Crypto 24 / 7 News

Dash – DASH Living on crypto & the freedom of exchange feat.Joel Valenzuela of Dash and Reuben Yap of Firo Foreign hello and welcome so this is our second multi-chain discussion and which we’ll be looking at the potential for living off crypto the freedom of exchange and cross-chain initiatives in this show we’re joined by our usual usual suspects axis and tivra um representing the decree community and The and the The Wider space and we’ve also got two special guests so our first um special guest is Joel Valenzuela um best known for his work with the dash community and an advocate for living off of crypto and Reuben Yap co-founder and Project Lead for the Pharaoh um project And a privacy advocate so um let’s say hello first and let’s just work our way around see see how everyone is today Who wants to go first let’s go for uh how are you getting on today Joel hey how’s it going um doing pretty well it’s it’s morning over here so you know got that nice Bright Morning Sun going in I tend to be a little bit of a slower Starter throughout the day so if I let a Reuben kind of warm us up a little bit more for the first 10 minutes you understand oh no how you doing I’m Reuben doing pretty well I guess I’m I’m on the flip side uh you know it’s 8 P.M here so Exactly 12 hours difference and and very glad to be on and really welcome the opportunity you know to be on you know these kind of like cross-chain discussions as well yeah yeah I mean it’s growing more important as we move move through the space that that projects maybe The Underdogs if you Like are starting to talk together and start to collaborate is something we’ve been working for only yesterday the the new proposal for um cyberpunk times got approved so hopefully there’s there’s a little bit of money there now to kind of build more of these things which would be absolutely great Um so let’s just start off by looking at each of the projects we’ll look at Pharaoh Dash and decret just just because we’re going to have hopefully lots of people viewing this from all the different communities and we’ll just discuss what makes each project unique and what we can look Forward to in the short and long term so if we get um Reuben to kick us off what makes Pharaoh unique what what are we expecting in the short and long term uh well Pharaoh you know was launched in 2016 and you know we’ve been focused on On privacy uh we are I think one of the few projects that kind of like do independent research on coming up with our own privacy protocols and I think uh you know we we started out with zerocoin we pioneered that we then went with Sigma the Landers and now upcoming in Like you know a couple of weeks is the test net for the London spark which is now also inspiring designing in Monero as well so we’ve really researched and and development base uh and I guess that’s our strongest strength but we also take a lot of good tips from from Dash as well we also implement the Amazon system which is like a hybrid system I’ll probably let Joe talk more on that because that’s more of a dash Innovation uh but yeah I think um I think one of the also really cool things that we’ve developed is uh in 2018 we Actually you know helped the Thai Democrat Party run its elections on our blockchain and that was like 127 000 votes uh class Nationwide and I think that was a huge milestone and hopefully we can see the you know greater interest in I would say blockchain you know cryptographically private uh voting so So that’s something that we’re really interested as well yeah yeah that’s fantastic I was I was reading through the coin market cap description and I saw that I’m quite interested I mean we’ve on decred they’ve we’ve got a um a timestamp thing is it is it similar on Pharaoh is it Uh not really are you talking about the consensus mechanism well for your voting your your Thailand no no how did that work uh that was actually quite a simple mechanism um it was used because you also had to like you know appeal to the Legacy people so with with the blockchain in That case what happened was um so there was the Thai Democrat Party which was one of the major opposition parties and uh for the very first time they wanted to have a primary vote on who should be the party leader uh and because that was traditionally just Chosen you know from the big weeks and say okay you know you’re the guy but uh this guy he really wanted to kind of reassert his I would say mandate to be in the head of the party and decided to open that to the to the you know I guess The several million uh registered Thai Democrat Party members when obviously that’s quite challenging and expensive right so they decided to go through e-voting and what happened then was um none of the parties could agree because no one trusted each other they didn’t even trust their own Election Commission And the suggestion was to have it on you know I would say a publicly verifiable blockchain and the way that it was done it wasn’t like anything I would say you know groundbreaking in the sense of technical implementation but uh the the votes were kind of uploaded encrypted You know using a Shamir secret sharing scheme that was like very very I would say basic uh but you know at the same time you know it was counted it was at a large scale I think it’s more about the scale and the importance of the vote but I think since then we’ve learned a lot from those um you know early kind of Trials and we’ve come up with a whole new like voting system that preserves like you know ballot ballot progress you know minimal trust in the election commission or whoever’s organizing the election but I wouldn’t take up too much time and talk more about that but it’s pretty different and then the decret system which is more I would say on-chain voting for governance here it’s more like real world and there’s a combination of people actually going to the to the Polling places for those who don’t have access to the internet as well so so yeah Well I didn’t have anything to do and actually I don’t think the decred community had anything to do with it but the Brazil elections used the time stamping and I was just wondering how similar the Pharaoh system was that where the the present Lola de Silva Um time stamped his he time stamped his his mandate I suppose on the blockchain and because apparently they were getting lots of fake news so if you wanted to verify that you were reading the proper mandate you literally upload this document to timestamp and it tells you If it’s the right one or not and based on on the crypto graphic proof um so yes it’s very interesting to see that the way you guys had yours working to kind of vote on on who the electorate was and and based on um verifying documents as well I just Think that stuff is really interesting to me I I really appreciate it yeah I mean I would say like early voting kind of mechanisms kind of just use the blockchain kind of like a you know bulletin board right and I guess the but I think that’s kind of a misuse of well I wouldn’t say it’s a misuse more of a you’re not using the full capabilities of the blockchain and you want individual voters to be able to verify that their votes are properly counted you know voted and not altered and I think that’s very important property uh That we can’t forget you know a lot of there are a lot of experts that are totally against you know blockchain voting because of the current state of the tech ensure there are valid concerns but I don’t think that is something that we should say we should never do it we Should move forward you know take it step by step with I guess low risk elections and then move to you know really serious ones like national elections but I don’t think the state of the art of the attack is there yet for I would say a nationwide general elections But definitely for smaller scale you know you’re talking about you know city city council meeting City or like you know I guess like Community stuff I still think the threat level is good enough but uh yeah I probably don’t want to talk too much and let Joe talk a Little bit hopefully he’s one oh no that’s fantastic go on Joe take us away what are your thoughts on that yeah so um I mean uh intro and dash or you’re talking about the election thing still I yeah because I think you guys have got vote Voting systems on Dash as well is that is that correct but yeah if you give us I’ll tell you what give us a um give us a brief rundown on what Dash is doing currently what what we can look forward to and then we’ll kind of inter intermingling to what Reuben was saying As well yeah so Dash is one of the it’s I guess commonly credit is the longest running Dow right now there’s some disagreement over well was it bit shares or something but shares isn’t really kind of working at the moment that’s from my understanding of course watch the one Bit shares maximalist in the comment you know lighting us up but uh Dash has been running a dow since 2015 and um it’s been pretty um I’ve been personally involved in some way shape or form since about 2016.and it’s been pretty pretty kind of interesting um I know there’s a definitely diff Different um evolutionary steps to Adele but basically the way Dash is one works is instead of like a pot of money that has say a multi-sig or something like that it’s new black reward created every month that depending on where the votes go of the masternode system again the Incentivized node system that again projects like Pharaoh have also adopted at the end of the month whichever peop whichever proposals went out budget proposals submitted towards the network the funds get automatically created and just sent right to those people with no kind of intermediary intermediary sort of a step and so That’s been one of the kind of more you know unique Innovations as far as uh as far as uh it’s kind of interesting because this has sort of helped me in um I’ve done a few uh testimonies in before the local legislature about Dow related Bills and a lot of people kind of you know don’t really understand the concept but it is kind of interesting that there’s been sort of part of my life for you know six seven years something like that and um well any real quick on dash beyond that Dash is focused on being Digital cash on being uh payments focused digital currency and so as such has instant finality for transactions via something called instance and then kind of uses the masternodes to lock in transactions as soon as they basically are broadcast and something called chain locks which basically provides a layer Of security on the network that it’s sort of similar to a proof of stake hybrid hybrid in that it uses the staked element the master knows to basically guarantee the security of blocks on the first scene rule it’s so that’s kind of like the basic overview there’s been a Project that um I kind of always hesitate to talk about because of how long it’s