welcome to gaming nodes a
somewhat less than weekly
podcast from independent
validated teams we're back
from our summer break uh
stream yard has added lots
of new features docs the
software that we use to do
the podcast right there um
and we now have lost the
ability I think to pre-rug
at the start of the show
because it's now clever
enough to um actually just
always sequence the intro and and uh
It was a technological and
understanding limitation of
ours that led to our habit
of talking when one of us
had already started the recording,
which is obviously a
feature of the hundredth anniversary.
Well, I walked into that one.
Does that feel better?
Does that feel more natural now?
Welcome to Game of Nodes,
a somewhat weekly Validator
podcast from independent Validator teams.
We're back from our summer break.
We're raring to go.
Very bullish indicator for the market,
for the whole economy, really.
I think, you know,
things have maybe been a
little bit not on track of late.
It's time for us to get
things back on track.
So we said, let's get on a call.
Let's thrash it out.
Here we go.
Shorty, I got to say,
I thought you had a massive
home lab behind you last
time I saw you on video.
Has that moved to somewhere?
Has that moved to a secure location?
A less secure location.
That's in the garage now, actually.
It puts out... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
I'm not dealing with this.
Not happening much.
Yeah.
It's nice in the garage.
That's what happened there.
Yeah.
Well,
you got a warm garage in winter then.
Yeah.
There's no humidity out there or anything,
right?
In the Pacific Northwest,
it should be fine.
It's fine.
That's right.
Actually,
I ran so much shit in the garage
for years.
It doesn't really, I mean, it's fine.
It's a little bit hotter
than I want it to be,
but it is that temperatures
are still safe.
So I'm like, man, it'll be fine.
So that mini that mini rack
is five hundred watts.
It's like a ten.
I mean, it was.
Yeah, but I, you know,
seven servers on it and
other like periphery things
attached to it.
And then a lot.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
There's spinners in there.
Or is it all SSD?
Oh, okay.
Well, so I had the NAS right next to it.
And so I'm including that into it.
So the entire lab got moved.
We got you.
But yeah.
The lab.
The lab sounds more formal.
Yeah, the lab sounds formal.
It's like summer break.
Yeah, exactly.
Look at this.
I shaved.
We're coming back fully professional,
fully loaded.
I took this T-shirt.
Actually, you can't see it on the podcast.
Sorry for those listening
later on podcast players.
I took this T-shirt to the
summer conferences,
and I was expecting it to
kind of wind people up,
and it just didn't.
What is it?
An open paren?
It's just one open paren,
which I wore to a
conference several years ago,
and somebody clocked it across a room,
and they were having a conversation.
I could see that it irritated them,
and they stopped their conversation,
walked through a room of
several hundred people to me.
and just shook their head.
They were like shaking.
They were so angry.
And they're just like, you're a monster.
Why would you do this in a room of people?
I'm the only one that's come
over to say to you,
but you're just annoying
people for no reason.
That's funny.
And I was like, yes.
And they were like, no,
but you're just winding people up.
This is such an effective way of winding.
It's just not nice.
And I was like, okay.
Sorry, man.
I hope you have a good rest
of your conference.
Anyway,
so I wore it to a crypto conference.
And it goes to show how few
technical people there are
at a crypto conference.
because none of the
marketing managers that I
met were in the slightest
worried about it while they
were trying to sell me bare
metal servers so and get me
to pay get me to pay for
our company to participate
in test nets or whatever it
was there's there's a lot
of there's a lot of weird
vibes at conferences at the
moment a lot of it is hey
you're an independent
validator how would you
like to give us money and it's like oh
I may not be the sharpest
businessman in the rack of
business knives,
but that analogy didn't work at all.
But I know you're not
supposed to hand out money
to participate.
Speaking of bare metal node providers,
we just had one that I use
show up in a blockchain Slack group,
which I think you guys are both in.
I was like, is that the same?
I don't like that shit.
That's weird.
I don't like that shit.
If our partners start
turning into our competitors,
then they're not going to
be our partners anymore.
And I'm not sure why that
communication is there.
It doesn't help anything.
It's really weird to have that.
I've had that happen elsewhere too, right?
Not with that specific vendor,
but with other vendors where
like I don't want to call
anybody out but like
there's a South American
vendor that shows up
everywhere like in all
these different types of
that's what I was going to
say too yeah they show up
in like and like it's good
for them because it's
marketing and they're
basically it's like a lead
generation right because
they're like if anybody
bitches about a note
they're probably in the DMs like hey man
Right.
I got something for you,
which I don't like number one,
because it just adds more
centralization on that.
And everybody,
I think node operators
should be in the
responsible for finding
their own partners and
figuring that shit out.
Right.
But when they show up in chat,
like I didn't,
I didn't ask the team why the fuck.
And so anyway, it was.
It's weird, right?
It's happening more and more.
I think it... I do wonder if
it's part and parcel of the
thing that we were talking
about before the break,
which is the kind of...
what are you going to call it,
like a mergers and
acquisitions trend or like
a market concentration
drive on the validator side
of the business,
which is partly adverse
business conditions,
but I think it's also
partly like market maturity or whatever,
like where there's money,
it's being squeezed out and
it's becoming more of a margins game.
But I think that's also...
driving it from the other end.
Because honestly,
if you've got like a
hundred independent
validators who are all
running hardware and
they're all paying for it, great.
But those vendors now are like, well,
if a lot of the validators
that are making like serious,
serious money, you know,
not like us chumps,
are like a smaller group of
no providers, often institutional,
then those bare metal providers are like,
well, look,
it must be doubly the case
that if they're like, okay,
a lot of our potential
customers are now literally
institutional players that
have a few engineers and
ops people in the building,
they're not going to
not necessarily going to
have like a huge uh like a
an existing pre-sales
funnel or or like something
where um you know they
they're just straight in
the door with that kind of
a player so maybe it's just
straight up that they're
like well we need to get
them get in with those
players and the most likely
point of contact is the
foundation I don't know
yeah I mean I get it from
their perspective I just I
don't understand from a
foundation perspective like I don't know
Um, I mean, we did have, they,
they have had this provider had,
has had like three or four
fiber outages in routing
that's affected a few,
a few different individuals
like us who run nodes, um,
in that region.
So this was in Amsterdam, but they had,
they had a route that was
down between like London and Newark.
And then that put a shitload
of traffic on a different route.
Oh, was that the outage that you had?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, it wasn't an outage.
It was just really high latency.
So anytime that we were proposing,
we were dropping a shitload of proposals.
But it was very intermittent.
You could tell, like, is this the... Yeah.
Like, the route table was fucked.
Like, you could really tell.
And so what ended up
happening is that that route was down,
so it was bumping everything else from,
like, Paris to...
dulles or something it was
like their backup and
that's that's that's where
amsterdam runs um at least
at least in nodes in the
u.s just just because I
don't actually know where
the cables go did you say
dulles because that is
actually where it would be
or did you say or did you
say dulles purely because
it's a reference to the
question reroute the plane
a lot I had a lot of time
That was two, right?
Or three?
It's like Die Hard two.
Yeah, they straight away,
they reroute to Dallas.
That was two, right?
Yeah,
because they take over the church
outside the runway.
Actually, from what I see,
a lot of times when you have this routing,
they still use airport codes.
Not everywhere, but like in some vendors,
they typically use error
codes to be able to use that.
I guess they do, don't they?
Yeah,
they use AMS and they use like IAD
and they use EWR and
they'll use stuff like that
instead of like just typing it out,
which is fine.
But so anyway,
so so but then they had
another cut like in in in.
Ireland or something and
there's another one after
that and there's another
one and so and so we were
joking that maybe that was
just to get them in the
channel so we can complain
about fiber cuts but I
don't think that was the
guessing that was not the
idea they were like they
took it very literally and
that's why they're in that
yeah yeah I don't know I
don't like that shit it's
kind of annoying yeah I
mean in general I I think
there's even less um
There's even less of a sense
in which at the moment,
one of my takeaways from
con from conferences was there's, uh,
the sense in which the detail,
the decentralization stuff
is now like fully
performative and nobody's
even pretending right.
At conference behind the scenes,
as soon as you strike up
any conversation with anybody, um,
whatever decentralization does mean.
It is purely lip service at this point.
And I think, you know,
if that's in a semi open space, you know,
there's, if there's used to be squeezed,
not surprising is it um yeah
particularly so um we have
other what's the other fun
stuff what we've been up to
over this time it's been
there's been a few test
nets and things this summer
haven't there there's been
a lot yeah there's been a
few uh we've been back
we've been back on the test
net grind a little bit but
I imagine we're probably
doing fewer than than you
guys because you're
you're still fully on it.
We've, we've,
we've updated our marketing
materials to say that we're,
we're selective, which is, you know what?
That's a reference.
Yeah.
It's a direct reference.
