Welcome to Game of Nodes, a weekly podcast from
Independent Validator Teams. Hello and welcome
to Game of Nodes, a weekly podcast from Independent
Validator Teams, now sponsored by the Tillamook
County Smoke, Country Smoker, nearly got that
right. I can't even get a joke right these days.
That's what we're in. Bear market is one thing.
Tariff. war, trade war is another thing. It's
been a very wearing week. There's a trade war.
There's a trade war. Have you not heard? I heard
it was cancelled. Just cancelled just for just
for a couple weeks. So true story, I was looking
I was talking to a friend of mine who's who's
a journalist about the trade war. And while we
were just chatting, they were like, Oh, shit,
it's been called off trade wars. trade was over
lol and then they were like by the way it's not
really and then I looked at like when when they
were like oh yeah it's it's it's over I just
didn't even look at the news went straight to
like the candles graph and saw they'd all edged
up by the 1 % I was like trade was over we're
back baby and then of course like it's like oh
but when we say over we mean everybody's still
getting 10 % tariffs and then it was like oop
and then all red again And I was like, damn,
it's not over, dude. And he was like, is that
just in your stupid ass crypto world? And I was
like, it's just in my stupid ass crypto. Exactly.
I'm sure it's bad out there in the real economy,
too. I'm sure we're all losing money. But right
now, line not go up. And it's bad. And as an
aside, what do you reckon the players I read
some like bullshit headline about how Liberty
Financial will liquidate a bunch of ETH. And
I was like, that has to be making There has to
be some, there has to be some kind of scam here,
you know? Is that right? Who's Liberty Financial?
I should know that. It's Trump's thing. Oh, uh
oh. I did, I did see that they, that, that then
they flash sale like $50 million of that Molina
bullshit token or something like that too. I
drove that thing into the ground. Yeah, I don't
know. I think they finally rugged it. They haven't
already rugged it? No, I think they're a whole,
I don't know. God knows. I ordered some server
hardware three weeks ago from China, but it's
on backorder. And when the tariffs came up, I
messaged him. I was like, hey, I'm going to cancel
this because I don't really want to pay like
double the cost for the server hardware. And
they replied and they were like, let's just let
it wait for a few days because Trump's an asshole
and we don't know what to do. I was like, okay.
So you're finally joining. Now insert masochism
club Kinda kinda a little bit I'm actually setting
up home hardware because I don't want to commit
to a data center and it's gonna be like the low
priority things that it's gonna go in here and
then there's basically all the network is gonna
happen via the VPN in order to do like As least
commitment as possible you do test that tree
house is that what you're saying test that's
our high priority test that's you have to have
test that's you actually have to have good uptime.
That's fucking true. Nobody gives a fuck. You
don't care about any more as a business. That's
what you said. Totally. Dude, that is so fucking
true. I remember in like this was this is how
you know, how ahead people that are called fray
think right. I remember talking to Ethan fray
in 2021. I think it was Cosmoverse 2021. And
even then he was already like, yeah, for the
low priority stuff, you just run it out of your
garden shed, put it on the server, happy days.
I was like, in a pretty... There's still a ton
of valves to do that, right? I remember Jaby
running stuff underneath his desk for a long
time. I thought Demi ran his Juno validator out
of his house forever. Like it was on some, he
always said it was like on some machine in the
closet or something like that. Jaby was running
it off of the home entertainment. system in the
next room, wasn't it? It crashed, and I remember
him saying, oh, it's crashed because it's running
on the media center. It was like plex anosmosis.
Yeah, I was like, no, no, no. It's quite a powerful
computer, but it is in my house. And I was like,
shit's meant to be resilient. Yeah, I was like,
didn't you used to work for AWS or some shit?
He was like, no, no, no. We're trying to pay
for a home cinema. We're not trying to pay for
expensive hardware. That's funny. You should
listen to that advice. Then we would be sitting
pretty through this this tower of chaos. So where
are you putting that stuff? You put it in the
basement or something? That shit's loud, you
know? Let me grab the actual hardware real quick
so you can actually see it. Oh, is it like a
140? Oh, OK, so it's got like. big fans on it
or something like that. So it's not like, it
doesn't have those little 30 millimeters screamers
or that kind of server shit, right? Okay, that's
cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's worth it. It's basically
silent, but they're powerful as all hell. And
they're cheap. Like you can get them for dirt
cheap. Are they, are they Epic or what are they,
or just Ryzen? They're just Ryzen. Yeah. And
they're laptop Ryzen, but laptop Ryzen is like,
basically just as good. There's nothing wrong
in that show. For me, it was always like it was
always internet. Although, although I mean, for
a while, I had two routes out of this house because
I because for another reason, but but for another
reason. But but that was always the issue is
like just having something that's stable enough.
And especially if you especially if you have
open like if you have open ports and shit, that
becomes a pain in the ass. Yeah, so I've been,
well, that's why I wanted to deal with the VPN,
right? So if I, I can basically peer off - You
can route it out. Internal nodes. Yeah. But I
am gonna get a second line dropped so that I
actually have a business SLA. Yeah. So that I
don't have to worry about it. Plus all the unlimited
internet then. So, and it's already, it's one
gig up and down. Yeah. Good enough. That's funny.
Yeah. Or even if you put, even if you put signers
at home, that's not a good idea. Right. Something
like that. Just keep keys local. Yep. Yeah, so
- That's fun. But you're right about the testnet
thing, man. Nobody gives a shit mainnet, I swear.
