Yeah, I mean that is unfortunate I suppose but never mind dad's still not back for cigarettes we just got to go.
Welcome to game of notes weekly podcast on the cause must from independent validator teams.
Hello welcome to game of notes weekly podcast on the cause must from independent validator teams and as you might have identified.
Dad is still not back with a cigarette we're still very upset we were waiting waiting waiting where we've been since last week sat in these chairs clothes haven't changed maybe.
And yeah we also have friend of the show sporty fully doxxed Julie Fox.
No I mean to be fair I guess your your handle online is usually spoo or spoo bar which is at least half of the way there anyway so.
I think my twitter has my full name my first name.
I guess you need to put all of things together well this is the thing is that I guess you just knowing somebody's like everybody knows knows Jake from core one right they know his name but it's it's.
Watch it I guess yeah no it is very very easy if you know somebody's full name and surname that's the key I guess as long as you keep.
One of those things I guess we have a short C case in point you're you're like very not to know and yet amount of mystery.
Well here's the funny thing though I recently had a name change go through so I'm kind of anonymous again.
We say wait what you say you've changed your name IRL yeah yeah I got married we need our last name so we're like.
I got something different oh my god dad's back.
I'm back with the cigarettes and gin I was so surprised by the shit about my bike sound over the Leopold's from from Denver Colorado I was just about to ask about that that's really good.
No and I had some I think what he was on no we had a whiskey then but we had someone he was over I open that I open that laws like.
We I forget which one we bought we bought like some you know about the same one right it was I bought reserve that's right you but yeah you're about super fancy we bought I bought some reserve one there and I had a little bit of that and I was like oh boy.
Yeah I think it was like whoa baby right okay Eric's back.
Happy days null has gone walk about.
He's in the area of Australia and is belong to null and so he's not joining this week and I see yeah I see yeah so basically.
We're not gonna we've already taught we've already taught you which is better than we mostly do for like an entire hour we actually have not only a developer but a fellow validator on the show.
So probably somebody who's more more on the pulse of what's actually going on in the cause more so well than us fucking dipshits.
Wait hold on I'm gonna.
Sporthy you run a validator which validator do you run I don't think I realized that.
On Stargaze around the cosmos ladies.
Oh never mind I didn't know that I didn't know that okay.
So due to a scheduling cock up by Australian contingent spoo was going to come on on international women's day I believe to talk about the cause most ladies and.
What also obviously what's the best obviously maybe not obvious to listen to the show but sport is also worked as a core as a core kind of SDK dev.
Wait I'm allowed to talk about this is this do you have like.
You allowed to talk about your job right or your old job yeah yeah because I never saw something really like I don't really know if anybody has like a green but anyway what so you know what for ICF and stuff like that so.
Also knows knows a lot about.
Sorry yeah and yeah so.
Really kind of so I change so how long have you actually been working in cosmos in total I mean I despite having like.
No new on and off various things require a while I've actually never asked that question.
Guess in total 2.5 years but I am counting like parts where I was working on cosmos but not.
As professionally so professionally I guess it's two years but.
So like one or two and a half so kind of like an OG or like relatively I mean I guess how what was OG how how about how far back you have to go to be a really legit OG.
I think there's like you know the 2018 batch with sunny and all that tendament you know.
Okay so like like pre app chain winter OG post sunny and co OG one of just maybe not OG but but a G is that.
Is that allowed today so and what are you what are you mainly working on these days if you can talk about it.
Other than the validation stuff which will kind of go on to so predominantly I'm working at Phylabs on archway and adjacent stuff and also know I contribute some stuff to stargaze as well.
Okay nice so that you serpas you serpas like stargaze and what.
Sorry I didn't know you always do the site you always do this little involuntary dog with stargaze next mentioned you just like I do like stargaze yeah.
Oh yeah yeah I also do things with stargaze yes we do yes stargaze.
So hey so I totally missed that mint the other week as well did you guys will get did you guys will get it were you.
You mean the after the filter yeah yeah was it was it was I got a few was it good.
It was sold out of me what was the go yeah it was it was nuts what was the price on those.
I don't remember what they did that sounds right yeah yeah there was a they whitelisted what was it 30 some odd hundred.
It was one per every if you held a bad kid you you had one whitelisted right it was one to one wasn't I think it was I don't think it was was it.
I thought it was because I think I think there's 30 there was there was 3,000 or 3,600 bad kids originally and there's 10,000 of after the filter and I think everyone who held an original bad kid was could could whitelist was whitelisted one more bad kids than that one that 10,000 no it's only no no that's what I thought too because I was like how many are left after this I can go look real quick got it and then and then there were yeah I could take a look at how many bad kids there are.
Oh you're right there are 10,000 yeah yeah what are you talking about wait no wait that's bit kids look at the wrong one my bed look at the wrong one it's also one to one with bad kids yeah there's 10,000 there to say it was 9,996 because four people burned them.
Did we know we've been we've been on the show you didn't burn a bad kid that's a blue chip you can't that's a blue just burn that shit.
I thought it was one to one maybe it wasn't but anyway there was a whitelist that was that was for I think a few hours beforehand and then then it opened up.
And I think they had a then I think they all went in.
I remember I posted some stats on Twitter but they all went like within 1015 minutes or something like that.
It was something like that.
So and then they opened up then they opened up the market they're gonna.
They're thinking it was gonna meant for like a few days or something like that they're gonna they're gonna open the marketplace like a week later they end up open up the marketplace I think.
Six or seven hours after the mint was done or after the mint started what did you I guess you guys probably took took the hit on obviously the traffic and stuff for that what did it look like.
I I'll link a little tweet I had but it was something along the lines of.
Shoot I'll find it but it it was it was a pretty significant jump real quick.
Was it intense intense degeneracy was it like mid level degeneracy or.
It was pretty intense it was it was to the point where I like I was bit like we were prepped out like I knew I knew it was coming and so I was like watching.
Dashboards to what the hell's going on and there was a there and I during the minute I had no issues in terms of transaction I was just minting the ones I was going through is this let me go.
I did have one time out and I was like oh shit what the hell's this but I think at that point I thought at least what I was pulling there was something like.
20,000 transactions in the mempool or 20 or 30,000 so that's people just hitting it over and over and over and I don't even know what and but the maximum per block was only like.
20 or 30 a block I thought or maybe 30 or 40 block we can go back and look and see what the blocks were like so I assume that's the contract running and then it was trying to figure out who's first in there and a bunch of other types of shit in there and a lot of those transactions I assume failed because they're already minting on a.
Number that was already in process maybe is that how that works.
I don't know how the sequential mint works because you can do a whole bunch of ways like if it's just a pure.
Increment it's submit yeah I know it's a miss mempool and then the one that succeeds gets it and the others will fail right cuz it's just an atomic it's just an atomic right.
I don't know if it's but is it is it figuring out which one is the next one available and so therefore it's doing a transaction for that number it's just a hey run the contract whatever's next to give me the next one.
I think it would try and write it went to the simplest way it would do it in cause wasm is you try and write the key to the key value store but it already exists obviously we're just error.
For something like an ft so at so and then the request so there's request on the this is so there's a number request per second so we picked at around 18,000 requests a second so 18,000 requests means.
People are on the site they're hitting they're hitting the button they are you know going to marketplace whatever that is it turns into a bunch of requests right cuz it's the site is actually really well architected and it's cashed a lot but it's still hitting RPC and API a lot for.
For item so it hit 18,000 requests per second we haven't had that there hasn't been that high in a long time like that I think that the last I remember maybe bad kids or something before that was maybe 12 or 13,000.
I misspoke there's 3000 transactions in the mempool that was sustained for like a few minutes so I don't even know how that works dude but that's the numbers that I have coming out of the nodes.
I don't know I don't know maybe yeah that maybe that what it is and it's just fucking tough and transactions and or something.
And then on cloudflare there was 1500 unique visitors a minute which is pretty decent actually 1500 me figure who's in the men and everything else like that.
And Germany in the US accounted for 70% of traffic there was a ton of German traffic and a ton US traffic and everything else and after that was like Finland and.
A couple of the ones that were that were much lower down actually have a graph in this tweet thread as well so I use you know minted them all basic probably yeah right exactly Max you know was running a in Germany and Simon.
Right yeah exactly we will know.
That's exactly right sure so but actually listens to the podcast after so I know that's reason I'm like so I did not buy any of those NFTs.