It's very intentional.
Nobody's yet picked up on it.
We're selective.
We're quite selective.
We're very selective.
We're just incredibly selective.
That's why we don't
sometimes take these
incredibly potentially
lucrative business
opportunities that come our
way because we're being more selective.
But yeah, what have you guys been up to?
Let's see.
Go ahead, Shulte.
We're doing SOC two training
or certification.
That's not fun.
Let me tell you that right now.
SOC two or ISO?
SOC two.
Mostly because it's easier.
And it does mostly the same thing.
It is mostly the same thing.
Yeah.
No, we're, we're doing our ISO too.
So we're in the middle of that.
You're doing your ISA.
Yeah.
So we're, we're, I don't know.
I would say.
Fifty percent.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Um, it's just, it's, which I, I mean,
I don't know for you,
but it hasn't been that challenging.
I don't think like in the
policy perspective and
controls and things like that,
a lot of that shit that we had and,
and those types of things.
So, so it's not too bad.
The, the, obviously the,
the big challenge with the
stuff is always like is,
is producing artifacts.
Um, but,
but so I'm running a lot of
Ansible for that and we've
done some other things related to, um,
just kind of reworking some stuff with.
with, like, just shit that I want to do,
honestly.
Like, stuff that, to me,
doesn't really mean that much.
But, like,
we're using Waza to be able to
do some stuff related to, like,
CVE identification and shit like that.
And just some stuff like that,
which has been, I think,
more of a hassle than real benefit to us.
But away from that.
Like, from the other side of it, like,
it's been nice to...
it's been nice to be forced to,
to write some components that allow us to,
to validate of what we say
is true is true.
And that's really kind of
the whole point of that, that process.
Right.
So from that perspective, it's,
it's been good.
Um, and a lot of, I mean,
thankfully we had a lot,
like a lot of the,
I'm sure you guys do too, but like with,
with obviously with automation and with,
uh,
with overlay networks and
with all these other types
of things that we've been building for,
for those years to be able
to get to this next level of saying X, Y,
or Z associated to those,
to those policies.
And what we want to do is
actually pretty easy.
So that, that part's really good.
And, and just being, you know,
like it's just all these
little things that we've
done over these last couple
of years that have now
started to add up into,
into actually a pretty,
a pretty decent ISO certification.
So I don't like, I mean,
we'll have to do it.
We haven't done our internally yet.
So we'll have to do internal,
like maybe in Q four,
maybe I'm hoping to do it
maybe in October.
And then we'll probably go
for certification maybe in Q one,
I think is probably what we do.
I'm not really that much of
a hurry actually.
Uh, once I SMS gets built, really that's,
that's the lift.
Um, and then we're using it,
we're using a cloud-based
tool to actually put everything into, um,
which is, which, yeah, we, I'm curious,
we should talk about,
we could talk about that too.
I'm curious on what you picked.
We haven't talked about it.
Right.
Cause we,
we didn't really talk about tool
sets or anything like that stuff.
No, we didn't, we didn't talk about it.
Um, so, so I have that,
which we haven't done too much in yet.
Um,
other than like I'm pushing data there
a little bit, but it's not that much.
So I'm hoping that like,
I think it's a good.
It's a good milestone.
It's not necessarily a differentiator,
but it is for our size, I think.
And I mean, honestly,
ISO and SOC two and things like that,
the smaller you are, the easier it is.
It's really when you start
getting into multi, I mean,
you start having five or six,
eight employees, ten employees,
a hundred employees.
That's when it becomes a
real fucking pain in the ass.
Well, even with just the three of us,
it's really annoying to see that, oh,
we need to put two-factor
authentication on for whatever app.
All right, guys,
I'll send out the notification.
And then three days later,
they get around to it,
which is totally fine and
reasonable for them.
But it's still like,
suddenly I'm halted by this thing.
And then having to do that
ultimately over twenty or
thirty different things.
Yeah.
You need quite a lot of
really quite like a low
footprint of things in
order to make it somewhat
easy and um I worked for a
startup once when we went
through that process and it
was really really
interesting because all the
things I thought would
happen as part of that
process um kind of didn't
really because we we moved
away from a previous
automation strategy into
essentially a different like
networking architecture and, you know,
everything was kind of like recoverable,
like via the AWS console
and stuff like that.
There were,
there were ways of redeploying everything,
but because of how things
had moved with our clients and yada, yada,
yada, um, it was actually like, um,
What's the way it was?
How would I describe what
I'm trying to say?
I guess like the system itself, like,
or the, the, the way the,
the way the estate, right.
The technology estate of the
company was set up was incredible flux.
Right.
And so a lot of,
it was interesting to go
through the process of getting the ISO,
which we did get and sort of had,
you know,
a growing engineering team at
the time and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Um, but.
know the actual kind of like
what I would have called
like you know the red tape
and whatnot around it was
like way way way smaller on
probably average than some
of the growing pains
companies that I'd been in
that were having to start
to do compliance stuff
because their investors had
told them to or blah blah
blah blah or an external
auditor it was really
really interesting because
there's some stuff where I
was like surely we can't be
compliant because of xyz
that you kind of know about
as a developer or an
engineer or like there's
something you know where
like we don't really track
this yeah but it's all
about like you say it's
kind of about the artifacts
and the way you express it
so um you know not to put
people off who might be
potential clients that are
you know looking at iso and
sock certified
organizations because you know we we
in this podcast take take
such things very very
seriously but but it is one
of those things where
you're like um there's also
a process to it if you know
the process there's a way
of putting that together I
think kind of take away
from that is like the
people who were kind of
hand-holding us through it
really knew how to be like
oh they don't have a good answer for this
Here's how you should approach that.
Yeah.
Well, I mean,
the funny thing about these types of,
I mean, I did this,
I did this at a previous business that we,
we did.
And, um,
I don't even know what the hell
year was maybe five, six years ago.
And,
and then we started the process even
before that we started one back in.
Um, and like, it's,
it's obviously evolved a lot, um,
early on, like even like, I mean,
fifteen years ago or ten years ago,
it was,
it was much more challenging
because everything was much more manual.
Um, and, and now, um,
and the one thing about,
one thing about these tool
sets and like this whole process is like,
just because somebody's ISO
certified or SOC two,
it actually doesn't mean they're secure.
It just means you have the
processes in place to
identify where there's
issues and you have the
processes in place to solve those issues.
And you have the proof that there's a,
that all these things kind
of come together to be able
to have a continuous improvement.
Could you have a,
open SSH port somewhere and it's admin,
admin,
you totally could and still be SOC
two compliant.
The question is like over time,
do you have a process in
place to identify that?
Did that identification turn
into something that was an
actionable item?
Did somebody assign to that
actionable item?
Did somebody complete that
actionable item?
Did somebody test that?
Blah, blah, blah.
Um, and that's what, that's,
what's a funny thing about that.
And,
and like a lot of people don't
understand what these certifications are.
It's not really like a, Hey,
you're secure as shit.
It's really,
it's really the process work of it.
Um, and so like I was, well,
my point was like, ten years ago,
that was a fucking
nightmare because
everything was in Excel.
You had really no tools
available to really manage
these types of things.
You had nothing automated to do that.
And now with these,
like there's so much work
on these platform tools to
actually go out to cloud
vendors or we have one that
takes an API so we can send like,
Ansible JSON, you know,
formatted JSON to it for,
for proof on certain things.
And,
and that type of stuff that really
takes a lot of the burden off.
Cause that's really what I
was worried about was like
this whole fucking, you know,
like I don't want to spend more time on,
improving the work than doing the work,
which is always one of those concerns.
Um, but at least, at least now,
like there's so much, there's,
there's a lot of work here.
Cause I think a lot of these
vendors realized how
painful that process was
and everything else associated to it.
So, yeah, I, I, I agree.
Um, the tools that,
that they use nowadays
where we can just plug in.
Yeah.
Your bare metal providers to prove that.
Right.
they're SOC two certified already.
So therefore you don't need
to like cover their ass
with your documents,
whatever is really nice.
I began the process in a
previous company of SOC two certification,
but I'm believing before
they actually got it.
And man,
that was it was it was really cumbersome.
I think I was twenty eighteen,
I want to say.
And so I just kind of
dreaded having to go through myself.
But with the toolings that
are available nowadays, it's
One, I'll say it's much nicer, but two,
it makes it,
I don't want to say more fun
to complete it, but it makes it,
it almost makes it more
difficult to have messed up
machines by using these
tools or massive processes
because they prove it.
And then you're like, oh yeah, okay.
I can resolve this.
And then going forward,
I now know like how to look
into it in the future.
And I think that's a big part of it.
It's just like that you've
gone ahead and reviewed everything.
gives you perspective on how
it should be handled in the future.
I mean,
it's kind of like studying for a test,
right?
Studying for a test is like
in creating a note card.