Testnet, like, who the hell? I mean, it is true
that when you have, like, various things like
testnets or performance testnets, I find they
are the times that I am most stressed out and
most attentive to, like, specific. I mean, fucking,
like, back in the day, for, like, Cosmos testnets,
when we were running, we would... sometimes we
running a fucking century on AWS for some of
that stuff. Okay, that was pure madness. That
was. Look, look, sometimes now when I look at
what's in the bank, and I go, mistakes have been
made, which mistakes specifically have been made,
the answer is usually AWS. But yeah, there's
no but. But you got to care about test nets,
right? It's just it's just the nature of the
beast the Especially in this day and age right
because I think that that's one of the things
that new validators underestimate They're like,
oh I got into a main net therefore I'm doing
awesome But really once you get a minute everything
kind of quiets down, right? It's just test nets
where you have to kind of show your chops and
say, oh I've got this RPC for you guys Yins are
gonna love it. You're gonna love it. Yeah. Yep.
I think that Yeah, I mean, difficulty I found
with with test nets is that in in cosmos, it's
like, because especially in the early days, it
was like a bit of a club, if you knew people,
and you've met people, especially, especially
relatively early on, like, you can kind of get
into most stuff, like, you know, people basically
get the idea that you're not like a Mickey Mouse
operator in terms of technical chops, and you're
kind of that, like, all you need to do is actually
show up, pull your weight. help out with documentation
stuff, and you're good. But it's like a, in every
like that, that entire approach, obviously, for
obvious reasons doesn't work in any other ecosystem.
And then you're kind of like, I was talking to,
I was talking about this with somebody else in
with another validator the other day, who mainly
works in other ecosystems. And they were like,
they're like, as wild when you're in an environment
where there's sort of a barrier to entry and
sort of not at the same time, like from a business
perspective, when you're trying to get into testers
and things, because you're competing against
like literally everybody at every level of experience.
And there's, there's so little filter other than
having shaken somebody's hand still, which we
all know, obviously, but hey, yeah. So Yeah,
there's been there's been soft selling of Molina
over four million dollars a day Over and over
and over they think it's inside the team just
quietly rug -pulling just a little bit by a little
bit I can't believe it has that much liquidity
Yeah, I mean, I don't know but it's it's down
90 % 96 % from all -time high At this is the
article from no today. It says 51 cents, but
I know it's already down to 47 It just keeps
slowly sliding. I think there's like 75 million
dollars of liquidity Like that, which is like
full diluted value. Wow. Okay. Yeah Just just
like just bigger bigger smaller rug pool, you
know, that's the question He's got to do he's
a little a time, right? It's like a I mean, that's
like pulling the rug out from or like a tablecloth
as opposed to the rug Well, yeah, no, you gotta
do it, but you're doing it slow, right? So like
you're actually moving the whole all the shit
on the table with it until Until everything falls
off the edge. Yeah, exactly. Right. You're not
just whipping everything out. You're just kind
of slowly You're like how the fuck are we over
here now? Wait, why is it we have 40 cents? Oh
because somebody's been selling off four million
dollars a fucking day. I Mean anybody is surprised
that that tokens go to south has not probably
been paying much attention everybody knows it's
going to zero just to put every feels I can They
can be smarter than the people that are going
to be riding it all the way out. Somebody's holding
that bag. So you know this whole AI governing
blockchain thing that's been a meme for years?
I was thinking about it after going to an academic
conference last week. And I was like, OK, what
if public blockchains actually And I know this
is literally why people have been memeing this
for years. I'm aware that this has always been
the argument, but I was like, hang on. If these
public blockchains aren't actually much good
as a store of value, and maybe they're not much
good for payments either, and there might be
better ways of doing smart contracts. All three
possibilities. I know Serp has a news item about
the whole store of value thing that he wants
to talk about. But actually, like, I know it's
also been a meme of this podcast that we've always
talked about, like, what do these things do other
than, you know, make validators get up in the
middle of the night and create governance proposals.
But actually, the one thing that you do want
to create like a really public audience trail
and you don't care about privacy of any kind
for is your automated agent governance. The only
part of the whole AI on blockchain thing that
really doesn't make a lick of sense is that all
the people who are talking about AI on blockchain
are still going, oh, yeah, and you're going to
need gas and tokens, and we're going to mint
one. And it's like, oh, what? But why? The agent
wants to pay with US dollars or whatever. You
don't need a token. None of that makes a lick
of sense. But all the governance part, yeah,
kind of, but probably not token -weighted voting
because obviously, Sibyl attacks, right? So I
don't know, like maybe the whole governance engine
with Byzantine fault tolerance makes a lot of
sense in that case, just like nobody's gonna
get rich off of price manipulation for a native
token by doing it. But maybe it does make more
sense than I've given it credit for in the past.
So there you go. That's me saying I'm wrong.
I have no idea what you just said. Yeah, I don't
either. AI on blockchain may be good, but sadly
no moon. But number small? But for the discerning
validator, twizzling their evil mustache. Like,
if my hypothesis is correct, right, a native
token don't matter. Still means you need infrastructure,
still means you need people to run those nodes.
They're probably just gonna be paid in a more
boring way. And hey, I'm Captain Boring. Hear
it on boy labs. We like we like it pay for boring
work. We love it So I'm into that. Yeah, you
know Trump You know, well, why would AI be on
blockchain? What's the point? Just the governance
of it basically Because like the one thing so
the one thing that governance seems the one thing
the blockchain is do seem to be to do Dallas
more specifically They do seem to arrive at a
form of socially governed consensus, which is
interesting, right? It's interesting that even
some like terror fucking collapses can relaunch.