Hong Kong Great Britain Russia France Japan Poland Austria Italy Canada so like but it was there was a lot of US centric type of things right but yeah it was it was humming there for I don't know maybe only like 10 minutes or something like that but by that point it was the mint was gone it was done.
Like so it was then everything kind of calmed down yeah so it was fun I like I like you know I want obviously star guys to be successful I like when these type of things come up because it's a good chance to like see what is going to fail.
And why I don't think this was an I don't think it was necessarily an infrastructure issue with like the number of transactions and like the pauses I think like it like the nodes is could not get enough.
I don't know I don't know how that kind again I don't know how that contract structure works but it seems like it just there's too many requests on that contract for this one specific contract for this set and it couldn't fulfill it for some reason.
Well maybe would it would it be gas that's the limit potentially because if that's what I thought to I thought it'd be gas per block but I thought that was really high wasn't it I thought that was like.
I know it's config per chain but don't know what it's set to on stargaze but like you do like you know the complexity of the transaction has a pretty big impact on this ability to fit in the.
You know what Spoo probably know this better than any of us like right do you happen to know anything about the way the stargaze and if teammate contracts work.
I think the codes open source so I really should just read it and look at it but you know some homework we do code review so no idea.
We can do a code review on the show live on the show let's try and work out just how much gas roughly in my use and what the what the bottleneck is here that's probably not be.
I could use some time I don't see a mask I don't see a mask gas gas parameter on men's game I was hoping it might be in there.
Yes there's a brand pink dot pub might have it.
I have a show everything right.
Um so we've we've also we also had a follow up from from last so you missed out you said but we were trying to work was this last week we were trying to work out what Babylon is.
Yeah we were talking about I listened to the show was pretty good.
I encourage everybody who's listening now to go back and listen and we sort of managed to roughly figure out what what Babylon was doing we had a viewer follow up questions so saying well hang on a minute why not just do Babylon with cosmos chains.
Wasn't that me was that you.
Was I was the viewer with you the viewer okay well so I've obviously I've obviously massively inflated our viewing figures in my head.
Can't make me the hell now both of you and the other honor.
Yeah so is is proof is is proof of work the thing that is fully required there.
Is that what or is it the inherent or the high value of Bitcoin itself like what which is the securing what's the thing that's doing.
Because I'm guessing this is all about using the correct word here kind of exogenously securing outside of the in terms of economic security obviously the block thing is separate.
And Rama came on and schooled us all like children on why that you did was the case so.
Well take well take care of his own children.
Yeah I think the writing part like you need to write it and then that's external state essentially.
But yeah why could that not be another cosmos chain that's it.
Is it is it right into is it right into the is it right into Bitcoin or is it taking the Bitcoin hash and embedding it into a block so therefore.
You do you get a memo Bitcoin I think you do didn't you.
I don't know. Oh it could be that too.
Maybe you do.
I think that Bitcoin has a specific parameter that you can add to it because I just looking into it a bit.
And I imagine that's part of the reason why it's necessary and it's not.
You know implemented on a theorem or something it has to do with that that that field a specific field that you can use.
But I don't understand how that works either.
But by understanding of what when you guys talked about with Rama was that you're basically tying the you're tying the state of the Bitcoin of Bitcoin into.
The Babylon you're basically tying that state into this cosmos chain state right.
So therefore it's extremely difficult or impossible to be able to change this chain state because it's tied to a specific hash is coming from something that's off chain right.
Or it's coming from Bitcoin or something else like that.
That's kind of we understood it like you're there's no actual economic.
I mean the economic piece of it is that you can't change that state of both of these chains to try to change the state of a chain that uses Babylon right.
And so is that right. That's kind of what that's kind of what.
Yeah. So the the the economic security I think is just knock on in that you assume that the integrity of Bitcoin is correct.
Solid which is why you can use a second.
I assume why you couldn't use a second here proof of work chain because the whole point is that it has to be the high value one.
But I could be wrong about that.
I still say my narrow should be the one senses reason because Bitcoin the longer you go.
The more final the block is which is kind of opposite to the way proof of stake where you get fast finality.
But over time you could have long range attacks but you can't have that in proof of work.
That's interesting. Maybe that's yeah.
Well because the longest chain but the longest chain wins thing you can subvert that.
Can't you so you could have a situation where based on the number of confirmations if you depending on how the bit I could be wrong about this.
This is my miss my naive understanding of the Bitcoin mining bearing mine.
I haven't run a proof of work minor for over Jesus Christ maybe over 10 years anyway.
Isn't it the case and I'm directing this mainly at Spoo and Chelsea because you guys definitely know better than me.
If you because of the longest chain wins thing like Spoo just said the the more confirmations you have of the chain being the longest then the more likely that is to like be correct.
But you can do the thing where there is I guess no actually now I'm talking shit because the attack I'm thinking of where you build a chain in private.
And then you force the new chain to be higher requires voting power doesn't it.
So actually you that's that's just that's a 51% attack actually you can't you can assume that what Spoo said is right.
Which is that beyond the more confirmations you get the more likely that like is very unlikely that states could be rewritten right.
But it does make you think if there was a 51% attack on Bitcoin you could end up.
I mean the attack would have to move incredibly fast.
They'd have to notice that that was the case on Bitcoin and then attack you over here.
Right.
I mean if you attack Bitcoin I don't think you'll care about some cosmos change.
No shit right.
Exactly.
Wait what do you say Spoo what do you say.
Surely that would be the news people would be like if you're on the same attack on Bitcoin but also more importantly.
We want to attack Juneau.
Let's go attack Bitcoin first.
Yeah let's go attack Bitcoin first but really our goal is Juneau here.
A real goal.
Cosmos coins trading after around $1.
Just to be fair Stuggins trading after around $1.
I.
Did it hit that high really.
We were we talked about this before I think someone said it was 81 cents.
I think the whole set was 80 cents.
I thought it was like 46.
But I thought I thought the high was like 50 cents max.
That's what I thought too but I think I think I look back in coin get coin get co says 84 cents is what it hit.
Yeah.
Wow.
That must have been a really short that was been a real short spike because I don't really remember.
Maybe that was when because the the chain launched and I think it was listed on coin get co before the osmosis liquidity pool started.
So maybe that was when it was trying to converge.
You know the price was trying to the price.
What's it called.
I'm tired.
Price discover price when price discovery was happening.
You know this is this is price discovery.
That's what that means.
But the waving of the hand.
But but the idea that I like I understand where Babylon I understand that need it seems to be to me a bit overhyped.
It doesn't seem to be that large of a concern that it needs all this this hype around it.
And also my question was why couldn't you do the same idea with other proof of stake change within the cosmos.
And if you do it with if you can IBC that structure whatever whatever transaction that is why couldn't you do that in a mesh system with every chain in the cosmos that is IBCed.
And so basically you have a shared security structure of having all these different block hashes or whatever the hell they are doing somehow contained in that type of thing where.
Does it does it need to be proof of work and does it need to be Bitcoin at 14 minutes a block or could you do it in some other way.
And it sounds like a much cheaper way.
I mean that was my question.
Yeah.
I mean it sounds like we can and that's kind of what mesh security is fundamentally right.
Which to that end is that we should also get someone from stride on like Riley to explain to us as validators if we are still going to be validators on strike in two weeks.
But that's that's neither here nor there.
I still don't know the answer that work is a vice yes.
Yeah.
And then like governators or something like that.
That's right.
Yeah.
We're going to be governators.
But does that mean we turn off our nodes.
I don't know.
Is that is that what it is.
Or I'm a I'm a governor.
Something like and yeah.
And I don't want to be a governor.
Love governance right.
Big big part of being the governor.
You don't want to be a governor.
I want to be a governor.
You don't make blocks.
You don't make blocks which sounds that sounds a little bit.
I am the one who knocks actually more.
Yeah.
More of an instruction.
You don't make blocks.
So I make blocks.
I make straight doing nothing.
Yeah.
So so 15 percent of strides income is going back to ICS validators.
So we're going to make 85 percent of inflation or whatever or of income
of fees as governators.
Does that make sense.
But wait.
Are we making blocks but they're receiving the 15 percent
because there's a security piece of it or they're making blocks.
They're running it for 15 percent because why the fuck would they do that.
Yeah.
That's what I was thinking.
Like wait a second.
Yeah.
This is like the other day I was reading a I was reading a paper
and I was and I was reading it and like I just don't understand
how validators make money in this model.
It's it's this is madness.
Like why would you possibly want to do this.
