I'm from democracy not earth and we're
an organization that is trying to figure
out what democracy means or stand for
democracy with encrypted networks any
kind of network including nation-states
so we're in an organization that it's in
the middle of activists in politics and
crypto and hacking so every coin has two
sides and in governance those two sides
it's certainly you know moving between
the land and the cloud this was a thesis
originally exposed by Balaji serene
inverse and he's now the CTO of coinbase
so he certainly is closer to the cloud
now but if we look closely at what's
happening in the land and the cloud the
land is pretty much broken democracy the
voter turnout even in developed nations
has been going down since the 70s
there's complete lack of citizen control
in electoral processes no transparency
nation states are fragmenting and
there's the rise of autocrats
which some people you know perceive us
are very bad thing and other people
perceive us just an acceleration of the
system ending soon the land consists of
government's consists of those entities
that control the territory consists of
those entities that control or bodies
and the cloud consists of those entities
that control the mind that control
information and the the challenge that
we're facing right now is that the
influence in social of social media in
democratic processes around the world is
undeniable and social media we know this
problem very well there's centralization
of data no ownership of identity they
are farming user attention you know I'm
preaching to the corporally over here so
what's the origin of the nation-state
most historians agree that after 30
years of war in Europe they came to
negotiate the Treaty of Westphalia which
was a peace treaty that brought
a particular novelty in the process to
deliver peace in Europe that was this
principle of non domestic intervention
with will draw borders and you don't
mess on my domestic affairs and I won't
mess on your domestic affairs and this
gave rise to another new consciousness
on how to execute politics notoriously
in France for example was the rise of
Cardinal Richelieu who started
prioritizing the interest of the state
over Catholic or religious interests or
over monarchical interests so for
example keeping fragmented Germany which
seems to be like a pattern across Europe
throughout history was strategically
relevant for France who made a strong
alliances with German people in order to
keep strategically stronger than
relative to Britain so the origin of the
nation-state is this nash equilibrium of
nations where the best move is not to
move you know if i attack this nation
then this nation will attack me so we
are all threatening each other in a way
that keeps an equilibrium of power and
we can try to keep the peace within a an
extended third territory
so eventually these equilibriums start
breaking apart and notoriously is the
fall of the Berlin Wall the fall of the
Berlin Wall
according to the thesis of the sovereign
individual is not the first that the
beginning or the end of the Communists
or the Soviet bloc and the triumph of
Western civilization and capitalism but
it's actually the first episode of a
greater mega political trend that has to
do with the end of the nation-state and
the reason I am picturing Tetris there
is because the same year that the
following Berlin Wall fell the most
successful video game in the Western
world was Tetris that was developed by a
Russian who never saw a dime actually
the Russian government still saw the
royalties of that but it was a game
about turning bringing down a wall it is
a game about
you know bringing walls down so it's
certainly interesting to see that you
know how digital technology has been
shaping and influencing our perception
of the world since the early days even
in handheld devices so now the problem
with this equilibriums is that
eventually you have these players that
exploit them that find some than some
specific strategies and specific
vulnerability within the countries or
within the nations that that are trying
to sustain the piece and get the
benefits notoriously was Napoleon in the
19th century Hitler in the 20th century
and now we're witnessing this strange
fight between Russian interests
subverting democracies around the world
through the use of false propaganda fake
news or maybe real news who knows by
exploiting social media by exploiting
the algorithms that have been used
before to actually instill or tumble
government's elsewhere like in the Arab
Spring where Facebook was also very
influential in driving those riots in
Egypt so the interesting thing now is
that it's you know having an impact home
you know the big question after the
election of Donald Trump is whether or
not there was influence of social media
or fake propaganda frake Russian
propaganda in the election or in America
itself so you know it's interesting that
the election of Trump seems to be very
much dialectic connected to the fall of
the Berlin Wall
most of the Russian money after the end
of the Soviet bloc was actually being
laundered using you know Trump Tower and
Trump properties around the world so we
are witnessing this greater geopolitical
trends that are shaping up our relation
with with with the political world that
we're living in the bottom line is that
the internet is incompatible with
nation-states I think this is a very
relevant narrative that we need to start
putting out there we need to start you
know getting everyone to embrace the
fact that you know we have globalized
commerce we have globalized merchandise
and finance but certainly you know
keeping political tied to silos
to territorial silos it's no longer
possible in a world that it's already
connected by the internet so I think
that a big lesson of the trauma that
came after the election of Donald Trump
through fake propaganda exploiting
Facebook algorithms coming from Russians
question mark is that you know let's
assume the fact that the Internet is
incompatible with nation-states so how
bad is it really you know are we in this
mr. robot world where everything is
coming down is you know our democracy
has been hacked you know are we getting
you know all kinds of weird thoughts in