That's kind of fascinating, right? And the token's
worth nothing afterwards, but you go like, okay,
there's something about trust in these systems
that can be achieved. Can you do that without
the shitcoin, basically? Can these systems be
useful for governance without the shitcoin? That's
the question. can these DAOs work with? Because
if they can just work with a US dollar treasury
or a stable coin treasury, then you're away to
the race. I mean, like our DAO, the game of NOSDAO,
it's just a stable coin treasury. We just use
it as some basic stuff. And it actually is quite
useful. We use it for useful things. But you
apply that logic to loads of other things that
you might want to semi -automatedly govern and
that might want to conceivably interact with
simple smart contracts or financial primitives.
AI is to be fair one of them Yeah, so I Just
don't think I don't think you can I don't think
you need the shit coin part, but I think you
do need the Dow part But is that what does that
do it's like like creating guardrails um, um,
hey like no, it's not it's not it's not governance
in the sense of like, you know, the what's the
What's the is Asimov's laws of whatever that
I'm thinking of, you know, where it's like, you
shouldn't kill a human. Those is I'm not talking
about governance in that sense. I mean, like,
is this action legitimate? Or should this new
model be deployed? Or is this? I don't really
I don't use AI because I'm a fucking Luddite.
So, you know, like, I mean, governance in a more
boring social consensus kind of way, like a Putting
putting constraints around like what smart contracts
it can interact with like what its interaction
surfaces and blah blah blah blah not like not
like Has it tried to take the nuclear launch
codes because obviously if it's done that we're
in terminator 3 anyway or terminator 2 or in
fact Every time every terminator after terminator
1 involves the new nuclear launch codes doesn't
it say From memory does to involve the codes
Isn't that what it was about? No, you're right.
Three is where three is what no three because
two is about they come back from the post apocalypse,
don't they? But it all happens before three is
where you see it happening. You see Judgment
Day. Mm hmm. Four is post Judgment Day. Well,
that's a very bad film, but still, I don't remember.
So Terminated Salvation is the one where Christian
Bale had the meltdown on set. You remember? Oh,
yeah. Have you not heard it? It's a main show
now. Oh, is it? Did somebody audio record it?
Oh, yeah, yeah. I think I did hear about that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The state, the audio is still
on on set. And so it's just like Christian Bale
in full, like, back to meltdown. Right, right.
He was screaming to the director. I forget. What
was he pissed about, though? It was something.
Somebody dropped a... I think somebody dropped
like a mic boom or something in the middle of
a take. And apparently it had been a really bad
production, like really disorganized. And he
just like explodes. And they're just like, there's
like copped out. It's just a bike boomer. He's
just like, I'm not calm down. It's minute 30,
just like rant. And like, he names the director
and there's like, ah. Listen, we've had those
days. Yeah. But there's the there's a I think
his family guy had a great bit where they just
like Peter's just like in the set and like a
boom falls down. He's just like repeats verbatim
the entire rant and then storms off. They thought
they put that one out really shortly after it
was like a meme. It's like fair play. That's
actually a really good joke. All right, I found
it up on LinkedIn notes. Wait, what does that
have to do with AI? Which one has the nuclear
codes? Who has the nuclear codes? Christian has
it. That's the one. So Bitcoin and gold. Yeah.
Yeah, what we think we were talking about before
was, well, we've had this theory, or I guess
the market has had this theory. Who's had this
theory? That Bitcoin is playing this role as
a digital reserve. And it has in the past, I
think, at least in the last, maybe, I can go
back and look, but maybe the last year -ish,
something like that, but it has followed a bit
of gold prices and it has followed at least that
structure. Although gold has been going up for
a long time, but so has Bitcoin, I guess, and
we need back out far enough. But what was interesting,
I was just looking at just in this tariff situation,
just how much those two have diverged and...
There's huge influx in the gold right now. I
think the price is over 3 ,200 USD, something
like that. 3 ,174 right now, which I think is
two or... That's per ounce? Yeah, which I think
is like two and a half percent, two or three
percent since this whole Hubba Baloo started,
whatever it was, 10 days ago. I'm not sure. How
long are we in this? It feels like... it feels
like it's been months but yeah it's been a lot
it feels like it's been a long time it's been
like five days right i know it was last week
uh what's the fool is interstellar where they
go down to like the planet where matt damon is
and they think it's been like an hour and then
they come back and the guy's been like it's been
like 30 years oh yeah that's a great scene The
guys that's been spinning, the guys that's sitting
in that scaffold spinning around 30 years waiting
for him to come back. Do you remember like when
that film came out, there was like a brief, there
was a brief and delicious period of memes where
they were all just the, you know, the really
intense docking music where they're trying to
dock with the spinning spaceship was out of control
and it was just things that were spinning. And
they had like some guy that like fired off a
fire extinguisher while sitting in a in a desk
chair and he's just like spinning really fast
and there's like there's like a cat hanging on
a you know like a what's it called you know when
those ceiling fans uh -huh like it was trying
to climb up onto the ceiling fan to get and it
just kept slipping back down and it was just
like really intense music um yeah that's great
yeah so so anyway so great meme I think this
last few weeks, I think we've seen, I don't know
what it was, I thought it was like 10 days ago,
whatever, fuck. But we have not seen that those
have been at all correlated. And so I think it
is interesting, it's something that we'll probably
talk about again at some point, but it is pretty
interesting how maybe different types of risk
drive investors in different ways. maybe has
nothing to do with that at all. But the idea
that like, hey, these tariffs might get us into
a little bit of a spiral here, we might have
a recession. And is Bitcoin a store of value
during a recession? Or is even that that's too
much risk. And so therefore, our traditional
holders would then run back to gold or something
similar to that, that is a more traditional store
of value, like that they don't feel has the same
amount of of risk associated to that. It is a
store of value, but maybe it's a different level
of risk structure. I'm clear it's a different
level of risk, which we've always said that.