Creating the note card
doesn't probably actually
do anything for you.
You're probably not gonna reference it.
But in creating a note card, you then have,
you know,
committed more to memory and the
correct way to do things.
Yeah, for sure.
So yeah, so that's a big thing, right?
It's a lot of work there.
You've done a good job of
selling me the idea of SOC too.
I don't know.
So the thing that I was joking about doing,
which is a lot less useful,
is I was joking about going
for B Corp certification.
It's also cheaper than it used to be.
It was fifty some odd
thousand dollars in like
twenty eighteen at a pretty early point.
It's much cheaper now,
including the audit.
Yeah.
I mean, they still take their,
they still fucking take their, yeah.
Yeah.
That's still quite a lot of money.
I mean, for us,
I think at the moment we
probably don't like just financially,
I don't think it adds up
unless a client was like, yo,
you need sock too.
I've had one conversation in
the last year that has requested it.
Really?
Yeah.
Maybe two.
or at least asked about it,
usually I'm bringing that up, right?
Like that we are headed down
this path and this is
something that we bring.
I am expecting,
like we can get into
regulation and everything else.
I am expecting that change.
Like, I do think that like, as like, it is,
it is a leading indicator that in that,
like,
we're going to get more questions
related to that.
And I think as the assets
increase and as a
visibility increase and blah, blah, blah,
like it's going to turn into something,
which is totally fine.
I'm okay with that.
Cause I think we run a good ship.
So I'm okay.
I like for that to happen
because I actually think
that's a benefit to us.
But but up until today,
in terms of August twenty twenty five,
it very rarely comes up.
Even with like even like
capital managers and things like that,
like they're there.
It's not that big of a concern.
They're more concerned about
there's good technical
questions and things like that,
but it's not so much around
certification.
Well,
I'd also add that there have been a
couple of people that we've
chatted with that had their
own like security questionnaire in order.
Oh, yeah.
So like they didn't care
about whether you're certified.
They have their own like questionnaire.
You have to work.
Sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, I think it makes total sense,
but it's quite interesting as well.
By the way,
can we talk about how fucking
AI is about that?
Do you guys do so like.
I, I, we use Claude a lot, right?
I use Claude like for, for Anthropic.
So you can build like
projects and shit like that, which is,
so I've dumped,
so a small nice little project,
all of our like website information,
all other security things
that we've answered in the
past are ISO docs in there.
um like all this shit like
just in this giant like
repo of shit and so I fill
out those questionnaires
all the time and so now I'm
using like those tools to
like do a first cut at
those holy fuck are those
things awesome like like
it's that's smart dude it's
pulling it's pulling shit
out of the woodwork I was
like oh yeah I didn't think
about that and like just
bam bam bam like it's been
really really good and like
it comes off a little ai so
I basically like rewrite
all that shit but but still
like it's that that has
been also a huge change for
us over the summer break
which is like summer break
which has been like trying
to uh uh use those tools a
little more just to pull
all this data together and
actually build like
reasonable answers to some
of these types of things
it's been it's been pretty
awesome should totally do that
That's a really good idea.
Writing on your own is miserable.
And then ISO docs, website information,
other proposals that we've written, MSAs,
NDAs, GitHub, a repo,
just pulling that stuff together.
Because the context window,
for a specific question,
there might be fifty
different things that come
together to build a smart
answer to those questions.
And that's been really good.
And it's not so much like a, it's,
it's not so much like,
it's not so much like it's a,
it's not a cheat.
Like it's just that like
trying to answer that as an individual,
you just forget about these
other kinds of components of that.
And, and that,
that's a,
that's a really good use for
those tools where it
actually brings all that context in.
Yeah.
Well,
there were like a lot of times what
people are really looking for.
And again, like startups,
if you try to sell into a big company,
the reason they want to
talk to your compliance
person is because they're
trying to find out how big your team is.
Like it's a lot of it is
just smoke and mirrors for
them asking the question,
are you going to be around in two years?
Are you going to be able to
service this contract?
Will it hang together?
And yeah,
If you're a smaller player
in any of these markets,
you have this kind of
instant penalization for
being a smaller player
where just the overhead of
coming up with the correct
answers or whatever.
So, I mean, yeah, sure.
It's a really good use of the technology.
And the thing I always used
to find quite funny because
I've been on both sides of
that where tendering on the
perspective of a large company.
retailer in the uk but also
trying to get those kind of
people to pay us right on
different different
companies different times
and I I would used to find
that the whole thing like
um a little bit bizarre
right because the answer to
a lot of the concerns of
like oh well if we make you
a business critical part of xyz and um
you know,
we want to know you're going to
be around.
It's kind of like, well,
write the fucking agreement properly,
pay us properly and it will
fucking happen.
Right.
Like this is really straightforward stuff.
Right.
Because if it's just like, you know,
if it's a,
like a pure B to B play and
they have ten thousand clients,
seven hundred thousand clients, whatever,
it's like Salesforce or something.
It's like, well, yeah,
they're going to be around.
Their pricing model is very different.
Yada, yada, yada.
And I've worked for companies that were
trying to do volume right
and you're kind of like
yeah okay that's actually a
reasonable concern if you
have a company of like
twenty employees that are
trying to do the volume
play the twenty employees
isn't very much and they're
burning through capital
they're burning through
money on salaries blah blah
blah you know I can kind of
see that but if you have
like some of the outfits I
work for it's a lean shop it's
between two and five
permanent employees plus
contractors yeah like yeah
similar kind of setup that
all of us are running right
you're like that shit is so
fucking lean that they can
run for a year on no profit
if they need to right
they're not we're not going
anywhere as long as you pay
us like it's very very
straightforward um and you
know it's funnily enough
actually in a shop of that
size we did work for like
the british government
scottish government or
whatever because um
It turns out once you fill
in that form once, right?
And one of the CEOs of the
company was very sensible
about how they managed
not repeating work they
basically managed to to do
it once and then get away
with not having to do it
for a couple more years
yeah doing work for
multiple departments of
government and that was
like huge for that company
as I understand it I might
have simplified that or
slightly misunderstood it
so apologies to those guys
if they ever watch this and
they go that's not what we
did um but you to be clear
to them if they ever do watch this
It seemed like you did a
really good job of punching
above your weight.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Good job.
I wish I was as smart as you guys.
But like anything,
now it kind of seems
like... I'm not saying that
what you've done isn't smart,
but you don't have to plan
several steps ahead other
than making sure you
collect that documentation
and then use the tools to
then synthesize it.
Something that has your past...
the institutional knowledge
of your company, right.
Right.
Preserved, which is really powerful.
Yeah.
It's been good.
I have to say.
Romer series says the goodbye episode.
Number one, it's not the goodbye episode.
It's just, we're just off summer break.
That's all.
Hello episode.
Yeah.
Without the Aussie.
No, can't be here today.
Although he is calling me right now.
Let me conference him in real quick.
Bloody hell.
I'm sweating here.
All right.
That's it.
Lovely stuff.
That's great.
Yeah,
so the real reason Mel's not here is
because childcare
responsibilities overlap
with filming time.
We haven't quite managed to
figure it out yet.
And crucially,
as we were talking about
just before the show,
we decided to come back off
summer break just in time
for me to have my second child.
We had on the podcast before
where I was totally
exhausted every time we did this.
I swear to God,
somewhere in these transcripts,
I said that kids ruin everything.
Somewhere in these transcripts.
And it's proven itself here
on Game of Notes.
Bullish indicators.
Everybody's nodding positively.
Tulsi's like, hell yeah.
We still get woken up every hour,
every single night.
Oh, and Tulsi was at my house.
That's also happened over
the summer break.
How about that?
That was fun.
I'm sad you didn't get to meet Mr. Baby.
I know.
Us too.
Little,
little baby Monad testnet to little baby,
little baby apto suite.
Yeah, that's great.
I was trying to tell
somebody that you didn't
think about Doquan naming his child Luna.
I was telling somebody about that.
No, it was in chat.
We were talking about it, right?
No, it came up independently of that.
It's happened a couple of times recently.
And it was somebody outside of crypto.
And they were talking about, oh, yeah,
that was that big crash or something.
I was like, oh,
that was in the Cosmos ecosystem.
I was kind of around for that.
And they're like, yeah,
that guy was crazy.
And I was like, yeah,
he named his child after the token.
And they were like, no, he didn't.
That's too crazy.
The crash, everything.
Believe that.
That's too crazy.
I was like, no,
literally name the child Luna.
I had to look it up.
Luna's a nice name.
It's plausibly a real name.
It wasn't like Schultz named
his son Cerberus or something, right?
It's Cerberus.
Thank you.
Is it Cerberus?
Latin.
Yeah.
Look,
we all had high hopes for the little
doggy, but it just,
little papa wasn't going to make it.
My son, Odin.
Yeah.