taken to you know bring to fruition called Evolution oh yes the hashtag when when Evo is real right but it’s in the the I guess the final stages of deployment there’s a new Um database called grovedb that just got released as part of that and I believe over the next day or so there’s a a hard Fork to a new um version to introduce a new kind of masternode called the Evo note or Evolution masternode that’s specifically just supposed to run uh data platform Services including stuff like decentralized digital identity and things like that and so it’s a lot of really cool stuff and I just I just will not answer the win question because that’s always that’s an eternal Source object you know can I uh can I step in just just to Clarify something so yes uh you know Pharaoh inherits the the consensus mechanism from dash of obviously so we have all that instant stand chain locks as well I think we’ll probably one of the first uh after Dash to have chain locks if I’m not mistaken Joe can Probably correct me on that uh but the main thing the main difference is that we decided not to go with the the master voting which is a whole topic on itself which probably can cover later but uh it’s an interesting I would say deviation in terms of governance and Just to give you some background I actually that might I kind of like Dash was my first altcoin so I heard a lot of uh you know a whole lot of like good feelings towards that you know like setting up my first Master note even made like you Know custom t-shirts with the dash white people on and and um you know like like back then you know when it was dark coin it was one of the first privacy coins and I would say that uh you know my my involvement with with Dash or Dark Coin really kind of help Guide my I guess like you know when When developing pharaoh and stuff like a lot of the ideas not all of them that we accept but accepted but it really guided like how I wanted this project to to be like so so yeah you know really hats off The dash and and it still holds us a special place in my heart so yeah foreign was also one of my first projects in actual fact and furrowed for that matter I mean I don’t know if Ruben won’t remember this but I I reached out to you About four years ago to talk about some of the the things on it and you you were so kind to get back to me I was a nobody and still am but it was really nice that some somebody from the actual project account was actually reached out and Telling me about how things worked and stuff um and the same with Joel Joel’s reached out on several occasions and talked to me with food Dash and it’s been it’s been absolutely brilliant um yeah I think I think the the master note is something that is is something Is very intriguing to me how that how that works I like I like the way that that hybrid system is kind of implemented um so which one of you guys tivra or Exodus wants to talk briefly about decred and how that’s going sure so in decred obviously we’re in a Voting stage right now which is the uh the big deal about decred you uh you vote on consensus changes to change the network and we call it uh evolving money because it gets better over time so right now we’re going through a big change uh to basically change the proof Of work algorithm uh the hashing algorithm so that it bricks the existing Asic miners basically lots of research was done and we found that the Asic miners were pretty centralized or at the very least they didn’t really have the Project’s interests in mind or that we were just overpaying them for for uh Security so in decrit’s case it’s hybrid proof of work proof of stake uh most of the security is coming from the proof of stake element uh so we’re voting to to change that so we will be going to GPU mining so that’s kind of what’s going on in dcred right Now we’re also changing the subsidy the the block reward subsidy so before you run out and go buy a bunch of a bunch of uh graphics cards to Mindy cred we’re reducing the approval work mining work to just one percent of the block rewards so uh probably not much money going to Be made there it’s probably going to be mined by decrypt enthusiasts you know at least uh in in the beginning uh it does look like we we have been seeing some price action recently So lately so maybe the price will go up in mining will be more profitable but yeah that’s mainly What’s going on deep grid right now yeah I know that vote started about two days ago I think oh sorry typical uh I’m really happy to be here uh with people I really like and respect so uh thank you for inviting me um yeah recently I posted a Recently I was thinking like how to explain the cred in the easiest possible way and um you know thinking about various narratives we have um here uh Reuben from fire fire is doing uh privacy research I recently talked to one of my um old bitcoiner friends he’s from 2012 is a He’s been involved with the Bitcoin space since 2012 and he told me like of all the projects He the final research is the one that is most interesting to him so it’s uh really on that front and um when it comes to Dash is uh it’s the Original I mean everyone can agree that it’s the original Dao I think digret is like one year later if I’m not mistaken so Dash is uh really at the Forefront of the Dao so narrative let’s say so I would say that um one way to think about decred is like if You think about the the Privacy narrative let’s say in the Dao narrative and then you also think that the the the secret devs came originally from Bitcoin they were uh Bitcoin deaths they were working on uh btcd the they wrote an alternative for node implementation of uh in gold language So it’s like those two narratives but it’s also uh Bitcoin like in some ways so I you know most secret people have a similar take on sound money as Bitcoin people it also has like 21 million uh limited Supply and so on so it’s like imitates Bitcoin but at the same time it Does it’s like a Bitcoin Dao let’s say one once um if you guys remember Chris The Rose when he was still around he said once that uh his his now sympathetic to the idea that decred is one of the best Bitcoins he said maybe the best Bitcoin like he used the Bitcoin with a small letter B so it’s like there is a category of coins that try to be Bitcoin like right and then there’s others who are not trying to be Bitcoin like at all so I I still see decret as like like a Bitcoin with the Small B but it does coin voting also that’s important like uh each coin is also a vote not not really but to simplify and um and yeah implementing features we want to see like privacy so that’s how I see the cred yeah I think it’s bad sale free projects I reselled this there’s two questions I have let’s go back to pharaoh and one was um what is litmus Sparks Atlanta spark um basically yeah it’s the latest iteration of our privacy protocol um it actually you know High sender receiver amount uh with very very high anonymity set so like for example I Think like Monero like per transaction is like you have a ring size of 16 basically the anonymity set for that particular transaction not not as a whole is is quite limited while uh you know when we are implementing it um we’re talking about anonymity sets of Like 30 to 60 000 I wish it’s you know several I guess you know several magnitudes more uh and I think one of the key things because people will say well what’s the difference with Z cash what’s the difference with you know ZK snacks and all of that well are we first Of all we’re using very much simpler cryptographic building blocks and in a way it’s designed to be modular so let’s say if like there is a new kind of membership proof If there’s new kind of range proof or new kind of addressing system uh the system is flexible enough To actually like remove one part and like you know upgrade it with another and that’s really important like actually right now there’s drawing research between uh us and also some in the Monero Community uh which which is called Curve tree research which would allow at least basically Global Anonymity sets that means every single input and output or at least every single input is your it’s your anonymity set and would achieve I would say Z cash like type of uh anonymity without trusted setup without Moon math without weird type of Licensing that that you Know Z cash is using and the aim is to have a protocol that people can use and not have to to rely on us like you know ideally even if the fear of core team disappears uh you know other people can maintain I think that’s a key reason why Monero is also kind of going down this family of of privacy protocols which I guess I would say that in I’m very proud to say that Pharaoh kind of inspired with a first version of the Landis so yeah I mean we’re really really focused on privacy but we want to keep it simple Uh and still verifiable rather than you know only a few experts in the world knowing what’s going on because I think that’s really important if you’re talking about decentralized money right because we we have kind of seen how when projects get too Technical and in the sometimes they even might want to Protect their intellectual property for competitive reasons that’s kind of I would say against the the spirit of like you know free open source and it makes it more of a centralized project rather than a true like decentralized money I I wouldn’t claim that Pharaoh is like completely decentralized it’s it’s something that Every every project that is working towards to uh you know I wouldn’t you know many projects have the illusion of decentralization but I’m here to say that look we are not decentralized quite yet but um yeah so that’s all I have to say on that but Spock the test net is Probably launching in one or two weeks time um we’re just like putting finer touches and that should come life maybe in three to four months after the test net launch and I think that would be like the largest upgrade in privacy uh in in free row like census Inception so we’re Really excited about that yeah yeah I’ve heard some really good good stuff I was talking to I’m dead for her about things along the Pharaoh lines and it sounds really really exciting there was there was a couple of other things but I am I’ll probably get on to them as We move through it um and Joe what is what is it is the um is it called evolution yes so Dash is upgrading to Evolution so what are the main takeaways from that yeah so a lot of this kind of gets on more into the weeds and Technical but might as Well give you like the the story of the greater story of the evolution sort of idea so Dash’s founder Eva Duffield who hasn’t really been involved in the project since about mid-2017 I think uh in around 2015 he gave some talk at I believe it was a Bitcoin Amsterdam Meetup I can’t Remember exactly um and basically talking about the next the next evolution of crypto and in a way that’s a much more user friendly to