And then I like read on to the next section.
It was like it was it was it was about essentially stables
and it was like oh banks are running it.
That's why like it's not like degenerates.
They're like when they say decentralized they mean lots of banks
and lots of jurisdictions.
They mean they don't mean like random degenerates in their basement
like us.
And I was like oh OK the economic incentive is those guys are already
banks and they're issuing actual currency.
So that's that's why that would work.
Ben says Adam Vales make the blocks.
Dylan says stride.
Governators make 85 percent of the rewards.
I don't know.
I'm kind of turning my kind of turning this ship around on this ICS thing now.
I'm going to mess it right right now and see if you want to dig in.
If that's the case Chuck Norris broadcast transactions to the channel
with a stair.
That's right.
Yeah, actually correct.
Yeah, we shouldn't.
That's pretty interesting actually.
I don't know.
And that's coming pretty soon.
Right.
Is it next next few months or something or sooner?
Maybe even sooner than that.
So I know in kind of mastering commander news or related news.
Yes.
I another paper that I came across but didn't understand too much math in it.
But conceptually was quite fun.
Was a paper called Simple Rigs Hold Fast which was about
the object states and and invariance.
And it the reason this is funny right is because you know when people have to
define like an ontology like to to to express a new idea.
The ontology they used was sailing and rigging for essentially like
invariance I guess in a kind of low trust system.
And they the best bit is there.
So they define a rig as a cryptographic data structure that provides integrity
at a distance and then blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
And then it says we define the rig property of holding fast which is a strong
form of causal connection between a blah blah blah blah blah blah.
And then there's a whole bunch of other stuff which is all rigging metaphors.
But as you may recall holding fast is a prominent feature of the of the
crew and mastering commander.
So I chuckle quite a lot.
And then I got to the next page and there was a bunch of maths and I was like,
well, this is not for the likes of me.
I don't understand what the fuck this means.
But nice nice to see holding fast getting a few respect in the academic mealier.
That was put the you put the book down turn on master commander.
Yeah, I was just like this this this shit ain't for me.
Click the TV on play.
Watch the title sequence of master and commander.
You know, HMS prize, whatever it is, six guns, 300 souls, South
South Atlantic, her goal, find French privateers, take them, burn them.
Was it destroy them, burn them, sink them, burn them or take them a prize.
Are you reading the script from memory?
Yeah, that's kind of I think that's the title card, isn't it?
From master and you're asking the wrong and then just as we got past the title
cards, I heard the sound of a baby pooping and that was the end of my
mastering commander watching experience for the day.
So speaking of other things, drill three of the week.
Are you ready?
Oh, dining.
I don't think I could pronounce.
OK, so chef, Monsignor leaving this bad spelling.
This is I'm trying to I'm trying to phonetically spell the bad spelling.
Chef Monsignor leaving the tails on the shrimp is good.
It is Trebien.
Me, I'm going to nuke you with live ammo.
I'm the guy from the crow.
That's the that's the tweet.
That's that's amazing.
Magic. It's inspiring.
I the direction of my life.
I feel like I've got a new cue in my
Vamo, I have the guy from the crow is something I actually would say.
You really should like pre you got to you got to pre stage those.
Are you just putting a finger in the book and just like reading whatever comes up?
Yeah, I mean, really, I should actually like get there.
Just should.
But then as well, I mean, if I if I if I if I how I don't know how I'd find
the tweet, the original, I guess I could paper out the book.
Yeah, but it should get it from noise network.
Oh, really good.
You can make a drill box.
We could make a drill box.
Now that was noise.
We just need a corpus of drill tweets.
The problem is like Twitter is fucking turned off their API, haven't they?
Basically, unless you pay them a shitload of money.
So no, there's a website.
That's good.
That's what I use to use my governance votes comments.
Well, there's a there's a website you can click.
That will just randomly give you a drill tweet.
Like you hit a button and you don't need noise.
No, his network.
No, well, I guess so.
Yeah, I mean, you could randomize a randomizer, but I can't.
It real treats need to be on chain, dude.
Clearly, I mean, that seems very Web three to randomize the randomizer.
Just say you're using Web three.
Exactly.
We want to use noise because we want to somehow.
But that could just use math.
That round and in JavaScript core.
Fuck that.
But you could cheat it.
You might be you might be.
You might be you might be purposely picking specific drill tweets over and over
to further your agenda.
We need real we need to randomize.
Well, I mean, as we know, it's not actually possible for me to be random
in the way that I'm right.
That's actually not right.
Not conceptually possible.
I will have inherent biases that mean that I'm not actually randomly picking them.
So our entire methodology is unsound currently.
And I think cryptography is the only thing that will save us.
And the NFTs and Web three, maybe maybe defy as well.
Like I throw it in a way we could add defy on top of drill.
I think that would probably we could mint a drill tweet each week and have just
one one one tweet as an NFT each time.
So it would be randomized and we'd only find out what it was when we went and
minted the NFT when we instantiate the contract.
That would be cool.
And it would be fun because it would be copyright infringement.
But it would be copyright infringement.
Something's already public.
Right.
And like, well, I guess, yeah, you must.
Hmm.
I don't I've never read the Twitter terms of service.
I assume that you own the copyright on tweets that you write, but I actually don't know that.
I doubt it.
I doubt there's no way they would allow that, right?
That's got to be well, it's got to be public domain.
Well, but they probably wouldn't want to have the rights over it because then
they would be accountable for it.
So maybe it might be you that owns the tweet.
I think you must own the copyright on your tweets because it depends on jurisdiction,
right?
Because at least here, I'm pretty sure you have to explicitly sign a waiver or like
a copyright transfer to like remove your moral rights over something you've created.
But then maybe you sign that when you sign up to Twitter and you just don't notice.
But like it's, you know, it's like, like I write.
So for a certain piece of content, you have to sign that stuff over and it is like a form
with legal stuff on it and you have to like go like for these situations, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
So that makes me think that maybe Twitter doesn't.
But hey, if fewer knows, you know, holler.
So in conclusion, we don't really know why not babble on with Cosmos chains.
We suspect something's on proof of work, right?
Yeah, that's where we left it last week, right?
Hanway proof of work.
Hey, so you can probably tell I've been on a bit of a need to do something productive
while forcibly not being able to sleep for reasons that are obvious.
I also read another paper which is quite dated now.
But it was all about Libra, which obviously, you know, DM Libra.
Wait, hold on.
Is there going to be a white paper portion of this podcast?
Because if there is, I'm all about it.
Yes.
So this was, it was not the white paper itself, but this was an academic critique of the motives
behind Facebook's original plan to build what is now obviously been open source and
has become apps awesome.
Hey, and layer zero or zero layer zero.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And those guys.
They were in main at first, you know.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Good for them.
We don't validate them so I don't care.
Not that that's true of every chain, but it is in this case.
But essentially that the, it posited that the entire purpose of a proof of stake chain was
to basically create a massive surveillance apparatus for Facebook, which is obviously
completely correct because like the essential.
So the thing that's really, really interesting, right, which, which obviously makes sense when
you think about penumbra is the difference between how a lot of proof of stake works,
where the way it models counts versus UTXOs in proof of work, because one of them is token
based.
This is a subtlety.
I really, really hadn't clicked till I read this critique, right?
Which is that UTXOs is much easier to build privacy primitives around them.
What is that UTXO?
What's this stand for?
Unspent transaction output?
Something like that.
I'm getting a nod from the smartest person.
So there we go.
For those listening.
I don't know if it's the second half.
It is transaction output, but I don't know what the beginning part is.
I think it's unspent, isn't it?
Because you, by working out, wait, this is when I have to do some thinking because I'm
not a maths person.
If, yeah, yeah, if you know the amount that remains unspent after the last set of transactions,
you implicitly know all account balances, don't you?
But you don't need to know you because you re, yeah, you replay the state to get to now.
It's like event sourcing.
You replay the state to get to now and then you know the state of the world and now, but
you don't just like dump the state like a, like a Cosmos chain or something and just
see account coins balance, you know, just as a mapping, right?
It's fundamentally different.
But the flip side of that is that obviously because everything is deltas, like changes,
it means that you can just obfuscate them if you want to.
There's a whole sorts of things you can do, very more simple, well, I mean, whatever,
like it, what's anything simple.
But the inherent like ability to just reach in, dump the state of a thing and just see
all the balances is much conceptually easier for a non-UTXO blockchain is my understanding.