That's quite a good name.
Odin's not bad, actually.
I know.
The guy from Sigur Rós, the singer,
is called Thor, isn't he?
Yeah.
Well, and there's half Thor,
the strongest man in the world.
Really?
Yeah.
the the mountain from game
of nodes or not game of
nodes game of thrones life
imitating ass imitating dog
shit right no shit we must
have seen loads of good
films over the summer as
well that's probably
something I went to go see
f-one did you watch that
f-one the movie was it good
yeah yeah uh yeah
I mean, it's Top Gun on the road.
Basically what it is, right?
A little bit.
Top Gun two on the road.
Top Gun two.
So not quite as good as Top Gun one.
No, no, no.
It was like, okay.
Hey, so you know what?
We went to go see an IMAX, which, right?
So actually what they did is
I missed the first running
and then they...
They re-ran it back in the
larger IMAX for like a
weekend or something like that.
So it was like a month out and I was like,
I'm just going to buy this
and then drag my kids to it.
Which they were totally not
thrilled about it.
But anyway, I thought, I mean,
it is what it is, right?
It's that, hey,
the old guy teaches the
young guy and like, can he do it?
Can he not do it?
And he gives him, but he still has the...
the ability to sacrifice his
own success for the young one and blah,
blah, blah.
But in the end, it's whatever.
It's fine.
Classic.
Classic story.
Right.
Okay.
But here's the thing.
I was on a work thing a little while ago,
and there was a Canadian guy there,
and people were talking
about niche films.
And I just took a punt
because he was Canadian.
And I went,
have you ever seen the hockey
film about the small hockey team
where and he was like
slapshot and I was like I
knew you would know the
name is that a canadian
movie no no it's not but
like it's like kansas city
or something right like
like I was like I didn't
want to say I don't want to
say the name of the film
until I was like because if
I was going to miss with it
I was just like oh yeah I
can't remember the name of
it anyway I'll just like
start it out I think you're
gonna see strange proof
He just came in and I was like, bam.
I was like, shit, dude,
we can talk about Slapshot
now for a while.
He's like, oh,
the bit with the national anthem?
I was like, yeah, I guess.
Everybody else at the table was like,
what is fucking wrong with these people?
And I was like, okay, guys.
Oh.
And...
I couldn't go to it because
of childcare responsibility,
but there was a,
I saw in London when I was walking past a,
like a, it was like a cult,
what do you call it?
Independent cinema.
There was a Aussie cult
movies night advertised and
it had Chopper, Wake and Fright.
And what's the other one
that Noel recommended that we watched?
It was one of those, basically.
And I was just like, dude,
this is Game of Nodes, the movie night.
Chopper?
Which one is that?
It's the guy with the, you know,
the mustache.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I always wake and frighten that.
It's so weird that that movie's like,
is that considered like an
Australian classic or something?
Does it come up in that way?
Yeah.
It's a classic of Australian
new wave cinema.
okay it's also a very
important film for the LGBT
community I gather because
it like and I know like you
watch that as a
non-Australian and you're
like it seems like just a
lot of toxic masculinity
and it's like apparently
like even the level to
which that film has any
kind of homoeroticism or
whatever that is in any way
acknowledged is a big
improvement on where they
were before that film was
made so there you go
yeah apparently apparently
that film is sensitive by
australian standards really wow
of the time.
I mean, it was made in like what?
Like seventies.
I don't remember any,
I don't remember anything
like about that in that movie.
I think the,
I have to go back and watch it again.
Actually, it was there.
Well, I mean, I mean,
there's always a bunch of men.
I've, I've watched it twice,
possibly three times.
I've watched it many times, but it's,
it's good for the kangaroo
section as well.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
I couldn't make that anymore.
It's so fucked up.
Oh, it's good.
It's good.
Um,
I'm sure I've seen some
really good films this summer,
but now I can't recall.
I mean,
that's only when I watched in the
theater.
I haven't been to theater.
That was the first time I
think we were in the theater for a year.
Like, it feels like it's been forever,
but...
I mean, other movies, I mean,
we watch a bunch of shit,
but I just watched Smoking
the Bandit last night.
Does that count?
I mean, what, the original?
Yeah.
Sure, why not?
Then I Google what the fuck
a Diablo sandwich was for
like a half an hour.
I was like,
that's a sandwich that Jackie
Gleason orders in the restaurant.
He orders a Diablo sandwich.
What is it?
I didn't know what the hell it was.
It's totally made up,
which I realized it was
made up for that movie.
And there's a bunch of
YouTubers are out there
trying to figure out what
the hell that is,
which I guess is a spiky, a spiky,
a spicy pulled pork sandwich.
And I was like, oh, okay.
So then I, then I was like, sounds good.
I'm gonna have to do it.
I'm gonna get a shot, make a Diablo.
Yeah, exactly.
Artifact was in London a
while ago for a conference.
I took him to first a cockfighting pit,
a former cockfighting pit.
Obviously,
we don't still have cockfighting
in the UK in a pub,
but we went to a former cockfighting pit.
Good backpedal, by the way.
It was former.
Formal.
in the city of london um now
yeah yeah of course it's
knocked out we're not
savages um and then we went
for uh we went for a
sandwich like right towards
the end of the night that
was so good that like I
think it was like I feel
like a couple of months later
Either I saw Artifact again
in person or he texted me and just said,
I'm still thinking about that sandwich.
And I was like, yeah.
You know when you show
somebody around a city you
know well and you're like, I need one.
If I do one thing where it's just like,
hey, that's what you're going for,
isn't it?
That's the whole purpose of
me showing somebody around.
So I was like, sandwich, I'll take it.
Call it the Diablo sandwich.
That's the one.
that's the one brick lane
bagel for those of you who
are um actually based in
london and would know what
that is brick lane bagel I
believe one am something
like that are they
sandwiches yeah it's like a
it's like a bagel just
there's bagels all day baby
yeah yeah I've done for
like fuck it forever I
somebody have to tell me
how long brick lane bagels
has been open there i
It sounds wrongly imagined
that if I asked my old man about it,
he'd tell me that he was
having Brick Lane bagels
there in nineteen seventy
nine when he lived in the in the area.
So it sounds healthy.
Lane bagels.
It sounds healthy.
Just like a bagel bagel.
What is that?
doesn't sound like a two a.m
shawarma type of thing
right it sounds like it
sounds healthy like is
there oh it's not it's not
it's not it's like it's
like salt marinated salt
beef or whatever just like
a big chunk of salt okay
okay all right and a big
pickle like like you know
one of those huge pickles
just slice clean in two
yeah right now yeah um
I don't get to go there very often.
And, um, so I, I just ate two.
You did.
Yeah.
I'd like, uh, yeah.
And then like, um, artifact was like,
it was like, damn, I see why you had to,
cause you do think about it afterwards.
I was like, what are you going to do?
Yeah.
It's cool.
Isn't it?
It's, um, yeah.
ECC was a weird vibe this year as well.
Like, um,
was another one where
everywhere you went as soon
as you know people were
like we're doing a little
chat um as soon as anybody
found out that you um ran a
validator shop they were
like full sales mode you're
like bruh especially in
ethereum do you think
validators are bringing
home the big bucks at the
moment like what what is
this it's very very
interesting like it was like um
Yeah, it was like liquidity crunch.
The conference was my vibe.
Really?
Well, there are, I mean,
I think it's mostly the
Cosmos ecosystem that's
poor at this point, right?
Like hyperliquid validators
are just raking it in.
Sweet validators are raking in.
Solana validators, kind of,
but not totally raking it in.
We just happen to be poor.
Yeah.
Okay.
Fair point.
But as in like a lot of the,
there are Ethereum LTs doing well,
like you say, hyperliquid.
The
that was the follow-up
question right whenever
anybody was like you're
like we do some stuff in
the theorem ecosystem and
they're like do you do
hyper liquid we're a bare
metal provider do you do
hyper liquid I want to sell
you some stuff and you're
like we don't do hyper
liquid and they're like
glaze over I'm not going to
give you the cool merch no
um wasn't it didn't the
last thing I needed was to
carry any more shit around france um
But, yeah, I managed to gelato every day,
though.
So, you know,
it was swings and roundabouts,
as they say.
Ups and downs.
It was ups and downs.
Like, yeah,
Cannes is an interesting place to do it,
right?
Because...
was like all these clueless
um uh crypto guys can get
completely owned because
like a lot of the france is
kind of the capital of
attacks like physical
attacks on people who have
crypto assets and stuff
there's been quite a lot of
documentaries is it really
yeah as far as I can tell
there's a lot of documented
cases like kidnappings and
all sorts of stuff because
there's like it's like
organized crime and stuff
like really on the
continental mainland or
whatever um we need to
delve deeper into this really francis
If you go into any of the
public repositories,
there's one for Bitcoin, for example,
which on GitHub document in
the news physical attacks
of people to try and steal
or extort crypto assets.
