Shedlon Dearr , Tech Lead talks about innovation and community that Octopus Network keeps as its priority. Its infrastructure that can support new rust applications in a decentralized manner. Exploring the full potential of the protocol and the plans on its horizon , we dive into some of the innovative ways a Protocol can grow. How is the Octopus Network spreading its tentacles across chains ?

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Crossing the Chain - Octopus Network

Participants:

• JP (CMO of AdLunam)

• Sheldon Dearr (Tech Lead Octopus Network)

00:22

JP

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Welcome to this episode of Diving into Crypto. This is your host, JP from AdLunam Inc. bringing you everything about web3 on the show. Today we have Sheldon Dearr from the Octopus Network, and I'm really excited to have a deep dive into what the Octopus Network is all about. I understand it's nothing to do with the oceans, but it also does have something to do with the reason that it's spreading out so much. Before we begin, ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you first, there is an option for you to use those emojis. You can change the color of the hearts or the hands, with the exception of the faces. So please, today's flavor of the heart is blue, of course, because we are talking to the octopus network, and views expressed on this program belong to that of the speaker and is not to be considered as financial advice.

01:24

JP

All ideas that are shared on this program are for education purposes only. With that being said, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like the room is filled up, and we'll continue to do so. So without further ado, let's welcome our guest for today, Sheldon. Sheldon, welcome.

01:42

Sheldon

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

01:45

JP

Awesome. Okay, so, Sheldon, let's get the show on the road. Sheldon, tell us a little about who you are and what you do.

01:55

Sheldon

So I'm technical lead for Octopus Network, and that means that I handle a whole bunch of different things that are sort of front of house technical responsibilities. So that's somewhere in the scope of devrel technical partnerships, literally doing community support. And I love that stuff. It's what I've been doing in crypto for years, and I'm happy that Octopus and I aligned on some shared vision. And, of course, that's why I'm here.

02:22

JP

Super. Okay. Thank you for that, Sheldon. Sheldon, how do I pronounce your last name?

02:26

Sheldon

Dearr is. Right.

02:29

JP

Okay, so Sheldon considered the crypto industry or considered it for either the technology, the finance, or just the fascination with bitcoin. That's been the entry for most of us in the room for the population at large. Right. But I'm curious to understand, what was it that got you into this industry? And more specifically, what was the moment that switch flipped and you said web three is the space to be for me?

03:03

Sheldon

04:05

Sheldon

I was really impressed to see Chinese people taking significant risks to run Bitcoin to participate in the network. And between that and what I already knew about ransomware, I was like, okay, whether this is being used maliciously or not, this works. This is really cool.

04:22

JP

Wow, that's fascinating. I think that's the most fascinating story we've heard. For the first time, we've seen someone that shared an experience that was potentially, of course, negative on the surface, but it led you down this corridor that got you into the industry.

04:46

Sheldon

I'm very lucky for it. It was an interesting opportunity.

04:50

JP

Fantastic. Okay, so we know now what got you here, but what keeps you here? I mean, what makes you passionate about Web3?

05:01

Sheldon

06:06

JP

06:38

Sheldon

Yes, they're pretty focused on it. Go ahead. Yes.

06:43

JP

Sorry, my bad. I think there's a slight delay in the line, but I'll try and work that into the questions I'm asking. In terms of the real world use cases, I want to dwell a little about that and also a little about the community. So let's start with the community first and then go into the use cases that you're seeing. Like you said, the community is slightly different between then and now. I know that the community is important with any project, with any protocol. But more specifically, what seems to be the stock difference? Right? The one thing that most people are not seeing in the community shifts from before and now.

07:28

Sheldon

What do you need to really run a community to anchor a collaboration? Right. You need to be providing value. I think that over the last four years there's been a misunderstanding that value needed to be cash. I totally understand that it's a desperate world out there and people need money, but that shouldn't lead to skipping the jump on hey. This industry is literally designed for value before profits. If you put profits first, then you're going to put a whole bunch of sell pressure on an idea. So I think that's really the main thing that people are pivoting to now is that value propositions that have, let's say, social requirements or that are really heavily socially anchored, that stuff does work. That stuff is worthwhile and interesting tokenizing relationships the way we didn't before. I think that's what web3 is. So I feel like that pivot is kind of happening to us now.