And that was the kind of fundamental, that was one of the, one of the main critiques
of the design and also kind of like, obviously, this is what they're doing.
How do you think Facebook make the money?
They're not making their money because they're going to make loads of money like PayPal.
They are trying to basically go, hey regulators, don't worry, it's going to be all open because
it's a blockchain.
It's completely transparent, it's open.
All our users have to put everything on it openly.
Happy days.
And then they can be like, yeah, we know exactly how much money you have in your account and
we can sell you car insurance or whatever.
But obviously then, they did fall a final regulation and that whole thing never ended
up happening.
But it's really interesting paper.
And if I had my notebook here, I'd tell you what it was.
It was something like Libra not about money.
Is it about Facebook's Libra?
Is it about money?
Is it really about money?
Something like that.
But yeah, I recommend that paper.
It's quite a good read despite being about a thing that never came to pass.
But the thing about the knock-on effects of UTXOs versus potentially proof of stake solutions
and stuff I thought was really interesting.
I'd be curious how much information you'd be able to pull from.
How much money you just have sitting idle in someone's Libra account as it were.
Apparently Starbucks has something like, I think the last time I saw it was like $6 billion
of people having money in their Starbucks accounts so they can buy coffee when they want to walk
through.
So they're $6 billion.
So they're effectively a bank at that point.
How much money you ask?
You're telling me there could be a points run on Starbucks that would destabilize Starbucks.
It's not points.
Well, they already have the cash.
You can't get the cash back.
But could there be a, I mean, the only thing you can have would be a coffee run.
You don't have a cost run.
But yeah, I suppose.
That's about it though.
But you're right.
The question is like, what could Facebook learn from you if you have like $10 sitting
in your account at any given time versus $100 versus $1,000, right?
Hitting certain benchmarks would mean they can market some seriously different things.
Because keeping $1,000 in your Facebook account kind of implies that $1,000 doesn't mean anything
to you.
So we could really market cars to them or something.
Presumably also, and I guess this is the thing where the UTXO thing doesn't matter so much.
For memory, it is in that paper as well.
But it's also like they obviously care a lot about who you're transacting with.
Like that's one of the key, the other key things they really, really want to know, which
is really interesting.
So in India, WhatsApp itself has like payment features.
So at least for like a billion something people, they already know who's paying whom
through what you can just in the chat request for money and it goes directly through the
app.
Yep.
Same with Apple Pay and everything else, right?
Yeah, that feature existed before they bought WhatsApp.
No, so the Indian financial system has this API interface called UPI.
So any app can implement that and it'll connect to your bank account.
So it came out in 2017 or something, I think by then WhatsApp was already bought.
That's really, really interesting.
So it wasn't even something that they were like, holy shit, this is potentially insanely
valuable, like baked into WhatsApp.
We can just reach a billion people with payments.
They were like, no, no, we're actually going to implement them out.
So is it just that the regulators in India are friendly to that use case they were able
to implement it there where they maybe don't tell us where or?
No, I think it goes via banks.
So you need to like have a partnership with banks to use their version of UPI accounting
system.
I'm not super sure how it works, but I think WhatsApp did that in India because we chat
already had something like that and they were like, oh, we could do something similar
again, especially when the APIs are open and anybody can build on it.
I mean, that makes sense.
We chat is absolutely, when we're in China, we chat is just absolutely fucking everywhere.
It's crazy.
Well, you're required to install it now, aren't you?
Maybe.
My former roommate is from China and I think the last time he went there, he like, they
would not lent of enter until he installed it on his phone.
Wow.
I think it's a we chat.
So customs can reach them or immigration, maybe?
Probably.
Yeah, probably some way of just, yeah.
I just remember this.
I've seen like 2018, I think it was just, it was literally at the, it was the same week
of the people's Congress where Cheejin Ping basically went, yeah, I'm essentially going
to be here for life lads.
See you later.
And literally the internet was, everything was locked down.
You couldn't like get on anything.
And Dumley, I just, I didn't take it, well, it's smartly or dumbly.
I didn't take a laptop because I was like, don't want to take a laptop.
That seems like a really dumb idea.
So I didn't have a VPN.
I just had like my shitty old like back then I didn't really have a smartphone either.
So it was just like, it was like the shitest oldest sort of smartphone.
In 2018?
Yeah, like I just, I would just like get hand me down phones or things.
I just like, I really didn't, I was not into it.
Anyway, whatever.
So, you're so absurd, man.
I know, right?
It was fucking impossible to get.
You just carried her on a chalkboard and abacus.
Yeah, exactly.
Fuck your fucking phones.
2018, it's not like it was the launch of the iPhone.
It was 11 years later.
Hey man.
Whatever, man.
I got my, I wasn't spending big bucks and something.
I got my StarTac and shit.
I don't need that shit.
Whips is cute.
He's a typewriter out of the coffee shop.
I bought the fucking actual like expensive smartphone ones, right?
I got it home, knocked it off the fucking table like two days later and fucking smashed
on the floor and was fucked.
And it was like not in, it was like just outside of like, you can basically it was like, you
got to have to pay to repair this.
And then pay to repair it was like 200 quid.
And I was like, literally can't afford that.
So I just have great luck.
Baby cases, yeah, I was like, text people like, or whatever, man, like this is bullshit.
My green bubbles, man.
Yeah.
There you go.
Ben Davis in the chat.
Nokia 3310 does a whole trip to China on one charge.
That is the kind of tech we need.
3310, 3310 is the spicy little one.
That's right.
I mean, you can also beat someone to death with that thing.
So I mean, it's multifaceted.
I had a 7110 and that was the cool one because then that was the one they then used in the
matrix and you were like, shit.
I had that phone.
I imported that phone actually.
I used it for like six months or something like that.
Such a great phone.
And then they had the button and the whole front side clicked down and you were like,
you're like, I'm a legend speaking.
I mean, I was like, I think it was awesome.
Ten years old.
Like Neo.
Yeah, it could have been ten years old.
I wouldn't have had a mobile phone.
Whatever age I was, you're like, I'm cool.
You know, like literally at that age, the phone is the size of your head.
You look like a fucking penis.
Anyway, the point was it was really, really hot.
Like if you need to just like Google something or like look up like something really minor
or you'll find a map, like you don't realize how even fucking chocolate like me, you don't
realize how like completely dependent you are on that stuff.
And so it's all completely blocked and you don't have any of it.
You're just like, shit.
It's a good thing I threw a map in with our guidebook said to my partner, kind of that
you're like, well, let's find out what the fuck we're going to do.
And that's like, yeah.
Well, I mean, online maps don't actually work for China, right?
My understanding is like if you try and go over there, everything is completely obfuscated.
Like if you scroll over to Google maps and like go to Hong Kong and like follow the Hong
Kong Bridge back to China, like roads to start like moving.
Yeah.
There's loads of stuff that's just totally bust.
It was like less busted at some point and it's become more busted over time because
of obvious reasons.
But yeah, it was a very strange time.
But the thing that really stuck is back to the fucking long rambling, but to a right
way point was this was around the time when sort of that's whole social capital, social
credit, whatever it was that I can't remember the exact technical name of it.
Things started happening like really widespread in China, which and before shortly after that
and it was really weird because you literally like you can be served by somebody and literally
as you're talking to them, there's like a thing in front of them where you can rate
them and it has like an actual impact on not only their work, but also potentially their
life outside of work.
And people will literally be like a train station buying tickets and be like unhappy while
they're talking to the...
That's too much pressure for me.
So like I like to rate things and take photos of things on like Google Maps, right?
So like for the next people, they'll know if there's rum in place sucks or not.
Well, even for that, I have a hard time not giving like above like a three unless it's
like really egregious.
Like I'll just like I'll start at five and like take things away starting with like potentially
affecting their life.
Absolutely not.
I don't want any of that pressure.
I don't want that responsibility.
I'm out.
I don't need such a thing as a five star review or one star review, right?
Because people are just like inherently bad at actually reviewing things.
Like honestly, nobody wants to be a dick.
It's like, look, okay, most stuff in life is not very good.
Like inherently like you can see like the greatest fucking sunset and nine out of 10,
right?
I mean, a nine out of 10 is probably pretty strong.
It's probably more like an for the average person like the best sunset you've ever seen
in your life, right?
You probably be like will probably be in the grand scheme of things like a seven out
of 10, maybe.
But people will be like, that's amazing.
You're like, I mean, it's fine.
It's all relative though, right?
