it's now day four of a very very long
Def Con and of course it's 9:05 a.m. so
it's great to see that some people are
still alive and well thank you so over
the last three three and a half years
that I've been in the ecosystem you know
I've seen this really wonderful group of
technologists solving some really really
challenging problems in distributed
computing really with the goal of
helping people transact together and
self organize to help them about this
you know this new age of the internet
however in the process I think we've
kind of gotten lost a little bit we've
focused so much on the technology that
we're building that you know we stopped
starting to think about who are we
solving whose problems are we really
solving to begin with most importantly I
think we've forgotten that the software
alone the hard protocols
aren't enough what matters at least as
much is human behavior the soft
protocols and the culture that shapes
the way that they act so today I'm going
to share a thesis that I've been
developing over the last eight months
after looking what's worked what hasn't
in Bitcoin and etherium and in the
plurality of coins we now see
around us in our ecosystem I'm going to
share the three main steps that I think
are required to accomplish successful
tokenized community building by telling
you the story of how Bitcoin became this
massive massive global phenomenon and we
now see around us that isn't really
going anywhere if you can build a token
and if you can build a culture around
that token and you could change the
world so to begin I'm going to bring us
back to 2008 with the original launch of
Satoshi's white paper in it Satoshi
outlined this protocol for self
sovereign scarce money that was free of
manipulation from central bank's or from
any nation-state now at the time of
course this school seemed pretty
outlandish you know people had been
living with fiat currencies that were
printed by large institutions for such a
long time that it kind of forgotten that
anybody could create their own money if
they wanted to all that really mattered
was that they could convince other
people of its legitimacy now a number of
values were really interestingly
embedded within that protocol that
Satoshi launched for example Satoshi's
view on the importance of scarce assets
which we see with the 21
and hard cap on Bitcoin issuance or the
importance of decentralization which he
implies directly in the first line of
the white paper with regards to
peer-to-peer money transmission free of
central bank or financial institution
intermediaries some of satoshis values
were implicitly stated in his actions as
well Satoshi embedded a news article
about the Chancellor in the Genesis
block again signaling some of the
motivations behind what might have
brought him to build the network or also
his pseudonymity signaling the fact that
sometimes important work does have to
happen from the shadows it can always
happen in the light what's interesting
is that now in 2019 if you ask a Bitcoin
or around you what the values of Bitcoin
are they'd probably have a long list
that they could provide you despite the
fact that very few if any of them were
ever really stated explicitly by Satoshi
Satoshi did a good job of embedding his
values within the protocol without ever
making them too explicit this ultimately
served to benefit Satoshi's goal since
leaving them less defined meant the
people could still project their own
values onto the technology depending on
how it suited their needs best this of
course has helped Bitcoin grow to the
massive global scale we now see it at
right now since fewer people might be
excluded when they might disagree with
some of the values if he had explicitly
stated them however as with most things
this has turned out to be a bit of a
double-edged sword
the vaguer the values were the more
people he could bring into the community
but this ultimately would come at the
cost of social cohesion
since eventually different factions
which did have different values would
need to come to disagreements and would
require hard forks to overcome them this
of course helps explain the continuously
fragmenting nature of the Bitcoin
community that we still see to this day
nonetheless in publishing this paper
Satoshi completed step one of the
process that I think is incredibly
important creating a goal that he would
be pursuing he stated a set of values
some explicitly most implicitly which
have come to define the Bitcoin space
together these goals and values became
the lifeblood of the Bitcoin community
and they continue to inspire and bring
meaning to people's lives even to the
these are the same values that brought
me into the crypto ecosystem despite the
fact that I'd never really used or
contributed to the Bitcoin project very
much at all the next thing that Satoshi
did was to define a token Bitcoin which
would serve as the globally scarce asset
that he wanted to exist he defined the
Bitcoin protocol a set of rules that we
could all run on our computers which
could help achieve this stated goal the
protocol included a dispersal mechanism
mining which rewarded individuals and
the collective community for achieving
their goal of having a payment network
and ledger through the magic of Nakamoto
consensus this was step 2 of the process
whereby Satoshi created a focal point
which embodied the goals and values that
he wanted to achieve now I'm gonna take
a moment here and define what I refer to
as a focal point which is a little bit
different than the way it's usually used
in the real world but similar to the
world's to the word shelling point which
we actually use fairly commonly in the
game theory space a focal point
something that acts as a fulcrum around
which people can organize all great
movements have focal points whether it's
a person a place a symbol an object an
event a set of words or all of the above
a good focal point is something that
draws people in it gives them an example
