so these three efforts were called eath
prize each security and the community of
communities and while we have this big
messy governance stuff around aetherium
there's a lot of these cross eco system
things that have just sort of sprung up
not really any governance and all
volunteer base to kind of solve problems
and very much echoing what these guys
are saying it's not about you know you
should do it it's just people going and
doing it and that's why I find these
things inspiring so the first one East
prize what is it so I was talking to a
bunch of my developer friends from
different projects and it seems
everybody was duplicating efforts so in
talking with augur and Zeppelin and a
lot of other daps you know everybody's
rolling their own testing tools rolling
their own deployment tools having
trouble and not really sharing their
efforts so a group of volunteers about
ten people got together and just started
interviewing developers around what type
of tools they're using and what problems
they're having building on aetherium
this is like really cool
so just pen random people just start
interviewing teams out of the good of
their heart documenting this and making
it available in an open-source manner
this ended up this project ended up
interviewing 100 developers putting the
interviews and github repo building a
website around this and marketing it so
that new developers and the space could
figure out what they should be using the
build and it gets even crazier as a
result of that the etherium foundation
and a whole bunch of others like web 3-0
excel for coinbase funded the effort and
so the effort became called eath price
as this was a new way to fund bounties
and we called maktab bounties and as a
result two bounties were actually funded
this year one for an open-source block
Explorer and one for eath etherion
package manager now what's cool about
this is it's not like somebody said hey
I want to build this it was like the
best developers in the space or saying
we need this and so we listened to these
people these actually got funded and
they've been delivered so POA bucks
gathers an open-source block Explorer
that's existing and can be used and each
PM was actually launched this weekend so
if you talk about like people just
getting done 100 interviews tools
required funding tools built I think
this is like a really really strong
model and Heath Price has funded a bunch
of new work mostly around infrastructure
stuff so if you look at like the
universal logins project from Alex Van
Dusen it got funding from Heath price so
this is cool because these things have
no business models and
what people asked him for and actually
need so this scene this happened going
from an idea and talking to a bunch of
people it's like that's really awesome
so how did it happen right so if you're
thinking like I'm sitting here how can I
get involved in the community you know
what can I do well early curation is
everything so and listening to community
so as you heard these one-to-one
interviews were key so going and finding
credible people and asking them what
their problems are and having a strong
mission of making everything transparent
so here the mission was like can we
build better tools on aetherium can we
actually help the developers and like
really mean that from the core and
listen to what people said and then make
the notes transparent so this stuff was
just available in github for anyone to
see and so what this just shows you in
this case is with a little bit of
coordination you know there was no
weekly meetings or organization or
anything it's just a group of people
saying hey we're gonna do this there's
an opportunity for literally a huge
impact this can be done with almost no
technical skill anybody in this room can
accomplish something like this with a
little bit of work so two other stories
one is each security this started I was
working for a project called true--but
and I went to get our smart contracts
audited and it was really frustrating so
I don't know if anyone's tried this
before but you know getting quotes for
$70,000 starter smart contracts insane
totally insane but like just annoying
and then even on top of that you know
you might have to wait for three months
you don't even know what you're getting
so like are these auditors standing
behind this are they any good do you
know it was like it's a really really
really big problem there's not many
companies that can afford or only like
the pull of a few that can afford this
so I started talking to a whole bunch of
security owners during this process
found a bunch of people who like believe
in this mission put together a telegram
group and invited all the best security
companies to join it with the goal of
creating like a single source of truth
so what happened as a result of this
right so this telegram group ended up
getting like bounty hunters hackers
InfoSec and OPSEC experts DAP builders
all the big security players consensus
zeppelin solidified and it became like a
single source of truth so if you want to
find an auditor or have a question you
can go and ask and say hey what should I
be paying for the
who's somebody I can talk to who's
reputable where can I find information
to learn about security audits something
really cool they created the eath
security org website which launched this
week and the idea is a place for
resources around security so if you have
a security question you can go there for
free and try to figure out what you need
to do they hosted in a vanity Berlin you
know this was first posted on the
magician's forum by John martlin these
guys picked it up and over a hundred