It's not even the same fucking thing. But I think
the market has tried to look at it and say, hey,
this is a digital gold. So therefore, it's going
to follow that same structure in terms of as
flows go in and out of the market. And maybe
this last couple of weeks has put that to a test
a little bit. Yeah, I mean, this is okay. So
before I say this, I'm obviously way out of my
lane. I'm not economically literate or sophisticated
enough to really pursue this thought too much
further. But it'd be really interesting to have
somebody sufficiently literate to talk about
what's happened with stablecoin flows during
this time, especially US dollar, right? Because
the thesis on stablecoins especially like, okay,
if you hypothesize that there are people with
an whether or not it's an agenda, any body is
certainly first necessarily agree with. But if
you hypothesize, there are people who have a
thought out agenda somewhere behind Trump's plans,
all of their various forms. And they've basically
gone, hey, in exchange for you personally enriching
yourself, we get to carry out our economic agenda.
That's the that's the hypothesis, right? Is that
behind the scenes, the guys have said, hey, We
want to deregulate cryptocurrencies. Good news.
That means you can rug pull a bunch of your supporters
and make a load of money. And he's like, let's
go. And then he's like, well, I love tariffs.
And they're like, well, we want to revalue the
dollar and re -onsure some silicon. some semiconductor
manufacturing so that when China invades Taiwan,
we don't lose our strategic access to microprocessors.
So he's like, but I get tariffs. And they're
like, yes, yes, calm down, you get tariffs. And
what we're thinking is we would like Denmark.
And he's like, Denmark, no so worrying. They
were like, okay, we'll send JD Vans to Denmark,
then we can maybe they'll go independent. And
then we can just say, hey, we're going to take
your semiconductors. Amazing. Thank you. Also
rare earth metals, but like you've got to assume
that there's there's like some some kind of policy
right joining all these things up behind the
scenes and his Not SEC, I don't know one of his
officials I don't remember how all of these things
work in America has already written like an op
-ed in The Economist some time ago basically
being like here's what I do and You know to quote
Al from Die Hard. He's got the ultimate playbook
and he's running it step by step yeah well until
they capitulated on the tariffs like that's but
they were basically just running the playbook
that they had said in the open they were going
to run is my they said they're gonna run yeah
we'll just keep increasing this until somebody
blinks until somebody blinks right yeah but so
the interesting thing right coming back to our
little corner of the degenerate sphere is what
happens to stable coins right because you kind
of got to go okay well a lot of what the tariff
stuff will do is about devaluing the dollar.
A lot of it is going to cause trading partners
to maybe think twice about how much exposure
they want to the dollar from a trust perspective.
Well, that's why they backed out the tariffs,
right? Bonds were being sold hands over a fist
in the market and they were like, oh, maybe this
wasn't the best idea. Well, but that brings us
back to all this stuff about Bitcoin reserve
and also stuff about stablecoin deregulation
is that I don't know, I'm sure other people have
written about this, I'm sure there's literally
loads of news articles that I could look at,
but it was just a conversation that we're having
here. But there must be, like maybe that's a
part of the picture, right? Which is that they
go, well, okay, it's a very cheap bet on the
scale of an economy to deregulate stablecoins
and go, hey, if all of the crypto guys are right
and stablecoins end up being. a meaningful amount
of transaction value or being held or blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. If we can make the US dollar
the most used one, it's free real estate, right?
If your goal is to try and devalue the dollar,
but keep dollar hegemony, like people using the
dollar, I don't know. Like I said, a smarter
economist would have to explain that to me. I
imagine that the amount of stablecoins in use,
even if it exploded into mainstream use, would
be still tiny, but I don't know. I don't know.
But the role of the dollar itself is also a little
bit at risk, right? There's this whole de -dollarization
thing. Have you seen that come up? I think just
countries trying to make the U .S. dollar less
important to their own, I don't know, their own...
I mean, that's probably a good bet after the
last 10 days, but... Yeah. I think they want
to rely less on the U .S. dollar, right? So...
So the so it's interesting that that all the
at least all the traditional popular stable coins
have been USD based. And does that put those
at risk as well? That's the question, right?
Yeah. I mean, I suppose we have our correspondent
PFC on the ground at Paris blockchain week. So
maybe we can maybe we can ask next week when
they're back. But to be honest, like, I think
we were talking about beforehand that there didn't
seem to be like, much like super exciting news,
a lot of it is the same sort of stuff we've seen
at other conferences, like state, you know, RWAs,
by which people mean stable coins and institutions
increasingly like taking up a lot of the air
in the room was the perspective, like every single,
almost every single thing I've seen was was stuff
about like institutional access. I mean, ironic
at a time when we're still getting threats of
debanking and blah, blah, blah. Governments and
banks and things love big institutions to play
these games. But as soon as your garage band
Mickey Mouse company with a handful of heads
gets involved, they're like, no, this is not
for you. This is not your party. Well, they're
not for you guys now. So boys will be boys in
America. Yeah It's gone from boys will be boys
in the UK to boys will be boys in America Yeah,
yeah, they just they what was that? Yeah, what
was that? Let me find that article actually real
quick Yeah, there's a recent article from which
I'll put the notes as well That what the SEC
was dropping any any and all Crypto based investigations
The purple people that were in it were purged,
right? So like kind of by default they have to
drop all of their litigation. That's like that
That's the way to get shit get get out get out
of problems, right? Like you just you fucking
fire anybody who's involved in it like yeah Exactly.