our minds as we keep interacting with
these networks
well I always wonder when I was watching
this show mr. robot what would it look
like like if suddenly everything hacked
and how would it be portrayed in the
media and you know we would get all
paranoid trying to get our cash out of
the bank something that I actually
experienced many times living in
Argentina well it is pretty bad actually
like a very quick search on Google and
gives me these headlines from all
different kinds of news sources that are
about this massive identity leaks 50
million users on Facebook you got one
title saying 29 million another title
saying 90 million won only one is
already enough LinkedIn 6.5 million
stolen passwords it's actually 72
million uber 57 million users data
Equifax 143 million credit reporting
history of Americans in the u.s. so it
looks really really bad when you start
you know putting all of these headlines
together and actually there is people
putting these headlines together there's
someone that is actually this is a very
cool decentralized application by the
way it's 45 gigabytes
it's not as big as the block chains out
there but it's getting big and that is
aggregating each and every single one of
these leaks on a single text-based file
that you can access via BitTorrent and
for example this this file has 1.6
billion email password combinations and
if you are wondering if your email
combination is there I have done a test
with my friends 80 percent chances is
that it is there at least a password
that you'd use until 2012-2013
from what we've been able to analyze
from this and like everyone is there
yeah you know you can look I look for
the President of Argentina I look for
you know a lot of personalities and I
look for Zuckerberg of course and you
know karma and the interesting thing is
that you know among they of course many
of these are you know probably not real
but this looked pretty real to me and
you know the thing about Zak is that
he's colorblind and he cannot see the
color green so makes you wonder maybe
you know these could be some of the
passwords he used on the past it's it's
karma you know Tom York said that the
idea of karma was a good idea because
the minute you start believing in it it
becomes true so there you go suck so we
you know someone said the other people
don't vote that's people both
everyday
voting is the main interaction of what
we do on the Internet
we call it likes on Facebook we we call
it you know it's links on Google Google
is basically tallying links is counting
votes voting is the main interaction on
how we use the internet on a daily basis
the problem is that this kind of voting
is just surveys that are being designed
to increase the advertising revenue from
these companies and you know computation
itself began in the 19th century as a
way to be able to effectively tally
votes in a much more speedy manner so
the the challenge of what we're facing
right now is that we need to figure out
a way to change this interaction by
something that is able to carry value by
something that is able to to become
valuable to the users not not to the
orders of the network so we are a you
know a democracy earth were thinking
about tokenizing the like interaction
and tokenizing it with every token not
just orthogonal specific token but a
every single token that is out there
lets you know make use of the ERC
protocols in them in a way that can
foster more opportunities and more
moments where we can start transacting
these tokens in interesting and creative
ways and each one of these tokens has
their own governance logic embedded in
its code so we can have different
governance mechanisms competing in a
common playground you know we have to go
against advertising which is the model
of the web and advertising is just slang
for corporations corrupting or attention
that's advertising they are telling you
know advertising is about telling you
what to think what to desire and you
know in a democracy you need to have a
free and healthy mind it's not healthy
for a democracy to cup your opinions
being shaped by organizations whose 97%
of revenue depends on corrupting your
attention so I'm gonna make a quick demo
here to show you what we're talking
about about the reason the upcoming
release of sovereign which is our liquid
democracy application that we're working
at democracy earth so I have here a
quick instance this is running locally
on my machine on the previous talk
someone said we need products people
want to use products not protocol so
we're trying to shape up our technology
as simple as possible have a social
media you can feel there are some
patterns of social media that are very
very good for democracy they ask me
anything pattern is a very good pattern
for for deliberation and simply here you
know we're gonna be launching this by
the way on November 15 so very very soon
you log in with meta mask you sign the
transaction you're it recognizes your
address if you already have an account
on this account
I'm checking IRA so go figure and you
can start simply posting you know let's
take over Cuba oh actually they already
done that but this is just a demo so the
idea is to replace the like button with
any token you know any token any or c20
any token that operates on the network
itself let's say we can use some
decentraland
if you want to make this a debate on
virtual reality or something and you can
even restrict it by nationality maybe we
want to talk to a specific you know
people from use this token from a
specific country and that have this
country associated associated with their
ID and as simple as that you just post
content and you engage people on
debating this issue
whoever votes on this proposal you know
we support two types of voting off chain
voting by simply signing a trance
signing a verification that will use
your balance in that signature so you
can use your stake to vote in an off
chain way and online odd on chain voting
by simply making a transaction on the
blockchain which is more secure less
corrupt corruptible we just want to
allow and provide a toolkit that allows
for all kinds of Democratic transactions
happening across social media the
interface file also has this threaded
conversation which is new trying to