Franz from a
a kind of non-scientific I
was just flicking through
to get some like very rough
numbers um france seems
over represented was my
takeaway admittedly almost
all paris as far as I could
tell like again just from
from the from like flicking
through data in a
non-scientific way and so I
was kind of like can is
that going to be okay but
it turns out like because there's so many
But Cannes is such a weird place, right?
The menus are in English, French,
and Russian.
Really?
Yeah.
Some of those menus are in Russian.
You're like, hmm.
Yes,
a country with the economy the size of
Italy,
known for not being under an
embargo at the moment.
Oh, wait.
So why are we... Why are
some of the menus in Russian?
Unless they're... Anyway.
So...
But yeah,
there's a lot of rich people in
Cannes and they have their
own basically local police
and additional bylaws and blah, blah,
blah.
It's actually like,
it's incredibly closely surveilled.
So, you know,
cruelest crypto blows just
like walking around with
their lanyards flapping um
we're actually completely
safe unlike you know we you
know whenever it was like a
few years ago in lisbon
where we heard of loads of
people like getting into
potential trouble and stuff
right well and you well not
no lisbon yeah sorry and
then in barcelona where you
get your own pocket picked
all right thanks yeah keep
reminding me that's like
That was just, that was,
that was non-targeted.
That was just, that was just,
I got done over by a kid
who shoved past me on a trap, on a,
on a tram.
And I was just like, ah, that kid,
I don't want a fucking second.
Yeah.
Should have known better.
You know what?
Fucking hell.
Backpacks all the way
through the third world.
And I got done by that trick.
I'm still angry about it.
It's the oldest trick in the book.
It really is.
Yeah,
I think that's literally what your
business partner said to me
about one second after it happened.
I went, wait a second, that's my wallet.
He's like, really?
Yeah,
it was that guy that just got off the
thing.
Ah, that's the oldest trick in the book.
Do you think I don't know that?
there's four of us on this Metro train.
And then this kid, this kid bumps into,
into the fray.
It was like,
literally there's no reason to
bump into anybody.
There's nobody on this train.
It wasn't that busy.
It was, there was nobody out.
It was like the three of us.
Plus I was really surprised.
I was just like, I was like,
watch where you're going.
You're like, are you okay, sir?
Oh yeah.
I got completely rolled by that.
That was good.
but as again as your
business part said you know
cheap lesson um cheap
lesson completely changed
the way I do personal
operational security when
I'm not not doing part of a
daily routine in fact even
when I'm just traveling on
the train domestically in
the uk and stuff now um I
now I'm back to full
paranoid third world
backpacker mode like what
you stick your phone in
there in the backpack
no down my pants obviously
oh okay yeah come on now
bro loose fitting pants
with a giant pocket that
opens yeah no but just like
you know if you're if
you're like um just like
sitting down you've got
your laptop um in your bag
or whatever at your feet
have have like a big
carabiner on your bag and
just like clip it around
like the base of the chair
and stuff like that so if
somebody just like walks
past and scoops yeah you
know it would just go clunk
and can't do anything which
is which is shit I would
never have done on a train
like five years ago or
three years ago because
I'll just be like that is
too paranoid and now I'm
back fully on that um yeah
hey what you're gonna do cheap lesson
Well, I think the other thing was like,
you were worried about
two-factor because they get
two-factor app on there and
a bunch of other shit that was like, oh,
fuck,
how the fuck am I going to get that back?
That's the other piece, too, is like,
how do you... Because I
export like a two-factor
out because that thing's not cloud-based.
It's just one-off type of thing.
And like,
that thing gets exported all the
time because I always get
worried about that, too,
if I lose a phone.
I'm not going to get pickpocket, but
I actually have just to have
essentially a smartphone
with our two-factor app recovered,
pre-recovered.
And all it is on that
smartphone is the two-factor app.
It's just in our vault.
Because I'm just like, well, look,
absolute worst-case scenario.
I literally cannot get in.
Everything is fucked.
It is only ever a case of getting a flight,
getting a taxi, picking that thing up,
plugging it into charge.
Did you say getting a flight?
Well,
because I'd have to come back to the
bank vault to get it.
Wherever you are.
Yeah.
Because let's assume I'm in
Barcelona or whatever.
I had to pay the idiot tax, right?
Yeah.
That's also what your
business partner called it.
Yeah.
It's the idiot tax.
I learned a lot of things that day.
It's just that sometimes you
learn too much.
You see too much in too
short a space of time.
I remember your face.
You were like, what happened?
I don't understand.
How did this happen?
It was kind of like,
it's funny in hindsight,
but also the fact that we
were actually out drinking
and then I mainly had to
deal with it in the morning
with a hangover.
That was the worst part.
Because you were like, you have to call up,
you have to cancel cards, freeze things.
And they're just like, are you okay, sir?
You sound agitated,
but this is normal if
you've had a theft incident
and you're like...
Yes, I'm agitated because of the theft.
You're like,
I'm just really hungover and I
have a headache.
I don't want to be here.
Blurring your words.
It was also hot in that flat.
Well,
maybe it was just the... I think it
was just your rage.
Just my rage.
Forget Schultz's rash.
It's just a five hundred watts of rage.
Yep.
That was a good time.
Yeah, it was.
It was pretty good.
I enjoyed it.
That was the last, I think,
foreign conference I did before ECC,
actually.
Yeah, no SmartCon Barcelona.
Yeah, October.
It was two years ago.
Something like that, yeah.
It was just after I started the PhD.
Are you almost done with that?
Are we done with that?
Are we rounding third base here?
Where are we?
I'm on such a delay.
Well, I do it part-time, right?
So it can be up to six years,
but usually it's four to five.
But I'm two in,
and I've been trying to get
the thing that you have to
do as your checkpoint
organized for a while,
but it's really hard to get it organized.
And in the end,
it got delayed and delayed and delayed.
And then eventually an email
got sent around by the
admin department of the
university bollocking
everybody involved for not
having organized it, including me,
obviously.
And then suddenly it got like arranged.
Oh, okay.
Like that.
And it's like in two weeks or whatever.
So it's quite a big deal.
So what, what is that exactly?
Uh, well,
so I have to do two things
because they weren't done
and they're kind of the same thing,
but a bit different.
I have to do what's called a
first year Viva,
which is to defend that I
haven't been slacking for my first year,
which is kind of, it's not no work,
but it's like a little bit
of a formality if you
haven't actually been slacking.
And then the second thing I have to do is.
an upgrade fiver,
which is to actually prove
that you have fulfilled
enough of the requirements
of being a PhD student and
actually can viably get to
actually receiving the PhD
in order to continue.
And some people do fail that.
Does that mean you have to
stage a Juno upgrade
blindfolded or something like that?
What's the actual?
I have to write a long paper
about the theoretical
implementation of a Juno
upgrade blindfolded.
yeah I mean I'm actually
slightly kidding about
that's kind of what it is
like uh did you see there's
a prop-sixteen twitter
account is that yeah
there's a I should we
should have created that
why the fuck did we not do
that because because I
usually I usually I usually
tweet out about about the
anniversary because it's in
my calendar prop-sixteen's
in my calendar and then uh jack uh
tweeted out and it's like
some never forget
prop-sixteen and I I was
like yeah never forget it
and then there's a
prop-sixteen twitter
account was like never
forget and and like the
prop-sixteen twitter
account the subtitle is
never forget I was like I
thought it was what do you
do or what are you three
actually it could be it
sounds like it could be a
jack thing I know is
strange love still going or
to jack exit what's going
on there they were uh yep
they were acquired yeah
So no,
I guess they wouldn't be considered
still going because they
got rolled into Ondo Finance.
Yeah, they're in Ondo.
The whole team is in Ondo.
Whether Strangelove still exists,
I don't know.
It might have some, I don't know if they,
I don't know.
Depends on what the entity happened,
if they bought the entity or the assets.
By sheer coincidence,
I was wearing my Strange
Love t-shirt from Cosmoverse.
Yeah, it's glow in the dark.
It's actually quite cool.
I didn't realize I was
literally because of
eco-saving or I think
actually because the
building landlords are
cheap where we have our offices,
the lights in the toilets
turn off after three minutes.
That is too short if you
were taking a dump.
So what happened was the
lights went out and my
fucking t-shirt was glowing.
And that's how I found out
it glowed because I was
trying to take it down.
But it just said, strange love.
I was like, this is kind of,
there's a metaphor in here about my life.
And I don't really,
I can't put it together,
but that's funny.
This is, this is a,
I deserve this or this is
appropriate or something like that.
Yeah.
It was my kind of vibe there.
They build good tools, right?
So even, even,
Physical as well as digital.
Yeah.
So they're part of Ando now.
And then ICL has been
picking up some stuff there.