It's like hey mister president. Did you just
like rug pull a bunch of american citizens? Wow
It's like uh, yeah, it's like south manhattan
court anything else just fucking just get rid
of them all they can't things got to die and
always there to Nobody's there to work the fucking
stapler. What are they going to do? I'm the president.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this this DOJ ends crypto
enforcement team shifts focus to terrorism and
fraud. So basically the U .S. Justice Department
abruptly shut down its national cryptocurrency
enforcement team signaling a major shift in how
the federal government handle crypto related
crimes. Basically they were leaving focusing
on anything else except for who victimized digital
asset investors, victimized digital asset investors
is a good one to keep, thank you. Or those who
use digital assets to further its, in furtherance
of criminal offenses such as terrorism, narcotics,
and human trafficking, organized crime, hacking,
and cartel and gang financing. Honestly, I don't
know what else they were working on that was
outside of those topics, but I assume maybe it
was. Lavender five staking rewards and shit like
that. Like what else was? They had a big investigation
because they heard the validator was selling
their rewards. They were dumping. We have this
validator dumping case. Can we get rid of this
thing? This is one validator. They're taking
their five percent and they're selling it every
fucking day. Yeah. And we have an insider former
called L5. We don't know who L5 is. It's just
like a darkened room with like a voice changer.
Hello. I can confirm the jabby is the problem.
He logs into his black plex box and pulls rewards
and then sells them. You can find him walking
his dog if you need to disappear Okay, that's
funny keys on server To be fair, I think about
a lot more validators keep pieces so funny There
was our man I was I Was pulling no data the other
day because I was trying if I was trying to find
out Monthly distributions for a bunch of cosmos
networks just to test I just had this like, hunch
about some random thing. And I was like, I was
like, everything, all the data is on the blockchain,
I can just look this up. And then it turned out
that because of validators pruning, no, I fucking
couldn't. And then I was like, it's okay. I'm
pretty well connected to Cosmos, I'll just find
an archive. And then I couldn't find archives.
And then I was literally just like, it was just
literally because of a conversation I had when
I was on campus. And then I ran into the person
again, like a few days later, and they're like,
Oh, did you find out the answer to that question?
And I was like, I couldn't get the data easily,
but I'll, I'll look it up. And they were like,
couldn't get there easily. And I was like, this
is again, one of the academics versus the rest
of us type things where you're just like, yeah,
I mean, people just prune notes, dude, like the
day is gone. And they're like, it's fucking yesterday.
And they're like, the day is not gone. It's still
in the Merkle route. I'm like, yeah, a proof
that there was no double spend. That's still
there. The current state of the accounts balance.
That's still there. everything else man is gone.
It is gone. It's like Kaiser Soze. It's just
gone. But I was trying to explain this as well.
There was a conversation where somebody was talking
about like ledges, right, and the constraints
to them. It's like, well, you know, ideally,
right, you need all these ledges, like Ethereum,
you know, they don't grow at a fixed size. They
just the state balloons. I was like, no, they
don't, they just get pruned. And they're like,
they balloon forever. And I was like, dude, they
get pruned. And they're like, they'll just keep
growing. I was like, every serious non, like
every serious ledger that gets out into the wild
gets any usage feature one version 1 .1 is fix
cola or feet colon ad pruning. Like that's what
the git commit says, you know, I mean the change
log. And they're like, yeah, but then you lose
history. Exactly. That's the point. But then
it's in the context of there's a bunch of ledger
designs that you basically have a cycle. It's
like a day or a month or something. And you can
only see history in that cycle, and then it gets
discarded and you start again. And I'm just like,
well, you may as well just have the other one,
because then you could at least ask what the
state of every proof is. And it's like, whatever,
it'll grow. And I was like, yeah, but it will
get pruned. And they're like, well, we're not
going to implement pruning. I was like, well,
OK, fine. If you don't want to do literally the
thing that like in my just because everybody
else is doing like it's like, you know, we do
something naughty when you're a kid and your
mom's like, if all your friends did it, if all
your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump
off a cliff? And you're like, I don't know if
it seemed fun or if there was like water underneath
it or It's like that question, isn't it? Are
there girls involved? I was about to say, are
there girls watching? If there are girls going,
you're a coward if you don't jump off that cliff.
But I'm off that cliff. That's how I met my wife
jumping off a cliff. Just because every other
ledger does this doesn't mean it's a good idea.
factually correct, because logically, I can't
ever disprove that position. But this is the
same argument my mom used to used with me about
that cliff. And I only broke my foot. So it wasn't
that bad in the grand scheme of things. Yeah.
But yeah, let's just statement. It's a good time.
Happy days. So this was tax. This was tax you're
trying to pull? Was that right? TX is For taxes
or for no? I just wanted like a bunch of top
tens of validators at validators voting power
at a bunch of... Oh, I thought you were looking
at... Oh, I got you. Fuck it. I don't even know
where the hell you would get that. Yeah, because
it's obviously all in the block headers basically
like you can just call a historical info. but
you need to archive. You'd have to have an archive.
Yeah, basically, it was literally like a throwaway
conversation where somebody was doing something
on voting power. And I was like, voting power
day is really easy to get. And they were like,
what? You could just get like monthly snapshots
for a network. I was like, in Cosmos, there's
just a query for that on the binary, because
they mainly worked in Ethereum. And I was like,
I'm sure it's easy to get. And they're like,
oh, you know. If you just showed me how to do
it for a network, that'd be cool. And I was like,
oh, let's see if I can pull some data. And then
like, yeah, two days later, I just go like, it's
all gone. Data's not there. Computer says no.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I misled you. My mistake.
Peter says no. Peter says no. That's a good reference.
It's an old one at this point. Everything's an
old reference when you get old, isn't it? Yeah.