the end user and he talked the the big thing specifically is you know usernames and contact lists and payment requests and all this kind of More like payment app venmoe stuff that in the protocol level that really wasn’t kind of anywhere on anyone’s radar in crypto and then he basically gave a some ideas on how it could be done and then kind of said as a road map like oh mid-2018 let’s have this out and then Left the project and then like everyone else was sort of left to scramble to be like well how do we figure this out and so obviously there’s been a lot of you know delays and a lot of other problems and things that are kind of arisen from You know that whole thing but the basic idea at the the root level is to basically provide a a usability layer to the actual crypto experience and as someone who uses crypto every day one thing when I kind of break it down if I want to trans if I want to transact With Reuben I can’t just use the blockchain to do that I have to use at least a couple of other I at the very least I have to use let’s just say signal like an encrypted messaging app to say how much do I owe you for beer and then Also just say who like send me an address and then how else do I get the address unless I’m in person for example and so we’re already using that sort of data layer for uh but we’re just Outsourcing it to a different kind of app or infrastructure and so the the Root ideas to have that kind of In-House to have that built into the network itself to where at the at the minimum you can have like a username that contains all the other information you can kind of send the information back and forth with the actual transaction so You don’t have to necessarily default to something like that and having you know encrypted messaging built into that is something that’s maybe not in the initial release but is also kind of you know down the road and this is something that I’ve you know honestly kept an open Mind I’ve been looking around all of crypto for there’s quite a few different naming schemes out there but nothing is really taken hold because I mean a variety of reasons there’s you know centralization issues of like who’s actually running the database there’s obviously privacy issues and that is actually something that Um even Dash is trying to figure out a best solution for there’s a few to uh how to you know Bridge how to connect usernames and uh and actual wallets Etc without kind of having everything linked to a username very easily verifiable on like a blockchain for example where you can Just look in the block Explorer and be like oh yeah there’s no privacy like how do you provide a at least a minimum of privacy plus all this kind of extra functionality so the evolution platform is basically a gap layer a decentralized application layer with a decentralized data data storage solution that basically Um I’m going to have to start really digging into it because I’m not particularly technical myself and a lot of like why this is different from everything else is something that it’s there’s a lot of nuance but essentially it provides an easy solution for um queryable data where you can do Provably easily queryable decentralized data and so if there could be a whole lot a lot of other data applications to that Beyond just the basic username but it’s the basic engine that the first application of that is just you know a username and contact system and then you Kind of build in a whole lot of other things on top of that as well later we just had a really good question actually and as you were as you were saying about that I was thinking to myself um this sounds amazing and it also a lot Of what you described sounds very very similar to what um bison relay um has already done I just wonder I know Reuben’s touched upon it when it was really really early and I read through your report it might be interesting to to go back at the user the onboarding’s Got a lot better now but I wanted a job have you tried bison relay I have not as of today I’m still um chugging through I have I installed two different wallets from the Bitcoin cash World yesterday just to test it out because people were saying hey have you Done that yet I’m like okay fine I’ll tell you what I think of it and so as far as like the end user tester of Last Resort my job as a giant backlog but for sure I go you know that’s on my list for sure it’s it’s quite interesting I mean like You said about being able to communicate with other people privately and working out um how to how to do naming account names whereas what what bison really does it doesn’t have accounts you have a nickname and that’s you know that’s part of your actual voice familiar experience and if I have to pay Um Reuben I can I can set up an invoice or I can just message him hey Reuben how much do I owe you um and I can just literally just send it and it’s quite interesting I I will caveat it is still it’s still earlier days running we’re only seven months Into it but it it I I like it but then I’m extremely biased but um yeah it might be it might be worth doing the comparison that maybe once evolution is out um what about you decree guys but I was gonna say going off of Bison Relay I know there is going to be some sort of major UI ux overhaul I believe ideally tiver and I have discussed this we wanted to look like telegram if it can just look like telegram that’d be amazing uh one really interesting thing about bison relay is they are building Stores so they’re they’re building uh stores that are uncensorable so let your imagination run wild a little bit uh it’s it’s uh to me I think it’s super ambitious um you know private stores and you can do all the payments in the app and you always retain custody of your coins and Bison relay itself doesn’t do any run seeking so it doesn’t take any you know fees for for doing this type of stuff so that’s that’s one thing they’re working on I believe the stores are in a very early stage right now but um it’s it’s definitely something to Keep track of I would say yeah I think the description on the website it says uh social media decentralized social media I think it’s not the best description because it makes you think it’s like maybe it will be like a uh something a cross between Twitter and something blockchain related Or something but it’s not that um the day-to-day actually I use it more similar to something like telegram right now so I use it for channels and chat uh but it’s going to be many things as Exodus mentioned like storefronts and so on so it’s like a whole um we could say Another take on web3 maybe I don’t know like a whole new web we could say uh once you enter once you finance your lightning network uh channels there then you’re inside this bison relay Network and you’ll be able to access all these things like chat and so on now we see These days uh with the rate limits that must imposed on Twitter um that’s something that makes the thinking that went into bison relay relevant I think because it’s like you’re solving spam in a kind of kind of proof of work way not really but I mean you basically have to pay for spamming Right I mean because each transaction is a lightning Network transaction so even each each chat so this is really counter-intuitive you think like I’m gonna I’m gonna pay for chatting right but it’s I think we were used since the 90s this idea that the internet is free And it was a little bit strange for me for a long time like why is the why is the internet free right I never understood like how could the internet be free uh and it seems such a beautiful idea everything is free everything is free Google is giving us mail for free Facebook everyone is giving us stuff for free from America as a European I can say but I I now in retrospect I think there are two phenomenons here of phenomena here uh one is that you know it was a basically the free internet was a low interest rate phenomenon in a way Um and the other is that um that we were the products right this was the what I initially didn’t understand so here you’re not the product nobody’s spying on you because everything is encrypted nobody’s nobody sees what you do and uh yeah because the all your encrypted data has to be relayed Uh through the server you have to pay a little bit for the for this service um yeah the last thing I wanted to say is that this is like the let’s be honest right decred right now is not very useful right like uh I talked like Joel also mentions often that he uses Products I mean projects that are um most convenient to his lifestyle and decred has a has a few uses but let’s be like mostly it’s used right now for storing value like you know most people use Bitcoin and for stolen value and for it’s used for paying for work for devs who works For the for the Dao um but it’s not used in a day-to-day way I see bison relay as potentially being not right now but in the future uh what can change this you know because I think it can be like uh um like like what mask wants to do with Twitter like a everything app but uh crypto version of that you know you would have like chat in the same app and you would have tipping you would have buying it would have storefronts and everything so like us like a dark version Dark let’s say Cipher Punk version of the of of that Everything app that mask wants to build uh something like that I see in the future it’s pretty pretty interesting what can be done I think with that yeah I definitely think that’s as far as like the paper use kind of thing in a very small limited way Um it’s something that people don’t seem to want to acknowledge but I do think it’s kind of the way of the future where things are starting to go we already see like a lot of AI Services charging for either big bundle as a monthly thing or They say you know you have so many actions for you know in a certain month period for example and uh it’s kind of interesting because in the crypto world there’s already two social media apps which I would recommend people check out not because they’re necessarily the best Or the most polished but they’re great proofs of concept which are memo.cash for Bitcoin cash and then twitch for Bitcoin SV and both of them twitch is much more polished I guess but both of those operate on a you know paper transaction to put your tweets on The blockchain kind of model and one thing that’s kind of interesting especially with twitch because the the I guess it costs like a a cent or two to make a tweet or twitch it’s uh you don’t really find spam you don’t really find scammers floating around because it’s just they’re kind of like Spray and pray type targets and so anyone who’s been on Twitter for more than you know 30 seconds sees like you know Elon impersonation Bots and like all the it just especially crypto Twitter it’s just a disaster and then introducing like the rate limits and all those kinds of things they’re they’re Trying to figure out ways of solving