I think ICL is taking over Horcrux, right?
Yeah.
Speaking of ICL,
I saw a friend of the podcast.
I saw Mags.
Oh, you did?
Yeah.
ACC.
Yeah.
I will say like, I mean,
obviously a few months
delayed given that ECC was
like fucking what, three months ago,
two months ago.
Um, the cosmos party was pretty good.
Like, like a lot of the,
some of the ECC events were
a total downer, man.
Like there were just loads
of people just like, oh my God,
the end times, the end times.
Oh my God.
And the cosmos party was
like gently positive,
sat around with a few people caught up,
caught up with Erteman from, from L five.
Gently positive.
That should be the Cosmos subtitle.
Gently positive.
I had a good chat with Max.
Gently positive.
Got a little bit of miscellaneous merch.
That's cool.
Yeah.
It seems they're doing stuff.
Although I came off of that
event feeling very, very positive.
And then obviously saw all
of the wasm and cosm wasm and blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah stuff afterward.
I was a bit like, ah, this is like...
Maybe I missed this in the event,
but this feels like another
direction change.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Is permissionless Cosmos
live yet on the hub, or no, not yet?
No, I think it was only permissioned,
and now it's going away?
No, no.
Is it going away?
No, it's going to permissionless.
Oh, it's going to permission.
Well, I thought it was,
but I thought there was some other thing,
right?
No,
I don't think it was ever permissioned
at all on there.
I thought it was nothing,
and then they were going permissionless.
Well, maybe you're thinking of the EVM.
They're going to add EVM for a while,
and I think they cut that.
That went away.
Yeah.
Yeah, that process was dumped, right?
Wasn't there a thing where
they were going to go EVM
instead of CosmWasm?
Correct.
But now are we back on CosmWasm?
Permissionless CosmWasm.
Correct.
Okay,
so we've had another U-turn since the
last U-turn.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because I think,
if I remember correctly...
Mags was on stage at ECC
talking about EVM on the Cosmos, right?
Was it there at ECC or
somewhere else that they
did a big presentation
related to EVM on the Cosmos?
Yeah, so they were at...
They were at ECC saying they
were going to migrate from
CosmWasm to EVM.
And it was a sovereign EVM day.
That was the day at the ECC.
And I was like, fine.
I prefer CosmWasm, but I can see this.
This kind of makes sense.
Yeah, I can see it.
But then, yeah,
we've had another U-turn since then.
Right.
And then that went away.
And then I think they let
governance decide the
Cosmos structure and
governance dictated that
passed related to permissionless.
I think it's I know it's I
know it's enabled that provider.
I know that on the test net,
but I don't know if it went
live on main net.
I don't think so, though.
But I know it's coming.
So here we are.
Yeah.
I mean, Cosmos is pretty good.
Yeah, but... Relodge Hal.
Spaffel the hub.
But I don't know.
What I don't know is the
ownership of Cosmos.
Because I know Confio,
I know Simon and team
basically lost that
contract with the ICF to deliver that,
right?
When they went to the EVM thing.
And then Neutron alts it or something?
I don't even know.
Like, Neutron's involved in some way.
Wait, what?
Really?
Yeah,
so I got an email saying that I think
Confio moved off of Cosmosm.
They did.
Possibly Confio have even wound up.
I don't even know if they're still going.
No, they're still around.
Are they still going?
Yeah.
OK.
Right.
But then, yeah,
so what I don't know is I
don't understand the
ownership of Cosmosm today.
I don't think that's ICF or ICL.
I don't think so.
And then, so anyway,
so now we're back to this
permissionless type of thing.
So permissionless, I don't know,
permissionless on the hub
seems weird to me,
but I don't really know too
much about what the hell is
going to happen.
We're going to have a lot of
train holes is what we're going to have.
One thing I know from Juno
is- Take it from a guy that
didn't have a holiday in
two and a half years.
Yeah.
there are going to be a lot
of channels there's gonna
be a lot of channels that's
um yeah I sometimes like
it's so far in the past I
sometimes forget why I was
so stressed in that period
of my life and now I
remember that some random
fucking dude dude writing a
contract that whatever the
fuck right it's usually
accidentally saying fuck
something up they're
breaking the test that
they've done whatever
whatever whatever whatever yeah and um
It's one of those, like,
I keep getting this sort of
stuff now with the PhD
things where people are like,
how will you manage your stress?
How can you deliver?
And I'm just like, bro.
Manage your stress as a PhD student.
There's loads of,
cause loads of stuff about
what I'm having to do now
is basically like, I've,
I've done like quite a bit
of research stuff and backing and like,
I have like a thesis
skeleton or the shit that
you need to do to like move
forward with your,
your research and stuff.
Yeah.
Um,
You have submissions to conferences,
written papers, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
But you also have to write
reports and things for
these vivas where you're saying,
this is my strategy for how
I manage stress and how I
manage delivering things and blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
And you're just like, bruh,
I was a core maintainer of a blockchain.
Yeah.
I can't even like this is
definitely not unstressful
but like this this is like
you walk up at ten it's
just like yeah yeah we have
deadlines you know fucking
the deadline for this stuff
is like oh sometimes
something comes along you
got to get it done like
eight days or nine days and
you're like yeah sometimes
page duty wakes me up
fucking what I am I've had
that I've had the string of
the worst fucking pager
duty at four a.m every like
three or two two three or
four like every morning for
like the last next last not
in the last two nights but
every night before that for
like three or four days
stupidest fucking thing
like one dydx no just halts
just stops and I get and I'm woken up
uh, osmosis node reboots for some reason.
And for some reason they're all down.
So that end points down, I get like,
I'm like, what the fuck is this thing?
Like my,
my life in page duty has become a
lot more peaceful.
Now we've just turned off
the cosmos knows that we're
making us no money.
It was great for so long.
And then this is the last week it's been.
I did get woken up by a
completely undiagnosable
and random network choke on
Aptos a few weeks ago.
I was so unhappy about that.
You know when you get woken
up and it's just close
enough to when you actually
would wake up?
Your body just goes, hey,
are we waking up early this morning?
Okay, cool.
I'll just flood your body
with cortisol and you can wake up.
And then you're just like, oh,
I'm now just in that kind
of stressful early wake up
where you're like, oh shit,
I've woken up early because
something's on fire.
I've got to do something.
And you're just like, oh...
but it's actually still like
nobody else in the house is awake.
This is useless.
And I just want to just start working now.
That feels really shit.
So you're just like,
do I go read a book or
something while I wait for
everybody to wake up?
Like,
Watch YouTube shorts for an
hour and a half.
Do you know what?
It's funny.
I did actually just watch
Tom Cardy YouTube shorts.
I watch YouTube shorts for like two hours.
I could sit there.
Do you remember back in the
day there was that YouTube
playlist by a guy called
Epic Donut Dude called the
Instant Regret Playlist?
That shit.
I could watch even to this day.
I could watch Instant Regret.
forever it's just it's just
like the deepest darkest
like subconscious liminal
brain of the internet
that's that shit's wild um
you know apart from like
grousing about a few
different things like we
haven't even talked about
like you know your country
has completely changed its
stance on crypto several
times right in the last you
like things like things are
moving right yeah
Well, as in like, you know,
we've started the podcast,
but even the last few months,
like apart from the fact
the world economy is like, you know,
crashing, um, which is,
it turns out not good for crypto.
So, you know, oops, but, uh, you know,
things are moving in that direction.
That's a big change.
Things are moving.
Nobody's actually concerned
that we're based in the U S anymore,
which is that part's positive at least.
Yeah.
That part's positive.
Um,
Yeah, I mean, this country has issues,
but at least from a crypto perspective,
I would say there's a lot
less oversight and
watchdogging related to
things that either we do or
some of the tool sets and
products coming out of the U.S.
associated to that.
Obviously,
from an ETF perspective and just...
restaking and the F and from
the sec perspective, like all that,
a lot of that shit is like gone away.
Right.
Like at least from a open,
open suits and things like that,
obviously have, have disappeared.
Um, so, but I, but I don't know,
there's not necessarily clarity.
I wouldn't say that, but at least,
at least there's, at least there was less,
um, I don't know.
How would you describe it?
She'll see, like there's less,
there's less, uh,
I don't know, important people oversight?
Law and order?
Yeah.
That might be the problem, right?
There's less law and order in crypto,
but there's also less law
and order in the entire country.
No,
there's more law and order in the
entire country.
There's less law and order
where if there's law and order,
it's not related to making money.
Yeah, I did see that National Guard thing.
There's more law and order
away from making a dollar.
If there's things to be made
or markets to be grown or opportunity,
those restrictions are decreasing.
Away from that idea,
those restrictions are increasing, right?
Yeah.
Immigration, this, that.
That's different.
But related to the almighty
dollar and the growth of
the economy and the growth of...