So that was that. I continue to be underwhelming
as an academic collaborator as much as I was
as a blockchain engineer validator would be my
review of that interaction. Hey, I did find another
potential use case of blockchain as well the
other day or an interesting one. I met somebody
who worked on nuclear weapon transparency. Okay,
and I thought we just talked about this putting
nuclear codes on the blockchain. It's not smart.
It's not smart Yeah, so what they're trying to
do these nuclear weapon transparency people is
put all of the codes or the they're basically
like there are a bunch of organizations government
and governmental and otherwise that keep track
of where nuclear weapons are like for practical
reasons like inventory and also to be like Yes,
but has somebody just nicked that poorly guarded
nuclear weapon that was sat on a yard in the
Ural Mountains in Russia for 20 years or whatever?
There's a whole bunch of reasons why you might
want to do that from simple auditing to non -proliferation,
and not everybody trusts governments to do it,
so there are also independent organizations to
do this. Anyway, there's also a bunch of reasons
why people that have nuclear weapons do not like
this information being out there. And it was
really interesting, because this was a blockchain
thing. And it was like, it was in a session,
a thing about adversarial stuff, right? And then
somebody talked about this and the other, I think
it was like, deep in stuff, like energy grid
stuff. And then this guy just goes like, well,
you know, when it comes to adversarial stuff,
somebody's just going to come to your house and
shoot you in the fucking head. And I'm just like,
sorry, what do you do? Where do you work? and
they were just like all these crypto guys they're
like hey i could just put 100 nodes in 100 countries
and we're safe well let me tell you if somebody
who has a nuclear armed state doesn't like what
you're doing they'll send 100 assassins to 100
countries and kill 100 people it's really no
problem to do that yeah i was like damn this
dude is cool i love this like but but you know
it's interesting like but they were literally
like looking at like is the security and organisational
resilience model of any blockchain network. Proof.
Proof against, yeah, the 100 assassins problem.
And yeah, I don't know what they concluded. They
probably concluded no. Yeah. But I was like,
man, that is a really, imagine doing that for
a job. Now that's an interesting problem to solve,
right? Like that level of, I mean, Guess the
other question is like if you're having to deal
with that level of adversarial planning Is the
assassin coming to your house? That would be
that would be the thing. I'd worry about I guess
yeah, but Yeah, really interesting like for a
technical perspective. That's a really interesting
problems to solve Though I guess it probably
ends up not being a technical problem, right?
Well when Cosmoverse was in was at Columbia,
I remember there a lot of the Z guys was talking
about like Isn't that like the number one human
trafficking capital of the world or something?
And it seems kind of interesting to have it there
whenever like that would have been the prime
location if any of us mattered at all, which
clearly we didn't because none of us were robbed.
Well, not including me, not us, because I didn't
go, but none of them were robbed. Yeah. Whereas
supposedly some people got targeted in Portugal,
didn't they? Oh, yeah, that's right. I had the
one before. Did we ever figure out what happened
with the bathroom incident in Cosmoverse? Do
you remember that? Mm -mm. I remember somebody
working up in it. I remember somebody got...
What was the bathroom incident? You have to remind
me. I don't know what the bathroom incident.
I think it was at Cosmoverse. Someone's reputation
was tarnished because something happened in a
bathroom. But I don't, I never, I'm not deep
enough into, you know, the hive mind to figure
out whatever happened. I want to ask around.
Now I'm curious. I actually have no idea. I was
even there and I don't even remember that being
a thing at the time. I remember at least one
friend of the podcast had an incident of potentially
being targeted by somebody opportunistically
trying to rob them. I had that one. So, but then
I guess it was also super, super obvious. I mean,
like, I don't know if it was just because it
was post pandemic or whatever. Maybe there's
still lots and lots of crypto people in Lisbon.
I'm guessing yes. But it was definitely like,
because it was around the time of the the salon,
the big Solana event as well, like the people
weren't trying to make them exactly being very
good at making themselves not conspicuous. Do
you know what I mean? they were definitely and
it was like it was kind of still it was kind
of still like pretty bullish at that point as
well so people were being silly i think as well
which didn't help hey um it's still on not still
bullish i mean i think it is it's probably worth
more than it was in 21 right oh i don't know
question definitely maybe close Yeah, I just
remember that that being like your crazy huge
Solana party at the big Palace out on the headland
with all of the really heavy security guards.
It was like Okay, yeah, it's gone. It's gone
through two spikes right 20 21 to hit 250 bucks
Then it was at $30 $13 forever, right like 2022
23 bucks and then it spiked again to 250 bucks
and 2025. Yeah and right now we're at what under
a hundred i thought oh no we're on 12 right now
112 oh poor poor solana only 112 dollars five
billion in trading value in 24 hours it's crazy
it's insane what's what's interesting what's
funny is like in in the academic stuff that i
do like so much of the air in the room is sucked
up by bitcoin then ETH, then ETHL2s that like,
the, and then sometimes by like, you know, the
ones that those of us in who actually work in
this space, like really don't care about, like
Ripple and stuff, like they're like, often on
graphs, and you're like, oh, Ripple, how cute,
how quaint, you sweet summer child, completely
irrelevant. But like Solana is the like when
anything any but any of the research has happened
like maybe more recently at 2019 or onwards because
it's almost gonna take like five years to get
published You see like oh Solana new kid on the
block a lot of cool stuff on Solana and it's
just like it's just like oh, yes Solana, I guess
like It's still massive, isn't it? But like I
I don't know. I just can't Solana's pump dot
fun. What else is on Solana other than pump dot
fun? Helium there's actually oh shit helium helium.