those problems but it’s just really difficult and it’s much easier to just say you pay for like a you pay a very small amount for your activity and of course if you pay you know if you do 10 tweets for one percent or something like That per day and that’s you know not everyone does that many then you know 30 cents a month it’s like not that much money right it’s not it’s not unreasonable now with all these kinds of systems like for example getting people to use the Bison relay for all this kind of Stuff the limitation is people getting the money to begin with because I could say hey Twitter just make people pay a micro transaction in crypto for every single thing but that then that would be worse than the current system not because it is but because no one has crypto and no one can Just connect their wallet or whatever like that I mean some people with like metamask but then you’re paying Ethan that’s not really going to work but uh just the ease of onboarding is kind of what’s what’s difficult and so I kind of think that um A lot of times you do have to have like a a money for goods and services and for specific apps kind of a connection because neither one will really work out without the other it’s really hard for people to approach someone say hey look I know you’ve been using this money for Everything but get an entirely new money just to do the same thing you were just doing it’s a really hard sell and then if you say hey you can buy these credits just to use this app I mean at least they will if they really want to use the app but if They don’t but if you have like hey look why don’t you get this stuff you can use this app but you can also go buy things with you know your leftover credits like your Your World of Warcraft gold or whatever that’s left over you can actually do real things with it and then That’s where it grows and it’s like oh guess what this app I like oh I like this one too and this one and they all run on the same like micro payment rails and I just I only need one account for all of them or one you know in people’s Minds account that’s when you start getting those kinds of network effects that you know is really sort of lost to crypto right now yeah I can I can definitely agree with that what are your thoughts uh Reuben on that I know I know you uh you got you got a few I especially like your thoughts about the Privacy angle as well I don’t know the topic when when when here and they’re not pro what what what was the the original question but I mean like um I mean obviously maybe my my initial experience was was kind of Flawed because I tried to use bison really and didn’t have a good experience with it but I understand it’s in a still work in progress obviously and you know maybe I should ask for an invite because I went through all that steps I’m like oh you need some secret I’m like oh God And I just like gave up then uh so I mean I definitely agreed you know the the idea that we have to start moving away from the Internet is free it should be you know a certain payment for it but it’s always a better right especially you know for decentralization for Privacy and all of that there’s always a monetary cost and because that’s a very like a concrete course people say oh it’s costing me money right well versus something like my personal data which may be People Like Us uh can put a value there or at least a rough idea of How much we think it’s worth or at least you know put the price on it most of these people say oh I’m not paying anything right well it’s okay I’m gonna give up this data you know everyone’s giving it up it’s fine right so As I as you know Joe said it requires a very big shift in mindset because I think one of the issues especially if bison relay is trying to say oh we are social media Network maybe that isn’t the right play because um yeah you know we are used to you know It could be so much more it has all these uh additional thing but kind of like just saying it’s a social media thing A lot of people are like well why why should I pay for this why should I pay the Tweet why should I pay the chat right Um so I’m very excited to see where this goes you know notwithstanding the the initial bad experience and obviously you know I I’m being from a legal background I’m always like a bit of a pessimist because you know I’ve seen like many projects do stuff like like particle Right they were doing they’ve been trying to build like you know marketplaces uh to sell goods and and well they’ve done a lot of good work never really took off you know I mean we saw open Bazaar clothes and all of that so I feel that you know ironically we Have to find like more you know as as Joe said like the whole ecosystem that that we can do stuff and in right and I think that this like I know this is going to be controversial a lot of people think nfts are kind of BS and and then yeah you Know a lot of them are but um when you create like crypto native ecosystems and where you can only get them using crypto that would be a good first onboarding point because you know that’s the only way you can get it you’re forcing them to use the system For something that they can’t get in the real world rather than something that already kind of exists maybe even if it’s digital or not so uh you know I don’t have any sort of like Concrete Solutions to that but I feel that um you know if it’s just gonna be Messaging if it’s just going to be stores it’s going to be like either you ux is going to be so amazing or like there has to be something that that’s really stand out because like you know people might say well you know why don’t I use signal why don’t I use session Right and then people say oh well it’s not decentralized enough I don’t think that’s a strong enough sale for most people to to switch right because people say well my data is secure you know it’s fine for some centralization for this sort of stuff and am I willing to jump Through all this who oops uh to you know get get you know decentralized stuff and I think unfortunately for for things like privacy and and decentralizations they are quite hard sales Beyond those people the moon boys who would say oh yeah previously decentralization just to pump their backs It’s the only by the time you actually need it it’s already too late and that and sometimes I I go to sleep I’m thinking you know in the world where Pharaoh or like in all these cryptocurrencies or privacy cryptocurrencies have become really really valuable and necessary that’s Going to be quite a horrible like you know seeing you know cbdc is coming out and you know people like the government’s just like you know freezing people’s funds or telling people what they can or cannot spend on and sometimes I’m like wow you know I’m such a pessimist right like I’m building Something for a world I don’t want to see while other people are building for oh you know I’m creating this all this amazing new world but I’m I the the things that kind of keeps me going is that I am building this thing so that You know when we need them we have them but yeah maybe a bit uh you know idealistic there uh but I think that is kind of the same vein as what bison relay is you know you’re trying to build for a future that when we need it but It’s also kind of like well you know it’s a hot narrative to sell so that’s that’s just my two cents yeah yeah I I really appreciate both both your guys some views on that I think about both valuable um just uh one thing I wanted to add Yeah what you said Reuben they’re about uh building for when we need these things that’s really something I um for a long time you know talking in the decred community uh like the developers and the core people let’s say of the Creator really um like they’re always thinking in like Uh how can I say like um catastrophic ways almost you know like what if everything goes wrong what if every every server is compromised what if and for a long time I thought like that’s so Overkill you know I’m by Nature I’m more of an optimist I think like Um you know things will go okay don’t exaggerate or um but then then when things go bad then you notice that those people who are really were paranoid in the past even when they seemed like a little bit crazy then you see you really needed those people you really needed them Yeah so there’s a place of conspiracy theories right yeah what to get up I noticed a lot of the especially the crypto space in whatever the speculative space tends to focus on like a several year time Horizon which is uh the mid-level time Horizon which is where I think a lot of Things get lost where I kind of like the the super short term and the longer term like what works today for people and what worked 10 years from now and try to connect those two dots in the middle whereas I think a lot of people get lost In the middle saying oh this is going to be huge the industry is going to want this I’m going to hear the the best nft web 3 platform that it’s what everyone wants and you build something that no one today wants for a future that you Don’t it’s uncertain as well and kind of on lack of fundamentals like today fundamentals of like well we don’t care if metamask and insura like runs everything because you know well it’ll be censorship persistent eventually but we’re still building a product that no one today wants and that like middles Zone is where you see a lot of projects like get a lot of initial speculative investment and then you have a couple years and then they go down because they they never kind of figure it out and it’s like um the other thing about the the long-term kind of you know building for A world I don’t want to live in the thing is we live in that world today in a certain extent maybe it’s not as apocalyptic as we think the worst case scenario it’s like we’re going to be hiding you know GPU miners in our basement and there’s going to be like You know Jack booted thugs walking outside any Bitcoins in here it’s like probably not it’s probably not going to get like that but one thing I noticed is there’s always a cost to uh to centralization censorship lack of privacy there’s always like a real cost a lot of times in actual like dollar Terms for example I mean for example right now data is being collected on people’s spending habits and things in order to influence their credit scores and of course people go right away does China’s social credit score it’s like well yes but it doesn’t need to get that Bad it can just be now you get a less favorable loan because people see what you’re spending your money on and then you know it’s not ESG compliant or you you know you eat too much red meat and so it literally costs you money to have Your data out there it’s so or for example um I believe I’d have to recheck you know the info on this but I believe usdc the stable coin is more expensive than something like uh you know something like die because oh there’s a series of blacklisted