bring to girl a little bit of the best
of Reddit with the best of Twitter and
find interesting ways to use the tokens
for example steak tokens on hashtags and
discuss on how to use steak tokens on
specific hashtags in the platform is
another idea that you know we are
actually implementing so let me tell you
about what the reality of implementing
these types of systems the the
background of democracy earth actually
started as a political party in
Argentina called partido de la red or
the net party that has candidates
committed to vote in Congress always
according to what people decide online
we run for elections in 2013 we got one
percent of the votes and in 2017 we
actually had a very big internal
decision in the party that was very high
stakes everyone had a very strong
position on this decision and was
whether the party would be allowed to
make alliances with other parties or not
you know would be willing to to deal
with the traditional political system or
we would maintain ourselves as a purist
party you know not turn you're not
working with anybody else and the
interesting thing about that internal
election is that because it was a very
high stakes election there
four central points in the organization
that were prone to corruption and in
particular it was the database
administrators we didn't have a
blockchain implementation back then so
whoever was running whoever had control
of the database had the ability to delay
the registration of certain voters and
accelerate the registration of other
voters benefiting the outcome of the
election to their bias rather than
keeping the election as a whole neutral
and this election took only a hundred
voters but this effectively happens and
I've seen it in elections in Latin
America in Argentina when it's also
about millions of voters the moment the
authorities of the smaller parties are
not there the authorities of the larger
parties start stealing the votes from
the smaller parties so there are a lot
of points that are prone to corrupt
ability in democratic processes so the
in this experience you know where we saw
suddenly the VB admins tumbling the
election to their own bias by the
language istration Sun and accelerating
others was a very clear example in our
view of what needs to be built in terms
of technology to prevent this type of
behavior so we need decentralize self
sovereign civil resistant citizenship
and I highlight citizenship because you
know identities are very broad in your
concept and can be tied to many
different things machines and humans but
you know were specifically concerned
about the role that humans by play in
decentralized networks and this is the
the big problem that we've been trying
to crack at the democracy earth what is
the approach that we think that could be
pursued forward in in relation to to
tackle this problem so first I'm gonna
use as an example the way I thought I
did the birth certificate of my daughter
if you look for the coin desk article
meet the blockchain dad that's me three
years ago I did the birth certificate of
my daughter by simply doing a proof that
is you know I wrote their Turing
impossible
something that requires enough bandwidth
that will exceed computing capacity or
commonly available computing capacity
and that requires some kind of human
judgement of the of the proof in the
case of my daughter's birth certificate
I've used video I simply showed a video
of myself in the hospital my wife that
she was like very very mad at me of me
doing that video my mother and my
mother-in-law as witnesses
each one of them stating their own
identity and the last moment of the
video I'm shooting the week on
blockchain with the last block of the
blockchain and the and the hash related
to that block so I can demonstrate that
that video was shot in that moment of
time now that video is only for me I
don't need to polish this video anywhere
I don't need to share this video on any
platforms it's strictly can be a
strictly private video and in case of
conflict in the future I can use the
evidence what I submit is among a
trusted peers I simply submit a hash and
these trusted peers can develop a
consensus that works as a as a trust
graph and it's it's done strictly
through voting and the reason that this
has to be done strictly through voting
is that in order to acknowledge human
participants in networks and a is
machine learning in your software only
recognizes patterns
it never really recognizes human
participants it cannot acknowledge other
humans only people can acknowledge other
people so we need to put in place a
protocol that really brings the
attention variable in the way the
consensus is being built so a democratic
trust graph and then the score of this
trust graph it can be you know we can be
based on reputational algorithms like
PageRank the score of this trust graph
then helps mean a claim that can be put
in an EOC 7/25 identity and the claim
that we care about is simply asking if
there is the proof that is being on the
hash that is going to be included in the
USC 725 is a non civil
human is it a human being and not a
machine and does it have keys in the
system already that that's the main main
claim that we need to verify by doing a
democratic trust graph that uses these
types of proofs the challenge is to
build a system that can be deployed in
those places where identity is being
denied there are 65 million refugees in
the world right now
refugees are those who's who who no
state no no state actor anywhere in the
world is given them an identity I work
very closely with Julio Coco julio Coco
is an dissident an activist activist in
Venezuela in Caracas and he runs a
Twitter account that has over 300,000
followers he's giving workshops on
blockchain technology every weekend and
the challenge that when I met Julio in
in Caracas three or four years ago he
told me you know he asked me Santiago
what is politics to you and I gave him a
lame answer like I don't know the art of
the impossible and he said no no no no
politics is one thing and one thing only
politics is what you say in a given
moment in time that's all politics about
what you say in a in any moment in time
and my mind kind of exploded because
that's literally what lodgings are we've
been using blockchains