that they can look to when they want to
see how the community manifests itself
in the real world my favorite example of
a focal point is the disco ball at a
party which usually marks the center of
a dancefloor now if we bring it back to
Satoshi the disco ball was Bitcoin and
the underlying protocol was the
dancefloor
the substrate upon which people could
actually use the solution to do the
activity that the community originally
set out to exist by creating these two
things he turned this theoretical idea
into something defined something
practical something which existed in the
real world something that people could
hold onto having money that was free of
central bank control was now possible in
publishing his paper Satoshi seems to
have hit the sweet spot around the
hardness of his focal points which are
just solid enough for people to grasp on
to and be drawn towards but still vague
enough that people could project their
own
use Intuit as they saw fit if one
believed that the protocol could help
them achieve some goal which of course
is still different depending on who you
ask
then they could purchase the token and
or run the protocol to the benefit of
both themselves Satoshi and the broader
community what was really happening
whether intentionally or not was that
Satoshi was creating a culture culture
is defined by the ideas social behaviors
and customs of a particular group it's
incredibly important that the early
members of a given community action
actually act in accordance with the
values that they expose it isn't just
enough to talk the talk for example by
removing himself at the earliest
possible moment Satoshi made sure that
his actions embodied the the core value
of decentralization that's so critical
to the existence of Bitcoin the cool
thing was that Satoshi had done such a
good job of actually passing on that
culture and those values to new
followers that even though he
disappeared others actually began to
take the reins and continue to embody
and shape the culture first we saw
people like Gavin Andresen and Andres
Antonopoulos who continued to lead the
development of the core protocol and the
cultural movement around the token we
had companies like bitpay and coinbase
which popped up whose Express mission it
was to bring Bitcoin to the masses you
had forums like Bitcoin talk events like
the North American Bitcoin conference
meet ups like Satoshi Square which
created spaces for people to congregate
to share ideas to feel human connections
with others who shared their goals and
values events like those continue to be
critical critical for focal points for
the creation of any culture as I'm sure
many of you guys sitting in the audience
can understand after the last three days
we've had at this wonderful event now
when we think of onboarding new users
for Bitcoin in the mainstream culture
there was a pretty big one in the last
decade thanks to the Silk Road you had
this great path to onboard new users if
anybody wanted to buy drugs in the 2010s
the easiest way usually was using
Bitcoin in this way even if you didn't
care at all about decentralization self
sovereign money or any of the
rest of the goals and values you could
still make use of what was being built
as a third party observer and consumer a
similar Avenue existed for those in the
finance industry who saw an opportunity
for this massive massive wealth creation
by trading Bitcoin again this created a
new entry point for people to be drawn
in and discovered what the community was
all about importantly some of those
people who were brought in would stay
around long after their original
motivations had faded away these were
the people who cared the most about the
movement at its core of course this
often happened in waves the bear the
bull would bring in lots of new people
and then the bear would take many of
them out however the cool thing is that
just like waves crashing on the beach
which pull back the dust and the silt
leaving behind only the heaviest of
stones the most passionate people the
ones with whom the values resonated the
most have still stuck around that's why
the most prominent people we meet in the
crypto ecosystem are often the ones have
been around the longest there are just
the ones who've stood the test of time
while their peers have either decided to
take profits or realize they simply
didn't care enough to continue devoting
their lives to the movement we're all in
this was step three of the process and
in my opinion the most important of them
all building a culture it's important
because it accomplishes two main things
number one is it brings in new people to
the ecosystem and number two is that it
brings in new money now bringing in
people to an ecosystem is obvious you
know a fairly self-evident if you can
aspire people with what's possible then
there'll be more people willing to
complete tasks in exchange for the token
in question such as running a Bitcoin
miner in 2009 when the tokens really
weren't worth that much similarly you'll
have people who are willing to
perpetuate the culture yelling by
Bitcoin that anyone who's willing to
listen by bringing people in you'll also
have people who see value in what's
built who are willing to actually use
the solutions that we're creating people
understand the merits of the technology
that we've developed and will derive
benefit from them in the real everyday
lives
finally by inspiring people and building
a commitment to the cause you create a
really necessary economic force
haughtily
without Hato culture Bitcoin would
likely be worthless
people would dump their tokens at the
first sign of changing winds hollow
culture at its core is this mutual
agreement by the community to fight back
against the Bears - all agree that the
future state of the network is still
going to be better than the current one
and like many things in the world this
became a self-fulfilling prophecy
if everyone had believed that Bitcoin