There's a pretty decent amount of shit on there
Yeah, well in salon is also gonna come up with
L2s here soon. They're ready. Yeah couple of
test now right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, which
I think it's such a This is a bit of a segue,
but I think it's a really interesting Kind of
deviation in that The story of shared security
is so played out I can't believe it keeps popping
back up Like, not to show an eigen layer too
much, but it's just there's not much value proposition
to it. And yet every new chain, it goes back
through the same cycle of, oh, okay, well, we
can have more value by securing another chain.
Well, it's because they look at the wider economy
where we're in a situation where the ruling class
in a situation of highly concentrated wealth
are looking to return to rentier capitalism.
or if you like, feudalism even, where the goal
is to extract value via renting, via sitting
on things. Even Amazon, arguably, they just have
a marketplace. They connect people together and
they rent. They sit on that as a rent. You pay
Amazon rent to purchase goods, blah, blah, blah,
all these centralized platforms. This is why
decentralization matters. This is our This is
what us crypto people are supposed to solve,
right? Centralized digital platforms, their rentier
capitalism is bad. It's concentration of power.
And then what we did was we created all these
blockchains and they didn't scale. And so then
we went, what we need to do is create rentier
capitalism on the blockchain by adding more value
to the home chain and giving security to the
rentier chains. Oh, sorry, we can't call them
rentier chains, surf chains. Oh, no, we can't
call them that consumer chains. There we go.
Because master and slave chain would be a little
bit too on the nose. So a little bit. Yeah, that's
my that's my hot take, which is not hot at all.
It's a cold take on on that whole model. Well,
but like you said, it's been reinvented, right?
It's so weird. It keeps being reinvented, but
kind of in the same imagination. Polkadot, great.
They come up with it. Fine idea. Whatever. But
it's concluding itself over and over, right?
Neutron, I believe... Today. It either just exited...
Today. Okay, so it did. Yeah. So it's no longer
a secured chain by... Correct. Right? Yeah, it
dropped. Today's upgrade, 6 .0, exited out 120
validators. Yeah. So it's down to 22 vals. Not
the greatest selection in my eyes, but whatever.
But yeah, and then a couple of join, like CleoMedi's
joined back in, I think, with a couple hundred.
So I think this is... There's still 165 allocated
spots on this Neutron, but I know that, I don't
even know how this actually worked, Schultz,
you would probably know, but at that upgrade,
it went for like a block or two and then whoosh,
all those other ones were exited instantly. Yeah,
did it go to partial set or did it become fully
its own chain? I think it went its own chain
is what I thought, but because I thought the
Neutron team made decisions on who was going
to be in that list. They did, which is also another
really interesting discussion. I'm seeing more
and more that validators are starting to get
paid USD values to validate on a network. Neutron's
doing that. What do you mean? As opposed to each
validator that you see that's listed there, $3
,000 a month for doing so, USD. Plus rewards
or plus the actual stake or what are they doing
with that? Good. Question I assume it's Maybe
it looks like inflation isn't going because none
of them are getting rewards. Oh No, yeah, maybe
I mean that might get turned off. Hey Yeah, yeah,
yeah thousand USD which I Mean, that's great.
I would it's flat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's
basically It's basically like a this turns into
like an RPC contract at that point. Yeah. Yeah,
basically the lose keys which I think is I don't
know, I kind of like that, I like that idea.
I like the transition of being paid in potentially
valueless coins and just getting paid in USD.
But it's emblematic of a big change kind of in
the ecosystem in my mind. Well, I mean, we were
just talking about with the - PVW, right? Say
that again. What? Perch blockchain week, all
these events where the air in the room is being
sucked up by institutions and stable coins, right?
Yeah. The pipeline of shitcoin experimentation
to, it's okay, just use stable coins. That dirty
secret pipeline is in full swing. Yeah, that's
a good point. That's kind of the conclusion,
isn't it? So is there actually, are these getting
rid of the mint on here? Do you know? I don't
know. But you can look at them. I just looked
at them. They're none of the validators are getting
commissions despite. They have commissions listed,
but they're not. I guess that explains the reason
that nobody else has joined. Because what would
be the point of running this unless the neutron
team is going to. keep increasing the number
of VALs that are in that set. I wonder why they
even have 165 allocated. It must be a proposal
coming to reduce that. Yeah, presumably. Yeah.
You would think. Oh yeah, on -chain EPR is zero
point zero. It basically is POA at that point.
Yeah. Although it's weird because, I mean, if
there's no rewards, then there's no reason to
stake, right? There's no staking of that, which
means this stake here. But people clearly are.
I can't tell. I mean, for the most part, all
these number of delegators, the top one has seven.
And this this actually changed over 12 plus hours
ago. Well, maybe not. It was like 10 a .m. this
morning Eastern. So there are there's a small
number of stakers in here. And who's occlusion?
Is that is that? They haven't they haven't they
haven't signed a single block. Good job, team
occlusion. Isn't that like Zaki? Yes, it is Zacky
isn't it? Yeah, it is Zacky. Cool job. Good selection.
Zacky is just like, fucking, I guess 3000 a month
ain't enough to sign a block. You have to do
better than that. 3000 gets you one block. It's
like when I do a fractional due diligence contract
and you're like, oh yeah, that budget will give
you one day of retainer a month. They call you
up for the first month and like, can we have
you on the 10th? He's like, yeah, I'll sign one
block on the 10th. Pleasure doing business. For
3 ,000, we sign one hour a day. That's a good
deal. That's right. You're getting a real great
deal. Just right in right inside the slashing
parameters. slashing parameters minus one block.
I mean, yeah, it's all kind of interesting, isn't
it? But then like, I guess that's the the because
it gets really interesting. It gets more interesting.