addresses that the smart Contract has to run through and just not you know check that you’re not trying to send to those so it’s actually the transaction fees for using a centralized a sensor currency are actually higher and so you know for example that’s why cash is King because there’s the 100 Certainty that the payment will go through whereas with other methods there’s that well it probably will go through but what if your bank has an issue or what if this and even if it’s nothing nefarious or orwellian just the the act of that centralized kind of Thing or just the need for someone to be like kyc is the worst right and I basically for like 99 of cases banished kyc for my life many years ago but anytime I have to pop in for like a business type thing uh it’s the worst it’s friction I mean Even if you say I have no moral problem with identifying myself for purpose of payments it just means when you’re clicking to sign up for a service you can’t just say you can’t just go you have to be like well let’s do this extra step and let’s provide this stuff and Then there has to be a person over there that verifies it and like all this friction just makes you not be able to use the system imagine where Twitter would be if you had to verify with your ID documents for every single user no one would use it not because they object To it not because their identity being tied to Twitter is going to be used to throw them in a prison cell but just because that that friction of the centralization of your identity management is just always a problem and so I think that a lot of these problems that were these long far Out problems we’re trying to solve I think that they’re they’re problems today yeah I think one of the one of the key points about kyc that I’m completely against is a lot of these companies have already proven that they can’t store your data privately so they end up Losing it and you know and you end up in these situations where your data’s out there for for no for no real fault of urine um it’s yet another reason I like this idea of a countless internet where you you have your internet and your your Kind of and a lightweight wallet or a medium wallets synchronized so you don’t have to give up um your bank account details every time you want to purchase an nft or you want to purchase some some digital good um which seems like a really good intercept to talk about living off Crypto and and the things that we could uh or things that are currently being built and and used um to to make this a reality where we can get goods and services and peer-to-peer without exchanging for without giving over all of our details to make it happen now as many of you Probably know that Joel is a massive advocate in this area so we’ll start with John see how how he’s doing it and maybe we’ll look at what the various projects maybe can do or are doing to kind of make this a real reality so take It away Joe how do you live off crypto uh you do it that’s kind of a it’s sort of a funny thing when you talk about um be kind of immediate and near-term kind of a thing a long-term thing is we believe in all these principles like not using government-controlled money not Using government control payment rails not using kyc like radical Freedom kind of take those that long goal and then approach it from like the day to day and I think that um I’m actually in the process of arranging a few interviews with other people around the world who also live on crypto It’s kind of interesting because um it’s I’m trying to show that it’s not that not that uncommon it’s not like no one it’s not like no one does it but as far as I know I don’t know too much that there’s a lot of CopyCats in this domain one Friend of mine I know watched some of videos I did and started like learning from that but other than that most people Blaze that trail on their own they just decide I’m gonna try and then they start they figure it out on their own and they just don’t talk about it Some people for explicit privacy reasons but other people just because they’re they’re not in it to like talk about it they’re not you know which I guess I I don’t know I’m sort of in it to talk about it I’m mostly not but I at the same time it’s like an experiment Because uh uh one thing that I become I kind of honestly thought it was a cool idea back in 2015 when I decided to do it but not that that was my only information of like wild like sure that sounds cool let me try it and But now thinking I kind of see it much more uh essential because for anyone involved in the crypto space I think you need to have a connection to the end user experience or you’re going to build stuff that just absolutely doesn’t work and most stuff absolutely doesn’t work In crypto it’s pretty you know obvious because people don’t actually use it and um one thing for example I’ve noticed um is so I ran a lightning network node and I used a bunch of different lightning walls I kind of did that whole thing to just really try to learn how it works And as you know I came in it’s kind of the lightning skeptic and I definitely did not leave as like a lightning Maximus at all I kind of got a much more nuanced in that kind of thing and I think that using it for something like a more of a closed-loop Social network type situation is probably something that’s more designed for unfortunately in my opinion the um the Bitcoin Community largely because they decided to go through off-chain scaling route they decided to say that necessarily means lightning this has to work for all our Solutions and what we See time and time again if you look on Twitter everyone who speaks set up with a lightning wall it’s all wallet of Satoshi which is custodial and you can actually get a relatively decent experience with the Phoenix wallet which is you know it’s pretty truck it’s semi-trusted but it’s Non-custodials and they can’t actually steal your money and run away with it but the couple because it interacts with the lightning Network more directly because it’s actually a kind of a really stripped down mini mobile lightning node that a little bit of extra friction makes people just like Not want to use it and so the the markets telling them that the end user is never going to use lightning for their day-to-day payments kind of a thing it’s just not optimized for that but because people were living in theory they thought well this is this optimizes This works great but in in reality if I’m on a social network and I’m tipping you guys for every single post I make uh I I can have we can have a closed liquidity Loop between all of us and just you know pass SATs or whatever else along And it can cannot work because we’re kind of interacting with the same sort of systems but the necessity of opening and rebalancing channels like all the time when you go in like a merchant setting where like I go I go to this coffee shop and Do I have a route to them probably not probably not in my amount or if we have like a very small route and I spend more than was in the route and then all of a sudden I can’t spend more at that coffee shop because someone needs to rebalance Their Channel and then I go to a different spot and there’s not a lot of repeat business then it because the whole system just gets really kind of clunky and sort of breaks down and so uh that’s kind of why I try to use crypto that’s kind of like now I’ve decided Like oh this is why I did this all along is because you kind of need to find out what works and if it does but it’s it’s something that I think has gotten significantly easier over the years and I mean I first started not Um not being paid in Fiat in at the end of 2015.and 2016 was kind of when the Heyday of um spending Bitcoin kind of came around but then also when the block size filled up and then there was sort of like the the The Detour where the whole spending Bitcoin economy sort of took a break from like 2017 to I guess 2021 or something somewhere around when lightning not only came out but started to have some like mobile apps that like worked with it and some that kind of like popped back up it’s so uh during that time There’s a there’s it’s pretty easy to use just a few services to live on crypto today depending on your geography uh one thing I’ve noticed is the individual businesses like the Oh look The the owner has a an iPad and he downloaded this specific app or he has Just a wallet on it that kind of stuff is probably lower than it has been in the past is in the actual like what you what a lot of people especially like the Bitcoin cash people classify as like Merchant adoption like no that seems to Have taken a little bit of a dip but as far as services that you know kind of act as middlemen or something like for example gift card services or bill pay services or things like that or travel Services um I like I remember there used to be just a couple of Just like Expedia took Bitcoin for like a little bit but it was not on most flights it was some like that and then you had cheap air that came and took a few different cryptos and then they kind of take fewer now and then but now you have for example travala takes everything Like everything under I’m pretty sure you can use decred and pharaoh and stuff on travala to book everything and then um alternative Airlines does a lot of the same kind of stuff there’s now there’s a lot of options for that and now as far as the gift card services There used to just be gift gyft for the really really OG people that remember that one but now not only bit refill is like the standard for you know the instant gift card service with like basically any you know with huge suction around the whole world but then there’s Other there’s a whole bunch of other Alternatives like coin cards coins B etc etc and uh yeah it’s just starting to really grow there’s a lot of um bit refills started to do bill pay services in the US and El Salvador but they they didn’t do Europe at all because as Sergey said like we don’t need to compete in that area because there’s already a lot of services doing bill pay for crypto in Europe and then now it used to be there was nothing in the U.S now there’s a great U.S based one called Spritz which does all evm chains and Then right now uh does Bitcoin is starting to indicate Dash in the next few weeks and so as far as like five years ago I would have to like basically tell someone look you’re going to be doing a lot of research you’re going to be doing a lot of like selling your chicken Farmer on this and being like hey you know I can give you this digital stuff instead for the eggs there’s a lot of that kind of Blazing your own trail whereas today I can tell people in a lot of major countries use this app use that App use that app you’re good and it gets going and I I kind of think that this bull market is gonna uh this coming bull Mark I should say is going to Usher in sort of like the early majority of adoption maybe