn't I
the characters in the story are messy
they live in places where the water
isn't safe to drink
their dreams of children are met with
miscarriages and disappointment
their fathers drink themselves to death
their Partners tossed them aside with
indifference
their daughters become Sons their
governments charge them with treason
their brains betray them with depression
and panic attacks and crippling social
anxiety
the character that I play spends more
time in pieces these days than he's
comfortable with
his marriage failed this year
his windfall turned into tax liens and
hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt
he has self-destructive coping
mechanisms he turned 40 this year
he goes to a lot of therapy
and struggle struggles to keep showing
up to work and Lead when
the truth is that he feels lost most of
the time
struggling to keep things
compartmentalized and walled off
separate
this is fine he says is the pieces of
his life fall to pieces and the ground
around him
I'm fine he says
when all he can hear is the rattling of
the bars as the feelings fight to be let
free
it's fine he says as the community that
loves him props him up day after day
but fine or not there's a story to be
told here and the story of
cryptocurrency is not mine
it doesn't belong to any of us
but it's one that I've had the honor to
help write
it's a story written in math and Human
Experience straddling the predictable
and reliable world of numbers
and the messy reality that I've been
over sharing with you today
and in this story at least the part that
I'm telling I am a superhero
I feel uncomfortable and self-conscious
saying those words how arrogant
for real the things I get to do and the
stuff that I get to work on the things
that we get to work on it's truly
astounding when you step back and look
at it
and then step back again trillions of
dollars sloshing around 14 something
million ether staked
blah blah blah I think I have to say
nfts
I lied I'm not really here to tell you a
story I am here to tell you about
stories
when I said that stories are everything
I meant it
stories Propel us through our day-to-day
do the chalk marks on the floor telling
us where we came from in this Labyrinth
that we call life
and my job requires excellent
storytelling
it's a craft I take with the utmost
responsibility
the stories I tell have to be compelling
and true and entertaining
there are a myriad of people who deserve
an enormous amount of credit
for coaxing ethereum into existence so I
hesitate to draw such focused attention
to a single individual but we do love
our heroes
we might not be here today without the
story that vitalik told us
so many people out there deal in these
things called ideas and idea Merchants
need not apply
ideas are thin things electricity
surpassing some minimum threshold across
a path of neurons in your mind
ephemeral things but stories stories
have staying power they are sticky
things infectious things
ideas are nothing without a story to
carry them and stories are the
incantations that we magicians use to
summon ideas into existence out of thin
air
a few years ago I decided to tell a
story I called it the core developer
apprenticeship program and I told a
story about what some people call a job
or a career I don't think those are
exactly the right words identity Mission
purpose okay it's a job but it's a
really cool job
I told them a story about getting paid
to build what has the potential to be
the most important tool Humanity has
ever imagined and they believed me they
showed up and droves hundreds and
hundreds of them hundreds and hundreds
of messy people with Messy lives
they showed up eager and ready to learn
what do you have to teach us Piper
absolutely nothing this is not how it
works go figure it out for yourself
no there is not a road map no there is
not any curriculum
no we have not called it Serenity for a
long time
no I do not know how zero knowledge
proofs actually work
but they did it not all of them but
enough
Danny and I like to say that the doors
are all unlocked and hilariously wide
open and I think a lot of people have
trouble believing us
but all you have to do is look these
people walked through those doors one
after another
out of the Rat Race away from okrs and
conversion funnels
away from larger salaries and Stabler
jobs and away from the that I
never ever want to go back to
stories are power and power that I have
learned how to wield
unwieldy things that can slip through
your fingers things that can burn you
when held too tightly or Too Close I
almost drowned a few years back
I told everybody a story about a new
ethereum client that would be
lightweight line after line of code
months turned into years
the thing grew and metastasized wasn't
this thing supposed to be lightweight
I watched as it pulls me deeper water
filling my lungs I can't let go
my precious story that wasn't a lie but
would never become true
of all of the things I was saved by a
story about a monkey and a pedestal and
dreams of the Moon
so much time wasted and money to learn
that I was telling the wrong story
why do we have such a hard time letting
go of the things that no longer serve us
a few years ago I told another story
that it's called stateless ethereum
an Epic Journey fraught with Peril a
story filled with swaths of blank pages
yet to be written a story with a chaotic
beginning and a fairy tale ending and
nothing but empty space between
a story that some of you seem to have
believed was worth telling and that you
continue to tell and that is still being
written
Aya tells us stories about Infinities
and games Dany told us a story about a
bright beacon on the path towards a yet
to be realized dream
Alexi tells us stories about how we're
doing it all wrong and he's not entirely
wrong parody told us stories of
Make-Believe and fantasy that all turned
out to be too good to be true
Nick tells us stories about the names of
things and vitalik tells a story after
story after Story and today you've
listened to me say the word story 30
times or so without necessarily having a
clear point to be made
what story are you going to tell
[Music]
I I did a talk like this a few devcons
back on the subject of depression uh My
Hope was to help normalize some of the
stigma around mental health issues that
are prevalent in our industry and
often invisible and that I have
personally struggled with
my goal this year was to do something
similar for the more broad topic of
the messy parts of our lives
there is immense social pressure to
present a very well manicured version of
yourself
fairy tales make for good bedtime
stories but
when we tell them about our own lives we
deprive other people of the opportunity
to really get to know us
I'm done with telling fairy tales
it's easy to feel like we are alone when
everyone around us looks so well put
together my life is messy I suspect some
of you have your own messes
you at least don't have to hide them
from me
thank you