was likely to fail it probably would
have failed but if you could get
everybody or at least a critical mass of
people to believe Bitcoin would succeed
then it would at a certain point it
stopped mattering what the naysayers
thought because the movement was simply
too wide to fail and of course this is
now what we see with Bitcoin and central
bank's admitting their defeat to its
permanence next it's important I think
to talk about the relevance of bringing
in external money to the ecosystem and
highlight the unpopular opinion that
traders are actually incredibly
important to what we're building while
it's all very well and good to have a
token and great to have people willing
to earn it while completing tasks
ultimately it doesn't really matter
unless the tokens are worth something
eventually people do still need to cash
out and pay for their power bills in
their rent unless our community can be
entirely vertically integrated all the
way down to the bread we put on our
tables in the rent we put and the roofs
we put over our heads people eventually
still need to spend money outside of the
ecosystem this is basic macroeconomics
the money flowing out can't be bigger
than the money flowing in sometimes the
money flowing in will be for altruistic
reasons like donations sometimes it'll
be because people need to buy a token to
get utility out of the network and
sometimes it's simply that people have
faith in that what they're doing might
eventually be in their best interest
however most of the time people just
want to turn two dollars into three and
in my opinion that's okay because their
speculation is still necessary while we
figure out how to correctly create and
capture value so to recap these are the
three key steps to building a tokenized
community number one choose a set of
goals and values and state them
explicitly so that they can attract
people who will
with the mission making sure that the
actions of the early members embody
those values number two create a token
in a protocol which embodied that
mission and effectively reward the
activities which help the community
achieve its goals and number three and
in my opinion most importantly create a
culture which perpetuates itself
infecting the minds of people around the
world by capturing their hearts and
inspiring them with change so this might
seem like a done deal right you know the
play books already written we can all
pack up and go home right unfortunately
as we can fairly self-evidently
recognize there are parts of this which
remained very much unsolved for instance
look at bitcoins token dispersal
mechanism how efficiently did it really
reward people who contributed the most
to its creation and propagation versus
the vast number of Free Riders who
happen to buy in early and hold for long
enough to become millionaires has too
much value been generated for too few
too early so that the remaining 99.6% of
people who won't even care and what
about culture how well is it done to
inspire people who are in technologists
or who don't have a pre-existing
distrust for the institution's around
them how well does this culture
perpetuate itself rather than maligning
the original vision of Satoshi so in my
opinion these are the three main
problems which still exist for us to
solve today and what's really exciting
is that we can actually start solving
them right now in the etherium ecosystem
number one if I have a token and I have
a set of goals how do I intelligently
disperse those tokens either in protocol
or outside of the protocol to help
achieve my goals personally this is
something I've really been interested in
for quite a long time and when I
actually found out a project called
bounties Network to try and solve number
two if I have a token and a platform
that creates value for people how do I
capture some of that value to
sustainably maintain the inflow of money
into the ecosystem and number three if I
have a set of goals and values how do I
intentionally create a culture that
embodies them that draws in as many
people as possible without messing the
necessary social cohesion
these problems are admittedly quite hard
most of them have to do with humans with
an understanding of how people behave
and how people think these are
sociological problems they're not
technological problems and while this
might worrisome thankfully we have
events like this one which bring us
together and help us build a culture and
so we're increasingly seeing that
developers in our ecosystem are waking
up to the fact that they don't have all
the answers that the hard protocols are
only half the story that scalability
doesn't matter if we don't have users
and that the soft protocol protocol
developers are still needed to aid our
mission if we're gonna make crypto the
global phenomenon that we want it to be
so for anyone sitting out there in the
crowd with a set of dreams or some goals
you really want to accomplish I
encourage you to think big and to be
intentional about the way you build a
culture around your movement it might be
the most important thing that we can do
thank you
[Applause]
one of the values that I think is really
important is giving people credit an
attribution when they help there's a
long list of people here I'm going to go
through who actually without whom this
talk wouldn't have been possible
Joe Luba and Jesse grew shack and eat at
hope Simona and Corwin my teammates and
cofounders of ake Singh Joe bender Eva
Balin of course my mom and many many
more who helped me actually come up with
many of the ideas that are in this talk
many of the actions that I'm talking
about weren't mine and I think there's a
lot of other much smarter people in our
community who already know that this is
this is the case but with that I think I
have two and a half minutes so if
anybody has any questions I think
there's a mic in the middle of the room
otherwise I'll be around to chat about
this at length
[Applause]
you