not not mass adoption But you’re going to start to see like one in ten people maybe or one at 20 in your local coffee shop like use Bitcoin through cash app or something like that or you’re gonna start to see that it where it’s not just where you don’t know everyone who’s using crypto around it’s Not like all your friends it’s like some random person you’ve never met will be doing it too I can uh I can speak on my experience using crypto basically I have the coinbase card so a little bit different uh they have custody of some of my coins But it works really really well and the exchange rates are great even going abroad like it’s it’s probably given me some of the best um exchange rates when going outside of the dollar so I hold stablecoin usdc on there and uh honestly for the most part it’s been really really great Um uh there was one day where they took it down they took down the service and they didn’t tell anyone and my car didn’t work and luckily I had cash so that was kind of one of the main drawbacks to it um and then at one point uh I don’t know If you guys remember this this happened pretty recently usdc lost its Peg which was kind of insane uh but I believe what coinbase did was they honored everyone who was using their card they still gave it the one to one but obviously as we saw the peg did come back so that’s That’s kind of been my limited experience using crypto again it’s they had custody get my coins but it worked really well and I knew people using it uh the binance card which also works really well but yeah it’s Visa it works pretty much everywhere and it’s it’s Pretty great to be paying for things with you know the stable coin uh I would like to use a bit refill but obviously decredit isn’t accepted there so and I’m sure to get on there is pretty tough uh but yeah yeah that’s one thing I’ve I’ve kind of adopted like the multi-coin Kind of a perspective for a long time because at first I just I always was very interested in other coins but I was like mostly using Bitcoin because that’s what everyone used and then there became issues and then I was like what else can I use and there was nothing else that I Could practically use except for dash at the time and so then uh I guess a testament to the success of the dash world and making it usable I have it’s been like 95 of everything I’ve used over since then and in the last year or so or a couple years probably I’ve Become more intentional in just like seeing what else I can use just to just to see where things are at uh but still it’s it’s pretty you know solid in that way um fun anecdote on the usdc I did know some some crypto devs that when the peg Lost they threw like six figures into usdc and they bought the dip and um I mean that’s one of those most um I’m nowhere near that level of DJ where I’m just I’m trying to buy the stable coin dip you know but apparently some people are doing that What was the card you use axis it’s coinbase okay they have a card you can sign up for it they’ll send it to you in the mail and uh you can uh set your PIN to their website and you can put what coins you want to use to spend So you can you can choose to spend your Bitcoin or whatever but usdc is the easiest because it’s pegged with the dollar and for every amount of money you spend there you get some you get money back in cryptocurrency I think right now you get money back in like Stellar but It’s it’s really good it’s it’s been really good other than like I said it went down for a day usdc lots losses Peg but um definitely worth I would recommend it at least for smaller amounts of money so so I’m curious uh Joel do you avoid That or do you also use uh like binance cards or coinbase car or do you avoid that yeah so mostly I avoid it up until I guess last year I haven’t I didn’t touch any kyc services at all and uh I still tried it I still do that for my Like personal self wherever I can but um as part of like the Journey of you know trying to figure out how to live on crypto I started like in a legit business with trying to have that with no bank account but still like running on crypto and so as such there’s some Paperwork involved and so I am starting to so far I’m in the process of signing up for spritz Finance which is um it’s a bill pay system in the US that basically lets you pay any Fiat bill with crypto and they do have like a reloadable virtual card thing too and I’m trying to get that for like company purposes that makes it easier to do you know business expenses whereas I can do my own crazy you know roughing it out there in the uh on my personal side but yeah to this point I haven’t really used a um I guess a A kyc crypto card in the early days like 2016 I did use a couple like wirex and I think Shake pay had one too but those were they they let you spend up to a certain amount before kyc and I just threw away the card and went with Someone else right but as far as that now one thing that is very useful that seems to have come out in the last I don’t I don’t know if come out as the right word but it’s become a lot much more available in the last couple of Years is uh prepaid debit card virtual cards that you can buy sort of on the Fly for almost any amount and then you can put them into a wallet like Um Google pay or Apple pay or something and then just tap and pay anywhere and so you know for example I’ve done that Before where you know I go to some coffee shop that doesn’t take it it does take crypto directly and I’m like okay well I’ll probably spend about twenty dollars today because I’m getting coffee for myself and my wife and maybe a snack and so then I just buy a 20 you Know prepaid Mastercard send it to the Google pay and then just pay it and then make sure to up the tip on that last transaction to just like max out the card get rid of it and so you can kind of do stuff like that which really helps where before I would Have to you know be a lot more selective of where I go and or maybe I occasionally I’d sell a little bit for cash just for a little bit of just in case I was a place where I didn’t have crypto and now I don’t you know sell for cash anymore Basically because that kind of need is sort of filled right there and so yeah it just allows me to not use any real custodial services and not be able to not have to have like hold on to Fiat value and then you know just only Release it into the Fiat world but is it is it mainly is it mainly to avoid kyc or because of the custodial risk like wow because these cards are super convenient right yeah it’s it’s for a few reasons it’s the custodial thing it’s the kyc thing and it’s the having Value in crypto now some things I can’t remember if the coinbase card is one of those but uh you can have a your balance in crypto and then you spend it if you want and so but some of them just make you load the actual Fiat value onto the card beforehand Yeah with coinbase you can load whatever currency so but again I use usdc because it’s convenient uh I wanted to ask you guys so so Dash and firo So lately in decred we’ve been really kind of searching on how to do the best how to Market decred because There’s so many different coins in this uh space there’s you know thousands how do you get the word out about your individual project how do you do Outreach uh So lately we’ve spun up a program that you know kind of pays people to come up with with good ideas To be a little more active on social media and they get paid in decred of course as part of our contractor system and uh we’ve been experimenting even you know paying some people from Reddit to kind of come in and help out and they also are are cool with getting paid in Crypto but basically how how do you guys do you have any really novel ideas for marketing Dash or feral I’m just kind of curious to see if you guys have done any searching in that regard well before I go into that I wanted to share a bit of my experience in paying Crypto if that’s okay um because you had a realized Fearless run completely on Pharaoh like like you know we pay I mean yeah of course we do conversions and stuff like that but you know our entire Fearless budget the development team and everything is is pain and fear and that Has a lot of challenges because you know especially as a developer you know you want to have employment you want to have some sort of protections you want to have pay slips not everyone is willing to just say like oh yeah I’m going to get some crypto and you know do all that Conversion right and converting feral to the pay expenses has been like um quite a nightmare uh I mean like okay first of all you know the simple stuff I use travala you know the pain all that and you know I’m so like you know very cognixon of like you know when Jose you Know he you know lives entirely off crypto I’m also like really concerned like you know when we get the listed from Big exchanges like buyers and whatnot a lot of this Integrations May or I would say most of them would be affected as well right and that would you know effectively Affect your ability to live off crypto because that that Fiat Gateway is important but at the same time that’s why I was hoping to see like more work where these type of services can draw liquidity from Dax Solutions I’m not sure how far that is the case I know There’s been like a little bit of work in there but I think for the most part you know everyone’s like you know using Finance liquidity or coinbase liquidity for all of that right so so anyway that’s that’s a side question but how I pay my employees so some of them take You know uh crypto and and that’s fine that’s like very straightforward but some of those uh want like you know full-on contracts right uh like they want employment status and um you know luckily I found like deal.com uh which which has been quite helpful in in paying people in remote Places which they also have additional service where you can get deal to hire them as an employee on their behalf so they get all the employee protections and all the benefits there so that’s quite interesting because we have a Russian developer and getting him a German visa to be able to Stay in in Berlin was was not easy and somehow we managed to do it uh via deal and then a couple of friends that helped us with with all of that um and interestingly deal does accept usdc but only if only if um if you can pay usdc using coinbase and Recently coinbase terminated my account so that made things more difficult again Um so so now like you know I have to like you know shift money here and every time when I do payroll it’s it’s a very very long process to shift money around to convert and you know get it into Fiat and all of that and um I I just wanted To share a little bit of like how difficult it is like especially if you want to offer an attractive package for people to work at your project and you don’t want to have like you know deal with too much fans because it’s been really difficult