The Blockchain Socialist

I spoke to Thomas Heremans, CEO of the Obol Association. Obol is an ecosystem for trust minimized Ethereum staking that enables distributed validators (DVs) across a cluster of nodes in order to improve resilience as compared to running a validator on a single node. Previously I spoke to Osín Kyne, the CTO of Obol Network and they had plenty of updates since last time.

Thomas gave us a refresher on what DVs are and what they can ena...

I spoke to Ferran Reyes and Pau Escrich, co-founders of Vocdoni, a blockchain based voting protocol used by several non-web3 organizations. They were born out of the Catalan independence movement in Spain from which they have designed Vocdoni to be censorship resistant and friendly to your average non-web3 user.

During the episode we discussed some of the elections  where Vocdoni was used, the cryptographic primitives that make it a...

I spoke with Paul Glavin, contributor to 1Hive and founder of Gardens v2, a platform for communities to manage assets democratically using conviction voting. 1Hive was one of the first projects in the crypto space to explore alternative governance mechanisms on Gnosis Chain which is the chain where we've build Breadchain Cooperative.

We discussed what conviction voting is, how to better fund public goods in crypto with it and t...

While at Devcon 2024 I spoke to Beth McCarthy, program director of Funding the Commons which I also spoke at in Bangkok about our progress on building on-chain post-capitalism with Breadchain Cooperative. Beth is also my co-author for the Katabasis crypto science fiction series and we spoke together at Devcon about the meme power of capital and why it's bad.

We discussed Beth's suggestions for building community when thing...

While at Devcon 2024 I spoke to Andreas Tsamados, cofounder of Fileverse and anime gif connoisseur. I highly recommend trying out ddocs.new as a decentralized alternative to google docs.

We spoke about the issue of radical communities using google docs, the importance of decentralized and censorship resistance knowledge sharing systems, and how this is all possible on Fileverse.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on...

While at Devcon 2024 I spoke to Josh Tan, the founder of Metagov, a laboratory for digital governance and lead of DAOstar, a DAO standards body (that I have also been doing some work with as well).

We spoke about making democracy just as available as autocracy in digital systems, making alternatives to venture capital, and AI as collective intelligence. We also spoke a bit about the DAOIP-5 web3 grants metadata standard that I'...

While at Devcon 2024 I spoke to Sarah Friend,an artist and software developer from Canada and based in Berlin. In 2023, she was a research fellow at Summer of Protocols, led by Venkatesh Rao and the Ethereum Foundation, studying the death of protocols and published a paper on "Good Death".

We discussed her findings in her research on how and when protocols are considered dead, how different human cultures view death and th...

In Thailand at Funding the Commons I spoke to Jake Hartnell, co-founder of Layer, a modular tech stack to build decentralized protocols using Eigen Layer's shared security. Jake is also a contributor to Juno and DAO DAO in the Cosmos ecosystem.

During the discussion we simplify how Eigen Layer works, what new affordances it brings, and what it means for collaborating across state lines. What is something that is norma...

While at Devcon I spoke to Anuj Das Gupta, co-founder of Smart Transactions with Vlad Zamfir. Smart Transactions offers advanced blockchain solutions with context-aware, decentralized, and customizable transaction capabilities.

We spoke about how MEV (maximum extractable value) gives someone the ability to control time for a split second, how the control of time has influenced the transition to capitalism and why we must n...

In Thailand I spoke to Florian Glatz, probably the first crypto focused lawyer in Europe and possible the world and co-founder of Common Ground, an on-chain social network. Florian also helped author some part of the MiCA legislation in the EU which lays out the legal framework for cryptocurrences.

We spoke about his experiences in the early days of the ICO boom, the unpreparedness of the legal system for crypto, and how C...

To finish off the year I spoke again with Chainleft, a pioneer in the on-chain art world and my online dopple ganger. We spoke about his newly released piece Crimson Echo (codename: Blood Journey) which is "A generative film, built by Ethereum Virtual Machine, compressed and stored fully on Ethereum, exploring how stories emerge through permanent acts of individual and collective conscience."

Be sure to be a part...

While in Thailand during the Funding the Commons design jam, I spoke to Tony Lai a co-steward of Mothertree Labs with Susanne Aichele who I spoke to in the last episode and Founder of the Blockchain Group at CodeX Stanford and an Edmund Hillary Fellow.

We spoke about Tony's interest in how to embody being a post-capitalist, Buddhist vs. Christian imagery, as well as his recent trip to Bhutan where he and others advis...

While in Thailand during the Funding the Commons design jam, I spoke to Susanne Aichele from Mothertree Labs. Susanne is a filmmaker, researcher, and communication practitioner focused on the intersection of ecology, community, and identity, leveraging experience with BBC, National Geographic, the UN, and WHO to create projects that foster interconnected ecologies and non-extractive practices.

We spoke about Susanne's...

There seems to be an ever increasingly thin line between crypto, scams, and financial domination. I spoke Steve Pikelny, CEO, CTO, CFO, COO of http://FastCashMoneyPlus.biz and Jesus pamphlet collector aka steviep about his newest art project FinSexy to explore the uncomfortable intersection between findom and crypto.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find conte...

I spoke to Eric Alston again! Eric is a professor at University of Colorado and recently completed a fellowship with the Summer of Protocols studying the governance of killswitches. His report is titled "Killswitch Protocols: Or On Engineering Recursive System Death" and co-authored with Seth Killian and Garrette David.

During the interview we discussed the history of killswitches, the many ways they can be gover...

For this episode I spoke to Simone Robutti. Simone works as an organization designer, adversarial researcher, and teacher. Formerly a software developer, he has been part of different chapters of Tech Workers Coalition since 2018.

During the interview we discussed how to start a labor union at your tech company, innovative ways to go on strike, and how tech ideology as psyoped you to thinking labor struggle can't work...

For this episode I spoke to Ahmed Gatnash, the Executive director of Kawaakibi Foundation. He is also a Strategy Advisor at the Albert Einstein Institution, and is the co-author of Middle East Crisis Factory, a primer on systemic crises and a vision for a positive future for the MENA region.

During the discussion we spoke about the context of the political economic situation where Islam rose, the economic policies that wer...

For this episode I spoke to Suji Yan, CEO and founder of Mask Network. Mask's main product is an open-sourced browser extension that wraps around several web2 and web3 social media networks. Rather than starting a new social media platform, the extension brings the benefits of both kinds of social media.

During the discussion we spoke about Suji's journey from jou...

Note that this interview was done in Spanish, you can find the youtube video with english subtitles if you need here.

This episode is part of a subseries where I've partnered with my comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association and their initiative called the Commons Economy Roadmap (CER) where we will be interviewing some of the projects listed as part of the CER. In this interview we spoke to Neri Ortiz...