I think if the chain did have inflation turned
on, right? And and staking, but the validator's
got no commission, but they were paid a flat
rate. Then you have an interesting situation,
right, where I think maybe the economic incentives
don't begin to not align, particularly if there's
like a bull run or something. But I mean, it's
also back to we're in the cosmos ecosystem. Like,
we're like a real bull run, like a 2021, 22 bull
run. It's like the lady, the bit from the end
of Titanic where the lady's like, it's been 80
years. Like other ecosystems, like they have
like a little spike every year or something at
some point during the year, like energy just
builds up. It's all bubbling and something happens,
but. Yeah, this is so weird. So there's 10 second
block times. That's really long. 10 second block
times. I assume by design there is uh that's
another interesting discussion to be had because
there's been more and more 10 second block time
chains coming up but anyway yeah keep going so
a sign blocked window what's another one it's
10 seconds sorry sorry sir I know you it's okay
you need to read Celestia is one yeah uh Celestia's
even 11 or 12 Lava is another one and then there's
one more but Celestia has that subchain thing
though right because don't the Doesn't it run
like a sub -chain where it performs some sort
of transaction at a really fast rate and then
it somehow goes back to the L1 to finalize or
something, kind of similar to Ethereum L1, L2?
I don't think so. No? Well, I thought there was
a fast way of doing that. Oh, wait, I'm looking
at fucking Babylon. Never mind, I'm a fucking
moron, dude. Babylon apparently Babylon's another
10 second one Babylon has 10 second block times
Is that right? Yeah 10 second block times and
then 10 ,000 the signing block window is 10 ,000
blocks at 60 % So you need to be down for 4 ,000
blocks at 10 seconds is 11 at 12 hours. That's
not too bad actually and there's a 0 % downtime
thing. That's cool This is more and more of those.
I mean, at this point, I think we can conclude
that tombstone doesn't really work. No, I love
talking to new teams about that. And they get
all happy about it. They're like, sure it is.
It's a big deal. I'm like, OK. It's like, OK,
every major tombstone event in the Cosmos ecosystem
has been reverted. But you know, whatever. Keep
believing it. I guess the point is, it's kind
of arbitrary, right? Is that it will get reverted.
If it ever happens, it will just get reverted.
But I suppose, I suppose, theoretically, you
don't want your validators becoming shithot Go
programmers compiling an actually valid version
of the binary that just signs whatever the fuck
it feels like and does a nothing at stake attack.
But I think the number of validators that could
actually do that in the ecosystem is probably
under five, maybe. And I think all of them would
get busted. That's generous. I think everybody
would be busted so fucking fast. It would be
like, oh, no, there's been a nothing at stake
attack. And it would be like, OK, it's short
C. Frey doesn't fucking sign anything anymore.
So it's not it's not needle cast like phrase
useless in the cosmos So it's it's not it's not
needle cast. So it's basically like Schultz these
strange love Celefa pod or Maybe figment at a
push like it's like one of a handful tiny handful
That maybe have the capacity to pull off that
attack. Oh and Oh, obviously jabby you if if
jabby was still validating more chains, of course
and friends of the book skip as was I Don't think
they run those games though. No What happened
your audio? Yeah Yes a battle on my go ahead
go ahead. Okay. I was gonna say this kind of
is continued Continuation of the conversation.
What does it say about our ecosystem that so
many of the developers have kind of dropped out
of being a developer and turned into a validator?
And is that kind of what is damning us? No, I
think we were damned before that. Possibly maybe
but honestly, I think the developer thing is
also it's a little bit also regulation everything
right because a lot of the things that you can
do as a developer in the ecosystem Like the core
dev work is very difficult and is generally under
rewarded right you and Not to be too crass about
it is it sticks in the core a bit to? Facilitate
other people to make a lot more money than you
do especially like that's that's this ecosystem.
It is about money That is the reality. And then
there's all the other stuff you can do like smart
contracts, DeFi protocols, things like this.
They often don't work. They often don't make
money. When they do, quite often the money is
being made or the value is being locked by some
other protocol unless you're the ones running
the chain. That's what we saw with the stuff
that we launched. The incentives aren't there.
At the end of it, it comes back down to running
a business. like validators don't always make
money, but they at least have some kind of a
business model that you can predict, you can
do business development, you can blah, blah,
blah. The developer model is just difficult,
right? Unless you just want to go work for osmosis,
which you can do. Or I think, obviously, Interchain
Labs are hiring currently as well for the hub.
So you can go and work as an individual contributor
if you want to do that. But the models and work
so well apart from that. I think if you're more
entrepreneurial the option the option is is much
trickier I think cosmos I don't if that's just
because of low Total value can't sorry low market
count But I don't know I mean it does it definitely
says somebody system and then something not good
We were talking about with with Eric as well
because it's like not just developers, but like
everybody who's selling something in in this
ecosystem as a service of some sort now runs
about to say hey you guys have these tokens sitting
around instead of taking stuff out of the cap
table just put these tokens to use it doesn't
matter might as well be us versus l5 right like
and then we will provide these other services
as a discount based on blah blah blah and obviously
there's a structure to that because they're not
going to lose money on that right but in their
eyes to the team, they're offering, they're offering
a way to be able to have services for free, in
essence, right? Because otherwise, if it's not
going to, if it's not going to you or I, it's
going to them and who gives a shit, right? Because
they get a different service. But we provide
services as well, just a different, different
way of being able to provide those. So I think,
and then some of those, I think, you know, does
a good job, some of these other ones do not,
like they do, they really poor jobs. But I think,
you know, it's gonna be more and more popular.