for a project like ours To get a bank account you know we are crypto and privacy at the same time uh unless you have uh like you know a couple of million dollars sitting around no one wants to to entertain you uh so so yeah it’s just it’s just been a constant battle but somehow we’re still Managing to to pay our employees on time or like you know I would say the contributors and developers on time uh every every month so so yeah I can feel the pain and obviously see the yeah I I guess the biggest takeaway is that how much of all these like you know living Off crypto uh relies currently on you know centralized providers and and you know you know Dash and decret and even if hero were classified for a short time as privacy coins you know like and then like totally delisted uh were from four countries in in in in you know for Binance and and that was to me what a huge warning shot and and that kind of made me question like you know am I going to go half heart that way and like oh yeah maintain the transparent layer and get all this you know compliance and all of that and It was a very interesting situation where Z cash for a moment was like considered to be compliant because even though they were clearly a privacy coin they had this transparency and blockchain Analysis companies that were uh willing to say that oh yeah we can trace it good enough and it’s very clear That Regulators have been pressured by I would say you know lobbyists and and people whispering through the year that as long as you have blockchain analysis that’s fine you know we can support it that that’s your AML policy even though like you know blockchain analysis is Only one two in the two right and even though we had a transparent layer because of Legacy reasons because zerocoin required a transparent layer we were excluded from that because of some misunderstanding of how our technology worked and saying that oh yeah well we only consider releasing you if you can Sign up to a blockchain Analysis company that can say yes we can provide that sort of tracing and I’m like you know that’s kind of like really bad optics for a privacy pushback right and and and that really made me wonder like you know taking a look at something like Monero of course Monero if they got delisted from binance and you know and and lost Kraken as well I mean they’re not listed on coinbase they will be severely hurt but I feel like they would survive and so I was like you know trying to understand how they would Survive in in such a a case um and because well first of all they have like all this.net usage and all of that like you know for better or worse they do have some sort of circular economy you know ransomware as being paid in Monero uh you know hopefully we Don’t have to go down that path but is you know it was kind of it reminded me what amitaki for you know one of the like the OG’s of Bitcoin and kind of like original Cipher pants he was saying like there’s gonna be a a clear distinction growing distinction Between right fi and dark Phi right and unfortunately that is the way to go and I’ve you know I I have kind of decided that you know if I’m gonna do privacy I’m gonna go like really all the way because you know playing this compliance game is a freaking The keeps on changing right like even though you are technically compliant like you know we comply with travel rule like all privacy coins can comply or travel through the the rules keep on changing and now there’s Mica and all of that and I’m like am I going to do it Like half ass to to to to to do things that I cannot control or to you know follow the path of moneros and let’s just focus on doing one thing really right and make a no compromise approach and I’ve been non-steering towards that that direction uh but but yeah I mean Going off topic but I thought it was a interesting thing to think about which I think was surprising a bit to to exit this question right because like what is decred right it’s like Bitcoin by his governance you have some privacy not as bison relay it’s like all these Things and it’s very hard to sell but like if you tell like Monero what’s Monero about it’s about freaking privacy and that’s it right like it’s a very clear thing right dash you know for for for you know I would say like they’ve been really focused on the Privacy Payment narrative because sometimes when privacy coins are hot this does it real privacy color and then we Regulators come we’re not a privacy client I mean you know because different parts of the community are that but it’s very clear they are you know they spend a lot of Time and effort in in getting like Merchant adoption and and places that you can spend on that and I think it’s quite clear like Dash what what is dash aiming for but I’m not so sure like what is the credit it’s like a well-polished project it’s like you know OG developers That that you know made like the first autumn knit uh you know implementation of other but that doesn’t to me doesn’t sell I mean I wouldn’t pretend that I’m great at marketing you know we wouldn’t be at this market cap if if you were great in marketing but it’s kind of Realizing to me that you know we need to be focusing on like what is our coin good at rather than trying to be everything because you know as we are embracing a multi-coin world certain coins will be good at certain things you you can be like half as good At everything but then what are you what are you standing for right and and well that’s just my takeaway that I think uh you know rather than trying to beat everything at one time it has to be let’s just be really good at one good thing but I mean that’s also applies to Me because I have a much smaller team that I cannot afford to be good at everything but I think that’s one of the benefit of an open source uh type of thing like I think early on Z coin as we we previously you know made a lot of Mistakes we spend too much time trying to get this you know Asic resistant algorithm you know trying to please miners who got screwed for that and wasted like two years of our development time and when we should have been focusing just on our privacy and we would have Been probably much better served if we did that and I think that’s my takeaway right if I am rather than trying to extol the virtues of how I’m technically but how I am no trusted set up all this cryptographic thing we have to realize that most people rely on emotions more On like the message the overall macro picture and then you have the fundamentals that back it and I think what you know Tim Cook said like you know an apple you’re not going to say like oh you know that’s how the whole thing different kind of uh you know Marketing campaign came about right it’s like what do we stand for and if we cannot Define that then that’s a problem because then you cannot gear all your messaging in that degree because we can do this we can do that we can do that it’s like all these Things should serve the greater goal of what do we stand for and yeah I guess I’ll leave it there yeah yeah that’s a it’s kind of a an unfortunate thing of the space where first of all I think that the value proposition for Bitcoin was very clear because there wasn’t Really very much competition it was just we need decentralized digital sound money and that’s it and then now everything after that including I mean I think one of the reasons why ethereum’s done so well other than build things that people actually want is you know who knew who Knew they’d won monkey jpegs that’s different story but uh is just to differentiate themselves and do something completely different and I think that um it’s in a weird spot where in my opinion I guess most of them more of this most of the successful projects in crypto like very successful Don’t um I don’t think are the best which is it’s kind of weird but it’s something about being simple has really um worked wonders in the marketing angle and not necessarily you know in the fundamental angle but like so you know obviously Bitcoin everyone knows that ethereum pretty easy even Litecoin it’s Just like silver to bitcoin’s goal just like the faster later Bitcoin it’s like you take the con the and Litecoin you know for lack of I guess sophistication some other ways is killing it in the crypto payments game like if you look at like bit refills statistics if you look at Bit paid statistics you’ll get just the on-chain stuff it and if you look at um so like for example when I spend Dash just about everywhere uh if I look at the services and things that I can use in terms of infrastructure is concerned it’s like litecoin’s like always there Too like it’s like the one where I I could probably switch completely to Litecoin and not really change very much in my life and uh a lot of that has to do with like the Simplicity and again monero’s Simplicity thing about you know just use it always on privacy all that Kind of stuff and this one thing I kind of noticed based on like I guess the projects represented here and Beyond is there’s a lot of overlap on features that are kind of needed it seems like uh a lot of people think a lot of people Aren’t sold on pure proof of stake yet um a lot of people are also acknowledging that having some sort of a stakeholder security uh method makes things a lot more secure for less like not huge projects like Bitcoin with a giant hash rate and you know maybe not Universally but then like governance is a little bit less Universal but a lot of projects are now saying we need some sort of stakeholder voting or something like that we need some sort of a privacy mechanism as well that’s not just like ethereum like account based just Everyone sees the one address or even just pure you know new address every time you at utxo style like Bitcoin style it seems like there’s just a lot of overlap of these what you know what I would say the Market’s starting to say are good ideas Um and unfortunately what it does from a marketing perspective is it makes everyone into a you know into a feature naming project about like where the project does this and that and that you know it’s like one of my things that I if you want to really annoy me you’ll Make an infographic comparing whatever coin you have with like all the other ones you know based on this faster this this and that just like adding weird stats most of it’s by the way lines like almost every info I have not seen a single crypto infographic that didn’t Have at least one serious factual error in it not to mention it just not useful but I guess my point is uh we’re at this interesting stage where a lot of projects are starting to overlap because if you’re finding out what works best you’re going to start doing the same Things to a certain extent but there has to be that like one thing that like why do you need this project why do you need that project you know there’s always like in every project well just join my project all the other