Like great ramen in Beaverton is not.
Well, hold on.
We do have one place called Yuzu that's like having been to Japan a couple of times.
It's still like it's really good, but it's all relative, right?
Like I can give a five star place to Beaverton and I'll have the same expectations of a five
star ramen place in Japan.
Similarly for basically all things.
Yeah.
I mean, okay, fair enough.
I will.
But then everything is relative as a get out is like, well, yes, everything is relative.
Yes.
Yeah.
I like the idea of everything is either everything is either awesome or it sucks.
Let's just get down to that.
That's it.
That's like that's cosmos governance.
Either it's a yes or no of veto.
Get rid of no and get rid of abstain.
Either it's amazing or F you, right?
No, okay.
That's the jaded world that we live in, right?
There's no fucking gray.
It's all black or white and just right to be fair, right?
I now live with a tiny human who also only has yes and no with veto as options.
That's true.
He does and life looks simpler to me.
I'm like, wait, hang on.
I think the fucking tiny human has worked it out quicker than the big human.
It's amazing.
It should just be yes or no with veto.
I'm imagining that like, I'm happy.
No, I'm unhappy and you're like, okay, does it need to be more complicated than that?
I'm imagining that like Jedi meme where it's like the beginning of the bell is like some
guy with his head caved in and he's like, there are two options.
Yes and no.
And then the top of the bell, it's like four options.
Yes, no, no, no, I'm staying.
And then the end of the bell is the Jedi where it's just yes and no with veto.
That's it.
I agree.
I like that meme described verbally.
We might have to make it for the Twitter later.
I did my best.
No, no, no, no.
I got it.
I was with you there the whole way.
I was like, that's fucking great.
That was a black mirror episode, wasn't it?
The yeah, it's what it was, right?
The one where like she like you can real time.
Yeah.
Social credit one.
Yeah.
Social credit run, right?
Like, oh, I didn't like interaction.
You like walking around because it was like real time, right?
You could have an interaction with somebody and you should turn around and it was like
one star.
Yeah, it was crazy.
Like the way she goes mad at the end is probably didn't happen.
Yeah.
Anyway, we're just black mirror does a thing happens in real life later.
Like the prime minister fucking a pig.
That's the other one.
That's the famous one in the UK anyway.
Sunset's going down here.
Fucking zero stars.
Fucking garbage.
No with veto on the sunset.
No with veto the sunset.
Exactly.
I think you know what?
We should just get, we should, I know we haven't even fucking got the your pup shilled down
t-shirt sorted yet, but we should do, I mean, we have great merch ideas.
We never do, but we should just get a t-shirt just says yes on the front and no with veto
on the back.
That'd be fucking great.
I would 100% wear that to a Cosmos conference.
I think that'd be really funny.
But I'm not gonna make that now.
I wanted to hear it just says no with veto.
That's all I want.
I don't even want the yes.
I just want no with veto on it and just fuck it.
Just no with veto and just walk in with it.
Do you think that no with veto, the game of notes for I would wear that.
That's it.
Right.
That's actually, I mean, yeah, that's all that.
I like that one.
Just no with veto.
That's it.
Let's do it.
Actually for the Cosmos proposal with for Grace, there was some validator who did a weighted
vote between yes and no with veto.
I was like, what's your reasoning there?
It's half based between yes and no with veto.
They did a weighted vote.
Not quite a few validators who did that nowadays.
Really?
How do you do that?
I didn't know you could do that.
You know the universe brain meme?
It's like, you know, the small brain is like yes and then the slightly bigger brain is
like no.
And then the bigger brain is like no with veto and then the galaxy brain, enlightenment
brain is going like half yes, half no with veto.
That's the meme you just described, Spoon.
I think possibly they've just ascended.
And we're not equipped to understand their resonance with the fine fabric of the universe.
I mean, I'll just start doing four ways split between yes, no, no with veto for every proposal
from the bottom.
Wait, hang on.
You're right.
There's another level that you can ascend further.
You can piss everybody off on Twitter at the same time.
That's really what I want in governance is how do I make everyone angry?
That's actually, that's it, right?
You vote all four.
How do you do that?
Just for everything.
Is this a four ways?
I want to know.
You got to show me how to do that.
I want to do that.
That's perfect cosmos governance.
This is what we can use noise for.
We can randomize our four way split.
So you vote all four and you let noise pick out the percentages.
Just decide which one.
I should kind of want to write that smart contract.
We're fucking getting somewhere now in this podcast.
That sounds like an interesting idea.
Combine with the drill tweet on each one of those.
What the fuck is going on?
We need to be able to drill Oracle to get the tweets.
Drill Oracle to get the tweet.
This might be a chain, right?
We're kind of approaching.
Yeah, we just, we just looked.
Yeah, it's a shit chain, complete piece of shit chain.
But all it does is vote all four votes with random drill tweets and random percentages
based on noise.
And I'll see you when merch.
I absolutely resent that.
What would it been say?
You guys should merge like Pup most ships daps.
That is not true.
Usurper actually got stickers.
So that there is shipping some merch just because you didn't get it.
It doesn't mean it didn't happen.
And I have one of those stickers.
I know they exist.
I am, I, it's, yeah.
Then email, email, email the show.
Give us an address, send some shit.
So a weird thing happened, right?
Which was that a small child saw the shiny sticker on my laptop and noticed that I had
some more in my notepad because I just, I have like conference stickers and stuff just
in my notepad in the back and they're kind of spilled out.
I was just like, kind of doing my thing.
Yeah.
The pad was there.
And they were just like, do you have more of those stickers?
And I was like, yes, I do.
And who's, what do you think about small child?
What was that?
It was, what are you talking about?
The, you know, the, the, the, the shiny, we're going to jail sticker.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
And, and essentially had the small child asked me for one and I was like, here you go.
Oh, oh, I got you.
Okay.
I thought you're a small child.
I was like, what are you talking about?
Like, is this kid asking for stickers?
How advanced is this for a kid?
Another small human.
Okay.
We're just like, wow, it's a dog.
That's really exciting.
I was like, I have a small child.
Yeah, of course they can have one.
Sure.
Why not?
You know, it gets so bad, little buddy.
Yeah.
And then I see the, the, the Barney, there's a big old Barney in the, in the Juno telegram
where I think Pup Moss has got thrown out of Chihuahua, like socials or something like
that.
For what?
I don't know, non-delivery of, I don't really know.
I don't, I haven't followed this drama.
I just am all vaguely aware that that has happened.
And then there was just like, it all got very knives out, like in the channels that they
were still in kind of thing.
And like, Ramo is going like full Australian fighting around the world.
And it was, was pretty much, it was, you know, it, it was the equivalent of come over here,
take a shirt off and let's go fight outside in the dusty street.
You know, it was, it was full waking fry invitation.
I'll meet you in the churchyard parking lot kind of thing.
It was, it was like, it was like South Park level of, of, of kind of dumb.
But like, to be fair, it was very funny and Ramo like, Ramo was great.
But yeah, that was that.
That's the only real drama I've seen this week was, was Pup Moss getting called out and not
shipping stuff.
And then getting really pissed off at Ramo.
And Ramo was like, yeah, if you, if you, if you're going to bark Pup Moss, make sure you
can buy.
Geez, getting rough in the bear.
No, no, that was great.
Nerds fighting over shit coins.
That's fucking bad.
Intense fighting.
Fucking.
Yeah.
Oh man.
So, but also, you know, we had the, we had the, that, can we just recognize it had the,
I would fucking cat plus week merch, go hoops this week and much gamers only accelerating,
you know, so, so clearly, clearly individual people on this podcast can arrange and sort
out merch.
Dad's not wearing his, um, I didn't wear hats this week because I got so fucking railed
last week.
I'm not wearing a hat all the time.
I was, I was, were you wearing it literally before?
I was I was in the ground.
I was making shelves for something and I'm out there and like a shirt with my hand on and nulls call me out.
I'm like, fuck.
Literally got the hell. Yeah.
He's in the fucking house wearing a hat.
Yeah. I didn't know he had to wear it outside.
I was, yeah.
Yeah.
He's got.
He didn't even hear me defend myself.
We kicked him off the podcast because of it, too.
Did America just get nuked?
Why would it happen?
What?
Out.
Video flash?
Both the Americans froze.
Oh, it could be.
I was like, was that the
MP of a.
It could be. Yeah.
It might be at its way here.
I don't know.
Well, I guess you'd find out.