GDP, if you want to say that,
or growth of new markets or
competition or those types of things,
that is greatly decreasing.
Is that fair?
I don't know.
I just made that up,
but it kind of seems like
that's a macro look at it.
Well, I mean, it also includes like, well,
I don't want to get into politics.
God.
yeah fair play uh I wouldn't
if I were you guys too it's
okay I mean if there's one
thing I've learned about
american politics is every
time british people get
complacent about american
politics we end up creating
a bigger dumpster fire
about two to three years
after you do so well we're
currently in the situation
where I gather I don't read
the news um but people in
the office were telling me
that apparently there's just like
loads of right wing like
like fashy kind of youths
just like putting union
jacks everywhere and then
people are just like oh
it's just the union jack
it's probably harmless and
then when people actually
like go hey dude why are
you spray painting a union
jack in this roundabout in
the middle of nowhere just
for reasons is it just like
for thing then they get
being up and it's like ah
this is like some fashy thing
just it's like just like why
whatever and you're just
like ah this is the kind of
shit that was happening in
like the thirties in
germany I don't like it
maybe time to that's how
brexit started right well
the thing is like brexit
was like the people who
were kind of dumb enough to
to think that any could
come out of brexit were the
ones who are saying like oh
well at least it's like a
pressure valve and
will calm the demands for
this that and the other and
you know an impulse towards
authoritarianism and it's
like well no because you
need to actually address
problems in your country in
your economy right
otherwise people continue
to get angrier and if real
wages stay stagnant and if
a wealth inequality keeps rising then
you know,
people are going to continue to
get angrier.
And the funny thing is, right,
the people who supported Brexit the most,
the people who are funding
the far right in the UK are
overwhelmingly ex-bankers
who literally don't even live in the UK.
A lot of them are non-doms.
they are the ultra wealthy
who stand to benefit from
the uk becoming like a
massive tax haven
essentially and the
consequences and so there's
this weird thing where they
you know they benefit
essentially from just
continuing this cycle of
anger and deprivation
personally and they're just
hoping that the music will
never stop like the they'll never
be lacking a chair when the
music finally stops,
they won't end up against the wall.
And it's like, well, actually, like,
I wouldn't make that bet.
Look at the French Revolution,
look at Ceausescu,
look at the fall of communism.
Like when the music stops,
quite often you do end up
against the wall.
It's just that a lot of
people have to suffer and
potentially die in the meantime.
It's a very short sighted strategy.
to get five percent extra of
your money rather than
paying ten percent extra in
tax or whatever like it's
very very dumb and it never
works in the long run which
is why it's just like why
remind me why we're doing
this again like I thought
we pretty conclusively
tested this hypothesis last
last century turns out it
was bad to do flashy things
I think that idea of in the
long run is dead
Yeah, like everything here,
at least at least here is
it's all extremely short
term with very little like
we'll deal with it when we
deal with it now now.
there, there, there's a balance there.
Like, cause that,
that strategy is not necessarily bad.
Right.
But that is a, that's a,
that's kind of like just
move fast and break things
and we'll figure it out and blah, blah,
blah.
Right.
Like there's,
there's pieces of that that are,
are viable because you get the other way,
which is like, you, you're,
you're basically analysis
like paralysis by analysis,
which is the opposite of that,
which it means like you're,
you're doing so much
analysis related to a
problem that you actually
can't make a decision.
And there's balances between those two.
And, and,
and right now it's definitely going,
the former, which is like,
fuck it fucking.
We're just going to drop things.
We're going to make,
we're not going to think
through these problems.
We're going,
that's a whole doge thing here
in the U S like,
we'll just cut these people.
Fuck it.
We'll figure it out.
If they need it, then we'll,
if something breaks, we'll bring it back.
Right.
Um, and, and I think that, that idea, uh,
like, you know, that extends pretty far.
Um, and then the latest thing,
which not to get too political,
but this idea, like,
I don't like the numbers or
I don't like the information.
So I'm just going to fire whoever,
whoever who's on the other end of that.
And.
and that's the solution to
solving the problem, which is, which is,
uh, we're,
we're not going to use a third
party source or trust any
thing that comes out.
We're just going to,
whoever doesn't say the
party line is going to get termed.
That's a fucking dangerous slope though.
That's bad news.
Yeah.
That's pretty bad news.
Bad news.
Yeah.
That's bad news.
Although I do think that that doesn't,
that doesn't necessarily
have a long life.
I honestly don't think that,
that, that can go for very, very long.
Like eventually that,
that shit catches up.
Cause I mean the numbers, the numbers are,
if the numbers are reality,
you'll see that in other ways.
I mean,
eventually the other sheet is going
to drop, right?
Yes.
So literally, for Bandcamp,
I got an email to my
Bandcamp account today saying, hey,
by the way,
if you're a Bandcamp
subscriber and you're in
the United States,
you should be aware that
lots of global shippers are
now no longer shipping
small merchandise items like T-shirts,
CDs, vinyls, whatever.
Actually, I think technically,
depending on which jurisdiction you're in,
vinyls and CDs might
actually be exempt under a
certain US restriction,
but the global shipping...
Uh, yeah, but, but, but I think,
but I think globally.
Yeah,
I think global shipping companies
don't want to figure it out
because it's too expensive
to look at the parcel and
figure out what it is.
So they just like blanket fucking no.
They basically was just saying, hey,
if you're based in the US,
you should be aware that
lots of shops are probably
not committed to ship to you.
And it might be because the
shop doesn't want to deal with it.
It might be because they
can't find something to ship to you.
We've enabled a feature to
just toggle and basically
say that you can sell
everywhere in the world,
but you can't sell to the US.
You can just toggle that
feature on in Bandcamp now.
And it's just saying, hey,
if you're based in the US,
you should know that
perhaps not every artist
will be aware of this or store.
So you should be aware that
maybe you just shouldn't buy stuff.
And you're like, okay,
this is where we are.
Like,
maybe you shouldn't buy stuff on the
internet.
Because it might not ever
arrive because the person
might not be able to ship it to you.
But hey, you know,
on the plus side in the UK,
we finally have regulatory
character around exchange traded notes,
which means rank and file
investors will have
um very easy access once
implemented to um uh
essentially a pseudo asset
which represents major
cryptocurrencies what's
that mean um it's just like
everything else in britain
it's a massive complicated
fudge to get around the
fact that you can't do a
thing but so what can't the
people want to do the thing
so we'll find a way of
doing the thing but with
more regulation yeah uh
people want to hold crypto assets
ordinary people get wrecked
so they've basically done
the same thing as like
essentially accredited
investor thing in the US
where you can hold crypto
assets if you already hold
them or if you're an
accredited investor or
you're a business but then
like other people how do
they hold them it's like
well exchange traded notes
is like it's the same as
like an ETF essentially or
whatever where you say oh I
have exposure to this asset
but I don't actually hold
the assets held by an
institution and of course
the institutions will then make
So yeah,
I'm sure just in time for the PhD
to be completed and all these,
all these timelines are kind of, they are,
I mean, to be fair,
these timelines are
aligning a little bit.
Like we talked about this,
like you going into this
area and like going after, um,
stables in the idea of of uh
digital currencies as use
and like like your timing
is right on though right
because like whatever's
gonna happen whatever's
gonna happen here is gonna
be somewhat positive or
negatively either either
perfect or a total disaster
within the next four years
yeah exactly we agree on
that well so yeah exactly
right either you've
completely wasted the last
five years of your life or
you've made the smartest
decision that you possibly
could at the right time you
will figure that out by
twenty twenty nine yeah I
mean honestly that's a but
I joke about it, but like nobody,
it's very rare that you're
putting that you can
actually have a position to
have this type of not a coin flip.
Like you're just not a coin flip.
Like it's not fifty fifty.
Like it's going the right way.
But like it's going the right way.
It's going the right way.
Um, how else,
like how many times in life
does that happen?
Where like you had this
massive cultural shift and
you're building an
expertise as being a
thought leader in an area
that just happened to
arrive when you did.
It's fucking crazy.
Yeah, but I mean,
that's kind of like our
whole thesis for all our businesses,
right?
No,
I'm just trying to avoid going to an
office.
That's really what it's about.
On some level, isn't it?
Basically, we got into this,
or at least I got into this,
because I was in the right
place at the right time.
And then after that, you were just like,
okay.
You end up with a set of
things that you know where
you can do that other people don't have.
That's competitive advantage.
Sure.
And then you just try and run with that.
That's my understanding of
how business works.
This possibly why I'm bad at business.
Well,
it's a mix of doing very strategic
things to at some point get
lucky enough where luck goes your way.
Because it is a mix of strategy and luck,
right?
Yeah, but luck is the bigger of the two,
I think.
Well,
you also have to be prepared for good
luck.
That has to happen too, right?
Meaning, you thought about this.