projects like mine should just like leave everything They’ve worked on come over here okay okay well it’s like a great easy here but I think that in a lot of cases uh some projects might just have to um focus on end user products for the marketing and rather than the chain itself the chain marketing the chain First off in crypto if you market like oh you know use this it’s like well what am I going to do with that it looks like just buy it and it’s going to go up it’s like it’s purely a speculative marketing for like the base chain but as far as The product that’s on it like for example you could talk a lot about the decrypt decks you could talk a lot about bison relay you could talk a lot about these things that people will interact with that just run on decred or something and uh it’s just like How many companies advertise like Amazon AWS like oh I’m just like an AWS Maxi it’s like no just what stuff runs on and people who don’t actually run these Services don’t even know what it is like how many average people on the street do you know what AWS is like no one knows But it’s marketed to those kinds of people and so I think that maybe we got spoiled with like the the the raw material is the end user product kind of ERA with other projects like you know the Bitcoin or even the Monero kind of world but at some point it might just Have to be we have to start saying like this is the app this is the solution that we want to Market and then that becomes a big thing and um like for example one thing I was uh joking with the the Bitcoin SV folks is um You know I don’t really I the only reason I have any bsv which is like four dollars worth is because I need it to post on Twitch and so I started calling it twitch bucks so I’m not even I don’t even call it bsv it’s twitch bucks Because it’s just why else would you have it right and so it’s that kind of a a thing like where I mean is there any like polygon or arbitro maximalist or something be like Oh I’m just all into that like no they just want to do their nfts they want to Do their stable coins they want to do whatever they want to do uh and it just happens to be the rails that do it and um ethereum might have gotten to where people still are into ethereum but a lot of ethereum users like how many nft people are ethereum people how many D5 People are just like ah I just love ethereum like no they just they’re into defying their nfts they just happen to run it on ethereum yeah I really like both your takes on that I like the idea of of marketing without the blockchain behind it um yeah but uh Certainly do have an identity or we do have an identity problem in decree and I think those simple messages and there’s no denying that monero’s message just works you know we’re privacy just get on with it you know um so yeah I can I can definitely see Both of those points you know uh What uh Joel what was saying here you know like uh talking about your blockchain is like it will interest very few people right I mean um the simple the simplest way to put what if if I talk about decret is Not no longer relevant I think it used to be relevant uh back in the you know during the block size the wars and so on where it was like um like a Peter Peter Todd once tweeted that Bitcoin really needs some kind of coin voting mechanism right we really Need coin voting and uh back then you know if you were into crypto you could just say to people you know decret is that it’s just Bitcoin with voting um but it’s no longer it’s no longer doesn’t work anymore I think even talking about you know like a different Bitcoin better Bitcoin all these things are no longer effective like they perhaps used to be back then because the contentious Forks at some point maybe people really thought this is dangerous or something like that right we really need some kind of more fundamental solution to this Um and this is no longer convincing to people so I think yeah you need to show something that you can actually do Beyond just talking about your infrastructure so the storefronts are interesting in this regard for me let’s say something a little bit controversial but you know If we go back back to um the beginning of Bitcoin you know the two things that made Bitcoin popular first was the um both were basically negative in Okay negative in some way let’s say um the first was Silk Road and the other was uh um okay the other wasn’t actually negative It was basically the Wikileaks was using was relying because it was banned from PayPal I think and all the banks banned it and so on but I mean both were like kind of uh controversial and uh so controversy can be good marketing let’s say like this if you cannot do normal marketing Then do controversial one I think so for some projects maybe that will work you know like Monero people always say um you know uh uh this darknet Market said we don’t no longer accept Bitcoin right and uh you know it’s uh and it works because it shows okay Monero obviously Works well in the Privacy Department if uh if the dark net markets choose to use it instead of Bitcoin um and then from then you can you can go and say if it’s good enough for the darknet markets it’s good to pay for coffee you go the other way around I Like that that a lot so yeah I think next one idea is negative marketing instead of positive I like this idea that we’re moving away from promoting blockchains and moving on to actual fact any new project that comes along now actually has to work has to justify the means Um I I really like the idea of you know you actually have to be able to use this stuff yeah it actually has to work um guys we’re at the one and a half hour point so this has been going an absolute marathon it’s been great talking to you Guys it really has and hopefully we can we can definitely do this again and and and kind of work out some more of this stuff but as Joel likes to say on his show let’s do some Shiller clock um where can we where can we find you And what would you like to kind of finish up with go and Joe you go first yeah so I would just follow me on Twitter and there’s my at the desert links um there’s a million scammers so go for the the verified one uh as always um it’s funny because I actually Had my first uh proposal and impersonator this week where someone submitted a treasury proposal asking for money from the dash Dow and they you they cut from the dessert links and basically copied a previous Proposal with like a few like word changes and people got really confused so yeah There’s always that but that’s just the number one place I just do that um I have a channel called digital cash Network where I do a lot of like interviews and things like that and I’m working on a series or a a video I guess where I’m interviewing a whole lot of Different people around the world who are living on crypto and just kind of a lot of them very different ways and it’s that’s going to be interesting when that comes out so I’d always always do that and um I also do like a weekly news show on There too and at some point I’m gonna be hitting all you guys up as guests so I’ve already sort of talked to Reuben about it but I refuse to make him get up at like three in the morning for just like just a basic kind of news to live News show type thing but maybe one of these days exit should we go next up yeah you can I’m very active on Twitter Exodus DCR posting a lot about decred uh so yeah you can find me there and yeah this has been a really uh interesting chat uh Reuben Uh well I mean just go to our website pharaoh.all f-i-r-o.org I mean I’m also on Twitter yeah Ruben yup uh Reuben yup I think yeah yeah and I post a lot of weird stuff so I mean follow me on the corner it’s not just pure related you know I post boxing Martial arts and cat pictures I get so yeah that’s all I have to say all the classics yeah I love a good pet go I love a good cat picture fantastic timra yeah I’m uh my handle on Twitter is was practice but if you search tivra you will find me I’m mostly On Twitter I sometimes host the Twitter spaces recently I’ll also joined uh what’s his name blue sky I’m also their name devra uh I don’t I don’t see really a point to it I mean it’s the same as Twitter but you know then one nice thing about this small social networks is Everyone is nicer to each other when it’s small when it’s got when it gets big everyone ignores each other I guess it’s like a city or a village you know in a village everyone is nice to each other and I’m also on um bison relay you Want to enjoy and that’s it uh yeah it was really enjoyable and uh I hope we can repeat this multi multi-community conversations I learn a lot from them yeah same as it’s been absolutely great having John absolutely great having reubenon thank you so much for giving up up your time Um just a final a pitch from me cypherpunktimes.com hopefully we’ll go live this week we’ll do the Rebrand um this week and if you have um content from projects around the the crypto space and you want to get involved and you want to publish some Some of your stuff on there you know get in touch um decred societies my handle on Twitter um it’ll be great to see even just even just like um updates of what’s happening in the individual projects or if you have something specific to say we really want to make it a multi-chain Publication and restart promoting some of these projects that are not so high up on the coin market cap list and start working together start getting some more listings on um DCR decks for all these love projects and build up liquidity that way on on a peer-to-peer deck so if you want to get Involved that’s cypherpunktimes.com and my handle is at decode Society um thank you everyone really appreciate you giving up the time um and we’ll see you all next time thank you The state of the market is brought to you by @Exitus and @DecredSociety and aims to look at social, economic, and crypto news.

This is our second multi-chain discussion, which will look at the potential for living off crypto, freedom of exchange and cross-chain initiatives.

In this show, we’ll be joined by: Tivra – @WasPraxis, a regular to the show and enthusiast of emerging tech and Ai Joel Valenzuela – @TheDesertLynx, best known for his work with the Dash community and advocate for living off crypto Reuben Yap – @reubenyap, co-founder and project lead for the Firo project and privacy advocate For those not in the loop, Decred is building a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) around the premise of sound money.Decred has a fix maximum supply of 21 million, is governed by its coin holders and is self funded from its decentralised treasury.

Through its decentralised, open sources and fee-less exchange (DCRDEX), Decred aims to be not only a project for peer to peer transactions but a platform for peer to peer exchange.

An interoperability factor unparalleled by any other project.Find out more about Decred: https://decred.org source.