Well, I mean, whatever.
You have an emerging broadcast system anyway.
So.
We do.
Whoa. Hold on.
I have a moment about that.
So my wife is from West Mifflin, right?
They have reused their World War II.
Outside of Pittsburgh.
Yeah.
Okay.
They have reused their World War II like
air raid sirens as like a 10 o'clock curfew siren.
So.
Are you sure it's a curfew siren?
It is a curfew siren.
Yes.
It happens at 10 o'clock every night.
Do you know where your kids are?
Yeah, that kind of thing.
So we were there like a year ago.
That's a good.
I don't know if it's like mandated curfew, but regardless,
it's an air raid siren.
And I went to bed early one time because I was like,
I don't know, jet lagged or something, like nine.
And then I got woken up by an air raid siren thinking like
war was happening or something.
I didn't realize because my first time there
had about panic attack.
Pure raging.
I mean, pure raging.
So sorry.
Sorry.
I just need to continue the merch shilling.
Oh yeah.
Here we go.
Part two.
I do like that shirt.
The shirt's cool.
It's great.
Yeah.
It's good.
Yeah.
It kind of reminds me of the robot from the anime Fooly Cooley.
And I mean that in the best way.
I'll have to dig that up.
Yeah.
It's I guess, I guess there's a lot of different things
that are going on there, but obviously kick ass design.
The same design that did the the howl stuff.
It almost looks like he's holding on to your nipples.
If you stand up like this guy, he's just got, he's just, yeah,
he's just holding them up.
Well, I hadn't noticed that.
And now I'm not going to say anything.
Now you'll never unsee it.
Again, thank you, sir.
It was a great t-shirt.
It was RIP.
A great t-shirt.
It's like the bro.
Sorry.
Cool.
I didn't mean to ruin the merch.
So, okay, we actually have another viewer question as well,
which I want to get on to, but I'm very conscious now that it is 58 minutes in
and we have not asked about the Cosmos Ladies,
which we obviously should have done on International Women's Day,
but we are now here.
So we've already like fucking ran around the house
about any number of different things.
So Spoo, do you want to tell us a little bit about Cosmos Ladies?
Yes, please.
You're on mute.
Well, the reason I asked now if I could be there on that day
was actually just a coincidence,
because the very next day we were organizing like a Women in Cosmos online streaming event.
And we actually had the CMO of Babylon,
who talked about Babylon for like 30 minutes.
So you could go check that out.
And yeah, so we had a bunch of people,
all the women in Cosmos developers and founders and NFT artists.
We had Kate Stills, who built the smart contracting platform on Agorek.
We also had Dora Palfi, who does like teaching young girls
how to program in Python using like really cute programmable accessories
for like programmable phone cases and things like that.
And yeah, so I mean, I wanted to come to promote that,
but the link is still in the YouTube, so you can go check that out.
But overall, I started this thing by doing a little bit of a video
about one and a half years ago, because at Tenement,
I was kind of part of the recruitment pipeline,
and I had access to all the applications.
And I saw there were no women applying for the engineering roles.
And I was like, if nobody's applying, how can they ever get in?
So we do some kind of mentorship programs one-on-one
for women who want to migrate from web 2 to web 3,
or even if they're just like front-end developers,
how do you deal with stuff like wallets and stuff like that.
And we run the validator because all the revenue from the validator
goes back to fund these things like we did a giveaway
for the event where we gave away three programmable accessories
to attendees who had young daughters or nieces.
So yeah, we use it to fund things like that.
So anything that's about it. I was also prepared.
So I've got a follow-up question. Once upon a time,
I worked on a team in a department where it was nearly 50-50 male female split
in engineering. And it required a huge amount of work
from a couple of the people who were kind of leading the department
who really, really did care about that a lot.
And it took so much effort to kind of get to that point.
But I obviously only really kind of know what the recruiting market was like
in that one particular thing, which was like developers for a corporate type situation.
But I remember that pipeline to find...
There were lots of challenges with trying to have an actually evenly balanced
sort of recruitment pipeline. What do you think are the challenges that are kind of
mainly stopping sort of more diverse people getting into that pipeline?
From what you've seen? What were the things?
Because you said it was like you weren't even seeing the applications in the first place.
Yeah. So I think specifically when it comes to F3, a lot of it has to do with
historical reasons. A lot of people came because of libertarian values.
And those things are usually male community-focused stuff.
You don't see a lot of women in those fields. And also a lot of the time,
like the absolute forefront of technology stuff, even in AI,
is just... I think there's a big lag behind because there's a lag behind in the traditional
tech industry as well. Because it takes a while to learn the basic tech stuff and to move on.
And you've got to do that step by step. And yeah, I don't think there's like an easy answer yet.
I think it has to kind of start at a younger age. And I remember there was a panel like this,
talking about this online, and somebody said, oh, it's just because guys are more into computers
and stuff. And that never made any sense to me. I got into programming because I was a big
fan of Hannah Montana, and I wanted to make a fan site for her. And that's like one of the
girliest ways you can get into programming. And that's how I learned JavaScript and PHP.
So I think this is just a path which needs to be shown. And that's why I was a big fan of giving
away those kind of programmable accessories. Because hey, you want to make something really
cute, and you want to accessorize yourself. And there's cool tech stuff you can do with that.
You can't do programmable accessories outside of learning programming.
Yeah, no, I can weigh on this a little bit. One, it's historically not true that
it's like males are more interested in it. It used to be that until the 70s, that it was largely
women that did software, which is really interesting.
Have you seen the film Hidden Figures?
Yeah, that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it was basically all...
It was a transition from people who did mathematics, like the computers. And then when they had
computers that did software, they were like, ah, well, the women who do the maths will probably
be good at the computers. And so... And then I mean, the Apollo 11 guidance computer run time
was really quiet. Yeah, Margaret Hamilton with the picture with all these pages of code.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure there was a picture of that somewhere in an office I worked in. And I was just
like, that's a lot of code. Yeah, I mean, the original software engineer, I don't know if
really could call it the software engineer, was Ada Loveless, which is of course was a woman.
But no, I used to volunteer to teach third to fifth graders basic software. And almost universally,
it was like half boy, half girl. So at a young enough age, there is no distinction. It's like
when our culture starts getting involved, that's when the distinction starts to pop up. Because I
guess you as a woman shouldn't be interested in tech kind of thing. And it's a really interesting
problem to try and overcome. Yeah, just a personal story to do our last business.
Before this, we were in the mobile space and we had a development center and we had about,
there was probably about 50 developers in that area. It was about 30, 35% women and about 60% men,
which was a huge, which is a big percentage actually, I think compared to like others.
And we were just hiring the best people we could, didn't matter, right? We didn't care,
we were just trying to hire the best people we would. But one thing that we heard was that
sometimes female candidates were drawn to us because of the culture of having that balance.
And sometimes it's difficult for other organizations to grow a female component of
developers because the culture is so fucked and nobody wants to work there. And so I think that
also impacts it too. Because like if sometimes those percentages are too low, it turns into, what
was that? Was it in, there's a good to portrayal of that in the Uber story. Did you guys watch that
Uber movie or whatever the hell it was? There was a really good to portrayal of women in tech in
that Uber story too, as well, because the culture was so fricking backwards. And I think that happens
and that creates basically barriers, right? It's stupid. Yeah. Yeah, at least what I saw was that
it was very chicken and egg and you had to kind of have the culture just because I guess mainstream
tech culture was so off-putting and toxic that people had to already trust that there would
be a place for them to land before they would put in their application was kind of generally what
we saw. That was my very high-level takeaway. But on the whole, I guess, yeah, I mean, it's
so difficult how you build that culture. That's the thing because my experience working on a team
like that was that generally speaking, I would say the people who identified as female were better
programmers. If I had to just like say, pick a random developer by gender identity,
if I had to assemble a team, I would have always picked women or the people who identified as female.
But then the thing is maybe this because the number and the funnel is so much smaller that
the people who do get into it are more passionate are just more on the whole, they're kind of a
very selective bunch. Like, you know, when you have entrepreneurs or immigrants, as the other
example where you have a higher incidence of entrepreneurs among immigrants on the whole
because you already have people who are sort of motivated to upstitch and go somewhere.
Maybe there's some kind of variation of that where you're like smart women who are prepared
to put up with all the shit. You've got to really like, you've got to be good.