attendees showed up right and again this
is like all volunteer people coming
together in the community to provide you
know some results around security the
guys in this group advised the security
track at DEFCON and have done a bunch of
presentations they also went so far as
to formulate working groups to determine
like guidelines common resources and are
now giving out grants as well so again
you know a couple people talking about
how shitty the auditing process was and
it turns into this like massive thing
with like a whole bunch of momentum so
anybody in this room could have seen
that problem started talking to people
and made it happen so again like how do
we do it right so like early creation is
everything so somebody actually applied
to the ECF for a grant to interview all
the best security people and in these
interviews we again made the transcripts
available and then invited everybody to
come and telegram thread to get people
to start collaborating so if you're
trying to like form an early community
think of like who needs to be in this
community where can we get them to start
talking and like what is the mission to
get these people interested so we use
common goals to align all parties and in
this case it was one the interviews and
sharing of knowledge and then to funding
of tools so getting these people
interested with potential funding for
the tools they're building and then
three there was the event at East Berlin
and once everybody was in this group and
came to East Berlin made it really easy
for people to want to collaborate
because like Greg said they're all
talking face to face and then provide
value add for the group members right
from the start so like in this group we
have a bi-weekly call around security
tools where people can present what
they're doing and it's a good way for
anyone who wants to learn about security
to watch what's going on and then the
final one is the community of
communities this was like a pretty cool
experiment where
major problem is that people don't know
what events to go to so every week you
hear about some type of conference meet
up is a real is it not is it valuable
should we spend our team resources to go
and so again
telegram group was made 250 community
experts have joined it's you know pretty
much people from every single ecosystem
a project it's a place where you can
share any PR updates you want retweeted
or clap for a medium you can ask
questions about you know hiring best
practices PR and there's a group of
experts there that can answer for you
and so again it's like a single source
of truth you know so why does this
matter it's just again like in
decentralized space it's tough to get
access to get information and no it's
good information so it's kind of you
know where do I go to find experts to
figure out a problem all these
communities super-lightweight and you
know really they're just problem solvers
so eath prizes for tools eat security
for security this is for like marketing
and building community this is where you
can go to find credible people to ask
questions and it's all volunteer based
which to me is like super inspiring and
powerful so again you know I'm just kind
of repeating here that the PlayBook is
the same so if you're thinking about
doing this you know you can do this you
want to find an early cure you want to
find a problem you want to solve make
sure you find the right people early
find common goals to align them so in
this case it was the events and the
mission was like getting the best
information around marketing and
community building and then providing
value right from the start so finally
just you know I've said it a bunch of
times but that's what I'm trying to get
across here is like you as an individual
can have a huge impact each prize was
just a set of interviews things start
small they move really fast so each
security was just a couple people
talking about audits and then a
three-month period it had a hundred
groups of all the best security people
in the space hosting events running a
Def Con security track like this is
awesome this happens with completely
altruistically with no funding and then
the final one which is most important I
think is just listening is important so
all these things come from listening to
problems people are having and then
trying to take people who have the same
problems and put them in a group and
again this is kind of what's happening
at the magician's and it's the first
group of people who decided hey like
let's listen to each other and you see
these awesome things happen and a lot of
momentum is built so
you know um final thing to say is just
you know if we do a breakout group here
and some things that people will be
looking to talk to is like how we have
these all these groups right and like
how can they improve so there's a lot of
like telegram and slack and discord and
all the everywhere it's kind of
like you know I wake up when I have 50
messages what am I looking at so how do
you make your group stand out from the
noise how should these groups be
structured so if you have 200 projects
you know what are the cultural norms and
like who is the leader are their leaders
how do things get voted on this is stuff
the magician's are working through right
now
I'm pretty interested in it and then how
do you make sure the group continues to
create value there's no financial
resources so like we wanted to do a
community of communities event at Def
Con who's gonna pay for that because
it's not a monetary thing so interested
in answers to any of these questions you
know how do we continue to get value
from these groups yeah that's it Thanks
you