mostly for financial systems but when it
comes to governance when it comes to
politics is by understanding what is
being said and what what kind of meaning
is being attached to a specific
transaction and and something that that
Coconino asked me back then is that he
has a very important need to organize
his network of dissidents using social
media using digital networks but it's a
very huge risk because all of the ISPs
are controlled by the government to
expose any kind of identity even email
or any kind of identity that could track
them down inside Venezuela so being able
to organize online while preserving
their anonymity by being
able to effectively signal identity and
at the same time signal the legitimacy
of those identities but without
revealing revealing any personal
information is extremely relevant for
these political communities to organize
in an environment in a Victoria in the
duct Oriole environment like the one
that Venezuela has is being transformed
into the metric we care about in what we
are designing as a system is
fundamentally inclusion you know we have
a lot of metrics to benchmark and
measure crypto networks out there you
know most of them are tied to financial
performance but the challenge for us is
to figure out a mechanism that we were
by allocating you know this claim on
Yossi 725 identities that you know other
states that you are effectively a human
participant and you don't hold keys in
the system and by doing it through a
democratic consensus that can use a
trust graph then what we can end up
measuring in the network is how many
people we are including we should be
able to easily include each one of us in
this room or each one of us in this city
in this country eventually scale
hopefully if you know the roadmap of the
theorem is able to deliver the whole
world so I will end up with a closing
statement from beautiful text by written
by John Perry Barlow in 1996 a
declaration of the independence of
cyberspace and he ends that that
beautiful manifesto saying we will
create a civilization of the mind in
cyberspace
maybe more humane and I highlight the in
his choice of words by saying that you
know this network needs to be humane we
need to put you know power in people's
hands the AIS are already ruling the
world you know a eyes have already put a
meme in the White House and so we need
to may be more humane and fair than the
world your governments have made before
and he's talking to he's talking to the
industrial governments of the past
beautiful text I encourage you to look
for this and you can you know follow me
on Twitter and at Santa City Santa at
democracy dot Earth we're gonna be
launching the new version of sovereign
which is liquid democracy in a social
media form and enable it by with every
token that is out there not just our
token and we're going to be launching
this November 15 so if you register on
the website before November 2nd I've
heard you're gonna be hearing
interesting news from us that we cannot
share in public probably due to regulate
regulatory aspects and stuff so thank
you and if there are any questions we
have time for one maybe two questions
does anybody have a question I have one
question given that no oh great we got
someone not me not sure if you I'm not
sure I think thanks for your talk was
enlightening I'm not sure if you
mentioned it but I think it's really
important especially in governance to
also think about the transitional moment
when people are not Unchained and not in
the blockchain right and how do we cope
with this transitional moment right of
because you talked about inclusion
what is this chasm that will basically
be a challenge to basically create from
one point inclusion well excluding the
ones that are not in the inclusion if
you see what I mean it's it's critical
question we're doing a bunch of projects
right now for example we're working with
the Congress of Wayne Osiris and we're
you know we have implemented with them
before a Digital democracy platform
traditional web app and now we're gonna
take the opportunity to try to figure
out how to airdrop at least one token
and on each of the validated accounts
using a traditional mechanism for
validation through phone call and
through email and we're gonna on this
pilot you know we're gonna airdrop the
token then it's the matter of well they
will they be able to use the token
prolly a lot of them not because of gas
cost or myung because you know getting
to teach them how to install meta masks
you have
those onboarding barriers but at least
we can start doing you know boating
mechanisms that have no gas cause like
off chain signing a message and using
that as a way of you know tallying the
vote eventually signaling the boat and
those techniques can hopefully be a very
cheap way to get people starting using
you know blockchain based networks
without having a huge payoff on on gas
that and the gas would be on us I think
we need to find very simple ways of
using block chains now not you know most
people out there expecting a user
experience that is web like so you know
thinking from the from the economics I'm
from the user experience side of things
you know making apps that look like the
traditional web apps but at the same
time are able to expose you only a much
more frequent basis to not just to the
idea of tokens like on crypto Twitter
but to you know start getting curious
enough to you know get some actual
tokens get some actual you know a crypto
currency and and understand what's the
purpose behind of each one of those
tokens we are also you know working
providing governance to crypto networks
I think that the stage of the industry
right now is scripta for crypto a lot of
the projects are thinking in those terms
we're working with block stack providing
the governance for their developer
platform all of the subsidies that
globster blocks that keeps - developers
are being decided by the governance we
provide with democracy earth we're going
to be working with the governance of the
central land which is a very exciting
project has already implemented some
solutions around boating and we are
eager to provide you know the governance
interface for any token that's out there
that's why we're making our or
application multi token
you