I don't know, I mean, I mean, Spoo, what do you think? I can't believe I'm just like fucking
theorizing. You're literally a woman in tech. What do you think? I'm a fucking idiot. I can't
believe I just literally mansplained that. I'm so sorry.
It's good that you're interested and it's good that everybody needs to have an opinion in this.
It's not just like one sector matters. But I mean, there is a lot of discrimination when it comes to
hiring as well. Because in India, this was a thing where if a woman who's like recently married
would apply, they would not hire her because she might at least soon go for maternity leave.
And you don't want to hire an employee who goes away for six months. And yeah, and one of the
most shocking things that I experienced was in Indian engineering universities, like almost
75% of the students are women. But then when you enter the workforce, the number just goes
super down. Like in my class, we had like in my in my batch in bachelor's, we had about 70
students out of which like almost 49 were girls. And then I enter like a company and now it's just
like 30 people out of which only two are women. And I think there is certainly a degree of like,
okay, women are caregivers. So once you do have a child, they're more likely to be the one staying
back at home. And it might be harder to get back into the industry as well after that, especially
when you know, their peers have been progressing and have been building up work experience over time
as well. So there is some degree of like, you need to be mindful and you might need to like,
intentionally hire somebody just to get the ball rolling. But but I think we're not really there
yet. I think there are enough talented female developers and stuff. So you I don't think there's
that much need for affirmative action, at least in like, you know, Western nations at least.
That was the thing that's really interesting there. Like obviously, I didn't do engineering
formally at university. But my impression, at least from people that did was that numbers are
much more skewed here than than what you've just described there. So I mean, I guess, I mean, kind
of to say something very obvious, I guess it's going to be different in different different
reasons and different factors in different places, right? So it sounds like at least in from your
experience there, like the funnel itself was, there's a lot of people at the start who obviously
are passionate about the thing enough to do it. But it's somehow not translating into the
into people actually, you know, in in industry, which is which is really that's quite strange.
Yeah. So there is still, I think up until my generation, at least it was really quite common
that women would enter the workforce. And once they have kids, they would just quit their jobs
and not reenter the workforce. So there's definitely a degree of if somebody is over 40,
then you can't really expect women to be working who are over 40 because in their generation, it
just was not a thing. Unless you were like financially struggling, you would probably,
it would be considered offensive, like, Oh, does your husband not earn enough that you have to work?
Like, that was the societal attitude. But in modern day, as well, like, I think there are
still some people who kind of just go continue on with that. Like one of my best friends in
college, she was like, Oh, I'm just getting a good degree. So I can like meet a, you know,
smart guy here. So I can just get married. Like she attended engineering just for that reason.
But I don't know why I got sidetracked. But anyway, so I think one of the main reasons we have a
lot of women in engineering in India is because engineering is not something you go into with
passion. It's something you're going to because it's a very easy way to get high paying jobs.
And that doesn't really care about what your childhood or interests were. And, and because
of that, once you start making enough amount of money, or maybe you're financially stable enough,
they might not be enough incentive to, you know, further up in the career field. Like, if I,
there are these kinds of companies like TCS and Infosys and stuff, which are like master
recruiters, and I think they have better gender employee ratio than, than like niche companies.
So would you say that women in India, when they're younger, like in middle school, I guess,
they have less interest in computing, and then they choose engineering as like the practical
option? Is that what you're saying? I think in general, like, even when I was in high school,
it was really very rare for an Indian family to have a computer at home. So again, it does not
come about interest because I think even the guys who were in engineering, very few of them were
there because of their interests, even they were there. Like, I like, many of the people who were
in my class were there because they couldn't get into med school. Like that was my priority. But
I guess engineering pays well. So I'll come and do this instead. So I think that that's the attitude
in like that entire generation, like, like so many people because of the tech industry boom,
which happened in India, it was like, just do four years of good education, get good grades,
you're kind of set for life. I mean, the sense like it was a smart choice then, honestly.
I guess I don't know what it would be quite, we, you know, we need to, we need to get Simon or
somebody on here, like to find out what it's like in Germany, between everybody in France,
because the, there's obviously a really different, so the traditionally, at least I don't know what's
like in the US, but in the UK, obviously, there's a heavy privilege on the humanities over the STEM
subjects. And it's as a result of, you guessed it, is the aristocracy our friends screwing up every
thing. Well, it's why they built the polytechnics wasn't it? Because they were like, we are literally
lagging behind in all of the practical fields. So we need to literally build a separate class of
university that doesn't just go the only important thing in life is the classics. And then after a
while, you know, it just became the case that the polytechnics will look down upon and then
eventually just got subsumed into the university system because people were like, well, I don't
want to go to polytechnic. And it was just like, well, the purpose of the entire thing has been
defeated. But actually, the polytechnics were a really good idea. Whereas like in Germany,
other places, you have like a high, you have like respect for practical applied subjects. And
you know, that that pays dividends, it turns out. So
Well, in Germany, they also have what do they have? They're like apprenticeships, right?
In lieu of college, if you want to, does the UK have anything like that?
Like, yeah, but it's there is sort of something like that. But it's, for a lot of subjects, it's
very half-assed. You do see it with trades, though, that is the one place where apprenticeship is
kind of alive and well. If you get an electrician round who's half-decent,
there'll probably be a spotty 15 year old, 16 year old, 16 year old, mandatory education until 16.
Yeah. So 16 or 17 year old in baggy electricians pants, handing them their tools. So
but like, but like things like, you know, like engineering, civil engineering,
like much less though, which is, you know, back in the day, mechanical engineering was
an applied apprenticeship type. Yeah. Anyway, I'm looking at the clock. This is a, I wish we had
gone to the subject earlier, because this is like really, really interesting. But I'm also looking
at the clock and I'm aware that a rugging has to come at some point. So we had a viewer question
from the other week, which was specifically addressed to wanting dad's opinion on this.
But also, I think, well, I could be wrong, but Spoon might have an opinion on this as a developer
as well. We're kind of, we're very developer heavy this week, which is good, because the question was
about development, which was essentially, we're in the context of work, but also more specifically
development software engineering. Should you ever work for free? And I was like,
that's kind of a big question. I thought that was interesting enough. I think,
I think it was basically asked mainly at sort of me in, well, it was, it was asked to me to ask to you.
You said, what was the context unit? Is there a context around a specific like project or timeline
or what was there anything? Just in general, the context was from a business perspective, right?
Yes, I think the context is like, both kind of on an individual level, let's say you're maybe
early on in your career, but also, I think if you're working on your own and you're maybe not,
if you're not trying to get a job, right, with a traditional corporate or something like that,
you are kind of inherently sort of a freelancer or a business. There's the roles are muddied, right?
So there's, there's a business aspect to your decision making that isn't just about trying to
get a job. So I think that's the context for like, should you ever work for free if your
client is Microsoft? Obviously, fucking not. I think that's the context. But in, if you're
essentially a freelancer, depending on your client or whatever, the context can be more muddy, right?
So I think that's the context which, you know, Shorsi is getting out there. It's like, there's
a business component to this as well. Like, should you ever work for free? If so, why? Like,
does that change? What are the, what are the, what are the sliders?
I don't know. I'm a cosmopolitan, so I'll validate or so. I don't know if I'm the right person to
answer this because we're doing a lot for free right now, or maybe for negative. All right,
so I'll try to answer it without, without context of knowing kind of where this, where this comes
besides that. My, my, my dead answer would be that nothing is ever for free. And your time is
actually worth something. Your time when you're young is worth almost nothing. And as you get older,
each hour that you spend is worth more. And so as you get into your 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s,
that time becomes much and much and much more valuable. It's not linear. It's exponential.
So your time at 10 years old, like kids can blow time at doing anything, but at 40,
that those hours are worth something. And so I wouldn't think of it as working for free. I would
think of it as if you give yourself an hourly rate, which sounds weird to say, but you kind of
have an hourly rate. And your hourly rate in your head might, it will change over, of course,
your timeline, like I just said. And that hourly rate, you're, you're, even though you're not
billing it, you're investing it. So if you're, if the question is, should I do work for free?
The answer to that should be that you should figure out what that time is worth and say,
instead of saying, should I do work for free, should I invoke 10 hours at $120 an hour?
Should I invoke $1,200 of my money towards this thing? And will this repay me later at either
$100, $1,200 or more? And if the answer is yes, then yeah, you can work for free. If the answer
is no, then you should think about where you're spending your time and how you're doing that.