You've been two years into this process.
Two years ago, when you brought this up,
I think... No,
I guess we were supportive.
I was going to say we weren't supportive,
but we were supportive.
If you're not going to do it now,
when are you going to do it?
Exactly.
yeah when you have young
kids and everything's kind
of fucked anyway it's
probably the time to do it
yeah because once you're
back once you're back
walking it once you're back
to killing it at work and
in life in general you can
be like why would I abandon
that to well you're at a
point where you're like
you're all in like what
like what else like not
that you have nothing else
to lose you that's not true
because you always get different jobs
But you're at a point where
if you're not going to do it now,
you're not going to do it.
So you might as well do it.
Yeah, for sure.
But I mean, yeah.
I think really specifically, right,
if you want to talk about
where we are as a sector,
and I've been thinking
about this a lot recently, right,
because a lot of the stuff
I'm working on is like
permissioned in the future.
But a lot of the analysis
I'm doing is of the systems
we currently have,
which are permissionless.
And I think there's going to
be a really interesting point, basically,
for those of us that have
some element of cypherpunk
still in us that want to
think it's possible to
coordinate without central,
without necessarily like, you know,
all the checks and balances and yada,
yada, yada, yada.
And I think this is why, like, as an aside,
I think this is why like
redefining what crypto
assets actually are saying, look,
is it a form of community credit?
Is it da, da, da, da, da,
because it's obviously not money.
It's not secured by anything.
It's too volatile.
But really clearly defining
what it is we're trying to
do with these incentive systems.
Are we just going to do them
with crypto assets?
In which case, fine.
It's possibly something akin
to community credit and
multilateral community credit reform,
not capital C credit,
but just a simplified version of credit.
Is it something that needs money?
In which case, yeah,
we need a stable coin.
We need something else.
We need something with
stable value linked to entropy, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
But like that understanding I think is,
is happening.
Like you're seeing that
we've seen that we've
talked about on the podcast
with the development of stable coins and,
and,
and you were just alluding it to that,
you know, right place in the right time,
possibly for all of us to
now like take advantage of that.
But like, what's really,
really interesting to me is
whether or not there is
still legs or there is a
life in the future for the
permissionless ecosystem in
its current form or in a
different form or with the
different assets.
Because that to me is the
most interesting question in crypto,
right?
Is a CBDC is kind of boring.
It's necessary, but boring.
A stable coin is necessary, but boring.
It's just private money.
It's the same as Visa
sequencing your transactions for you,
right?
The money is actually kind
of flowing via a clearance network.
It's not really money.
It's private money.
Whether you can do the...
Whether you can do the
permissionless thing and
actually also have stable
means of exchange is the
only interesting question in crypto to me,
I think, honestly.
Can you program incentive systems,
automated incentive systems
with human intervention?
Because that's what we've
seen in the cosmos, right?
Build DAOs and they will
come and they will manipulate the ledger.
And maybe that's fine
because every human system gets changed.
Yeah.
But can we turn those
systems into something
useful with more stable
value with better tooling?
I think there is still a
problem there and there is
still a possibility there.
And I just don't know the
answer because it's a big
question for smart people to me.
But that's the thing I think
about all the time now.
I'm like,
is there a future for the
permissions ecosystem?
I think it's really
interesting and it matters.
It might... Well, I don't know.
It seems like that would be phase...
We built these permissionless systems.
We modeled an ecosystem that
creates those situations to
make that possible.
Then it becomes viable
enough that you have large
financial institutions that
discard all that and copy
it and build their own permission systems,
right?
Which means the answer to
your question is no.
And then the next iteration
People say,
why the fuck isn't this
integrating or why isn't
this visible or something else?
And maybe that comes back
around where we take on
some of the original thesis
and re-inject that into
something that is... Right.
This is back to the heart of it, right?
You all know my thesis about, right?
why do we care about
decentralization what is
the thing it makes us feel
good yeah right right it
makes me feel great to feel
like there's a hundred and
seventy-five validators on
the network I'd say that
for nothing uh hundred and
fifty not so much but a
hundred and seventy-five
it's like the drake meme
it's like hundred and fifty
hundred and seventy-five let's go
But like, you know, it's like,
obviously it's not systemic resilience.
Exactly.
It's kind of like a performative.
It's like decentralization theater, right?
We all talk about that all the time.
And it's not resilient.
It's not like immutability
because we rewrite ledgers
all the time for loads of reasons.
So it's like, okay,
well it's something else.
Like, it's like,
I have this idea that I
know other people have had it too.
It's not just mine, but like this idea,
it's just opportunism, right?
That's the first thing that
Satoshi wrote about in the
fucking Bitcoin era.
white paper, right?
It's just opportunistic stealing.
That's the minimum threshold
that people care about.
You can't just steal
something because you feel like it.
That's the minimum level of trust.
And actually,
if we get ten thousand people saying,
well, we're going to steal your thing,
it legitimizes itself.
So I don't know that
immutability is a thing we care about.
I don't know that
decentralization has a
fixed meaning that we care about.
I think the thing that
probably we give a shit
about is ownership and it's like agency,
right?
we want to have agency over
our ownership of the asset over the thing,
right?
And we don't feel like we
have ownership or at the very least,
we don't feel like we have
agency in other parts of the economy.
And that's why
permissionlessness is an
interesting problem that
still has a life to it.
I think because agency, political agency,
economic agency, access to money,
access to opportunity have
always been the only ball
game in town for policy.
I guess at some level or one
of the most is the, is the,
is the economy stupid, right?
It's that same political argument.
I don't know.
So permissionlessness, I don't know.
I really hope we still, I really hope,
like you say,
we can take the tools that
we develop in this period
and turn them into
something more interesting
and more inclusive than
just visa run stable coins.
Cause who cares if these are
unstable coins, man.
Unless Visa want to work with our company,
in which case,
we will absolutely consult for you.
We know lots about stable
coins and decentralization.
Info at InnoCast.com.
Exactly.
It's such a fine line
between stupid and clever.
It really is.
Oh, dear.
You know...
The idea of chase or
whatever else using a stable,
like it's such a fine line,
like between permission
list to permission from
their perspective.
I mean, there's ownership there.
I get it.
But in the grand scheme of it,
it's such a fine line.
Like, and, and, and from, I don't know.
And those guys are literally, you know,
they are.
if anything goes wrong at the moment,
they're using public
blockchains to do various
pilots and whatever.
Oh yeah, they are.
They literally have a
Postgres database running.
If anything goes wrong,
they're just going to go, okay,
let's abandon the source of
truth of the blockchain and
check Postgres.
Like, you know, they are, of course,
but it's like, you know,
for the rest of us that
don't want an intermediary,
like it's back to the, like,
It's back to the boring shit,
the basis points, the actual inclusion,
the actual transactions.
It's back to privacy, confidentiality,
all that kind of stuff that
people talked about in the
early days of cryptocurrencies.
All of those things are
still relevant and true and important.
It's just that we... I don't know.
People say that are important,
but we'll give that up instantly.
For convenience or for some
other type of structure, right?
Like,
it's tough to live your life by those
rules in those situations, right?
Because you end up,
you're forced to give those things up,
like,
at the smallest point of making
something easier or making something,
you know,
more straightforward or easier
to understand or whatever else.
Yeah, no, I would agree with that.
But we have HTTPS everywhere, right?
There are sometimes examples
of when these things do
just start working.
Like internet carriers just
carrying each other's traffic.
Sometimes a solution...
the infrastructure or the
rails that lead to a
solution working become the
path of least resistance
and actually do facilitate
a better outcome for everybody.
And, you know, you're talking,
you're talking earlier about like, oh,
long-term thinking has gone
out the window.
Well, you know what,
like the most important
part of long-term thinking
is belief that another world is possible.
And that sounds cheesy,
but I think actually it's very,
very relevant for where we
are as a space where it's just like, okay,
I think there are actually
some very harsh lessons we
have to look at with where
we are currently in permission systems.
We all know about it.
We've been talking about
this podcast for years
about the good and the bad.
But it's like,
we can also imagine a future
where we solve some of
those problems and we still
continue doing a cool thing.
Like that's entirely possible.
We just have to imagine it
and then we can do it.
Like, yeah.
Like you go solve those problems.
And then like,
Okay, so whatever.
One of us.
I could use a bit of help.
The royal we.
Yeah, we'll solve it.
Sure.
But you know, the most important thing,
can we just say,
that happened during the
summer break was Rhino got a new logo.
We did.
That's it.
It's a pretty cool new logo.
And it no longer looks like
the concrete company that
were doing work at the
building site down the road.
No longer looks like the
bollards that I saw in the
park or the punch bag.
What is the negative space in the Rhino?
That's what I've been trying
to figure out.
Oh, maybe it's a finger or something.
Is it phallic?
Maybe it's phallic.