So like I said, early on, your time might be worth nothing, which means if you're working for free,
I'm investing 10 bucks for 10 hours, who gives a shit? If you're later, if you have kids at home,
or if you have a wife, or if you have a relationship, that time instantly goes up. Because if you're
not, if you're spending it doing something else, you're not spending it with a loved one,
that might not seem like a lot, but you are, you are taking hours away from someone else
who wants to spend time with you, right? And so that has a cost to it, even though you don't
want to think of it that way, it's weird to think about, but you kind of get a little bit in your
mind. And so as you get older, and as you're spending time on one thing to not work on something
else, I think the idea is that should I, instead of saying, should I work for free, should I invest
in this thing? And how much am I willing to invest? That's a good way of thinking about it. And
sometimes some, and also not everything has the same amount of risk reward. Some things you might
say, I'm going to invest a little bit because there's something coming down the road, like I might
go work for a startup that has a lower salary that I want. So I'm not working for free, but I'm
working for less. So I know I'm thinking I'm leaving 10, I'm leaving $20,000 a year on the
table, but I think that over the course of three years, it's going to have a much greater return.
So therefore, I'm going to put this 20 grand on the side because I think it's going to be worth
half a million dollars when this company sells. That's a decision. Like you can make that decision.
And people at different points of their life, instead of 20 grand, it might be 200 grand or
$2 million. And I want to think, am I putting this on the side to go do something else that's
going to have a higher return? So I think you have to, that's my dad answered this, but I think
you have to kind of rethink that question and put it in context of where you want to spend time and
what's important to you at what different points in your life. And it's a bet. Like if you're
putting time towards something that might not return something, I think you really have to
rethink to say, is this worth my freaking time? And can I make money elsewhere?
So yeah, that risk element is the interesting one. So do you think there's also something like,
let's say you're towards the start of your career, which is a very common time when people sort of
work for exposure or whatever. I built a lot of websites for people for free when I was
first buying out. Spoo did free work for Hannah Montana, which presumably Hannah Montana never
even knew about. But I guess it's a little bit different when you're 16 and you're knocking out
a website in your free time, fine. So let's say you're like 22, you've got bills to pay,
and now you're making the risk reward of should I work for free? Again, you're at the beginning
of a new career, maybe you've changed careers, something like that. You're shouldering a lot
more risk, aren't you? Because you've got bills to pay, but you're potentially working for free.
Well, I don't know if you're shouldering more risk. Your bills go up as you get older.
So it depends on your burn rate goes way up. Your burn rate at my age at 22,
I'd be like, Are you fucking kidding me? It's a weird number because you have kids and you have
there's things that come up, right? You have responsibilities. And so that burn goes up.
And so the late usually why people I mean, it's why you risk at young age is because when you
get older, that honestly, that risk tolerance goes way down, way, way, way, way down. At young,
you can make fucking mistakes. Who gives a shit? Like, we same thing, like we did the same thing.
So it doesn't matter. You have, yeah, you don't have much money. But again, you could survive
a much less and your your talent for risk goes way up. When you get older, that risk
tolerance goes way down, which is why you don't see you don't see a tremendous number of startups,
like 50 or 60 year olds, like that doesn't necessarily happen. It's a lot of work. And you
don't, you don't see it a ton. It's much more with as you're younger and have energy for it.
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the average age of or like the median age of a successful exit
startup founder was something like, like not, not super old, but not super young either is like 30,
30, 40. Yeah, that sounds right. But that's still like, well, I guess it's still, yeah, you would
say, you have enough cash to get it going, you have enough experience to start something, right?
You have all these things are right, right? And then you want to get out of it at like, if you
can get out of it, if you can out of a business in your early 30s, or something like that and have
an exit, that would be that's that's good stuff, man. That's amazing. So I think they were at 38
or whatever when they founded. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I mean, it's, that's, I mean, the other thing is
like, you have, you have individuals who have worked in a career for so long that they understand
the business well enough and they say, this is stupid, we should be doing this on our own, right?
And so like that, that also makes sense too, or you, you were like, I understand, I see the market,
I see a fit, I know how to run this better, right? You have that experience to be able to do it.
That might, that might be more traditional where in web three, I think, is this right? I don't
know. It's the first time I had this thought, but I would think the barriers to start something
are lower here. But I could be wrong about that. I don't know if that's a good statement. It seems
like the barriers are lower. Like you have a lot more infrastructure and it's very much more focused
and you have a lot more, maybe I don't know if that's right or not. You can definitely put out
something that's a lot less finished like an MVP, because yeah, maybe the expectations are lower.
I don't know if that's right at all. I think the space is so new, the expectations are like,
the fact that you can develop something on your own and just knock it out in web three, that's
like, we'll be going back 15 years maybe in web two to get to the point where you could prototype
an idea on your own and viably get something out of the door.
Yeah. The thing in traditional, your faces on the website, you have a set of references,
you have partnerships you've had, you have these other types of things. Web three, you're
a fucking, you're a AI generated rhino on a Twitter website. There's that anonymity piece
comes forward where we don't have it here, but that anonymity piece and nobody knows who you are,
your age or anything else. It takes all that bullshit out of it. I think that lowers the
barriers as well, where if you're trying to start, I don't know, I'm trying to start
up whatever, I'm trying to start something that's hand to hand where I'm going out and if you're
young, I think you get judged as young. Web three, I think a little bit, you get a little bit, and
maybe web two to a point, you get a little bit of a reprieve on that where it doesn't matter,
right? Like, you're, it's just more about the skill set, which is nice. I don't know if that's
true or not. I gotta think about that a little bit more, but maybe it's, maybe that's a little bit
the case. But anyway, that would be my answer for work. I think that I have no, I think in
everybody's, in everybody's career, you make decisions on where you're going to invest
on risks, right? Like you guys, this is a podcast of entrepreneurs, right? We have this, we have
this podcast tagged, asked around like, how do you tag this? And I put entrepreneurship was the
main tag. I don't think I've ever said this, but this is, this is the, it comes up with entrepreneurship,
because this is an entrepreneur type thing. And you have to have the right kind of
group around that. And then early on, even now, we're all investing, I think today, like as
Stargaze validators were investing, there's no doubt about that, right? It's worth it. So,
and, and like even on other chains in the cosmos, in those types of things, you're investing, right?
And so whether that's in dollars and infrastructure, or that's in your time, because
you spend a shitload of time. Again, I'm not in here because I want to lose money, because I have a,
we have a viewpoint that's very long term, and we think that's going to pay off.
That's it, right? I want to add one thing here. That risk equation changes a little bit when
you're currently working. So in software, it's very common to be asked during an interview to do
like a 20 hour project while you're currently working full time. The risk equation of burning
out when you're doing those every week, going from working 40 hours to now 60 hours, because
now I'm working on one of these projects for an interview, that's way riskier. And that's going to
be weighed completely differently when you're talking about free work, because most of those
projects are free work. So fun fact about one of those, I once did one, and I was obviously doing
it around my day job, and I was very, very tired. It was about two in the morning. And I realized
like the solution, the most elegant solution was painter's fill. And I couldn't be bothered to
code that algorithm. And they'd said, you've got five hours to do it. But you should do this in five
hours. And I was like, I got to four hours, and I was like, well, I'm not going to have time in the
time available. I can't even type that fast to code the full painter's fill. So I just can do
the slightly less efficient one, but I can know I can get it done in the time. And I left the code
comment to this effect. And then this essentially a multi method entry point for how the code was
going to work. And above it, I left the comment saying, here be dragons. This is where the magic
happens, here be dragons. And they were like, fair enough, we read the code comment saying you
didn't have time to do painter's fill, that would have been the correct solution. You probably
should have spent more time on it to do to code that up. And I was like, well, I mean, I followed
the instructions. And then they were like, but we're not going to take you forward because of
your unprofessional code comments. And I was just like, well, it sounds like I don't want to fucking
work here anyway, man. Exactly. This interview is both ways, people. Yeah, well, that's something
I was going to throw out there was that for me, it's kind of litmus test where if a company asks
you to put down, you know, 16 hours or whatever for a project, that for free, that means it's a
company I outright do not want to work for. You know, we did, we used to do this too. We used to
do technical, we used to do, I forget we should call it like a tech up or something like that,
but we used to do the same thing. We wouldn't do 16 hours, but we would put people through a pace
of four to six. And honestly, the reason we did that, Chelsea, was because there were so many
applicants that and we, we, we recruited really hard. If people would spend the time, we knew
they were serious.