08:21

Sheldon

It's not that NFT projects are overbought this year. It's not that FTX was such a disaster. Just the combined result of all these things is driving people to sort of ask again, like, hey, why are we here? And it's not necessarily for money.

08:37

JP

Fair enough. Yeah. Okay, so I do see some of that's happening, but I'm yet to be convinced about the wider spectrum. Are there specific spaces you're seeing it? Could you elaborate a little more about that?

08:54

Sheldon

Sure. Cosmos is a good example of that. Projects coming out of near Hackathons has been a really nice example of that, how they're integrating with different working groups. So they have some, let's say, official structure that they're drawing from. But also there's a series of privacy communities that are interested in different things, and privacy communities don't tend to step forward and announce. I think that it is a little bit tough to track the progress on this metric. But at the same time, if you look at NFT projects six months ago and look at them today, most of them are working on some social utility. And I'm not seeing as much of the sort of like club promise board. Apes are basically, hey, you're in the club and therefore you get this promise of some off chain benefit. Right. So I think that we're moving away from that gradually to relationship oriented tokens, to social tokens, to reputation tokens, and I think that's much more worthwhile for the industry.

10:00

JP

I would agree with you. Oddly enough, I was having a similar conversation with an industrialist just a day ago, and the last place I expected him to have any focus on was, of course, the crypto industry. So when we’re catching up, one of the things he told me was, hey, this is something that you have to watch out for. There's just so many scams. People have been rug pulled, and my jaw hit the floor. The fact that he was so knowledgeable about what was happening, but at the same time, I know that through his businesses, he can derive a lot of value from web3 tech, right. From not just the blockchain technology, but also web3 tech. So he's got a chain of retail stores. He's gone into ecommerce. He has warehousing a logistics business, distribution for FMCGs and appliances. It's fascinating to see that there still isn't a shift to new technology adoption.

11:06

JP

I'm certain you may come across cases that way. So what would you say to people like that?

11:16

Sheldon

There's pretty reasonable skepticism to have. I think that the mentality of 99% of all businesses fail is a healthy way to approach this industry. But, yeah, I think that filtering is just a matter of detail, and most people are not going to jump up and say, hey, look at my very complex workflow. Here's how this works. But being willing to dive in and rip through that stuff, that really helps you decide yay from nay on whether things make sense for you as a business or as an individual.

11:47

JP

Fair enough. Okay, so tell us a little about Octopus Network and what it does and where its tentacles have stretched out to.

11:58

Sheldon

Sure. So Octopus is a really interesting concept. Basically, we took the mentality from Polkadot, we took the mentality from Cosmos, and we said, when you go to Polkadot, you get the relay chain. You get a place where you can do some smart contract execution or some operations outside your own blockchain. Cosmos is a sort of similar, but opposite positioning where you're going to the hub specifically for liquidity. We said Near can provide both of these things in an efficient way, thanks to rust. So why don't we build a system that lets nier help other chains? So basically, we developed this concept through existing tools already available on substrate, and we use that with a custom RPC to peer up with near itself. So that means that the ecosystem that we've built is right now five blockchains that all communicate directly with near through the smart contracts that we maintain.

12:51

Sheldon

So that is a really different methodology and sort of structure than other projects that I've seen. But most importantly, in that structure, our goal is to help these small projects launch, mature, and eventually either renew their relationship with the ecosystem or leave. And some people get a little nervous about that, sell pressure. But this is normal for just about every independent chain that has a token at some point you understand that economics may not be in a positive place and the validator set needs to get paid. So we're trying to support economics that make that easier for small chains and providing them free resources like an Explorer and an indexer to make sure that they can get up and be successful in their first.

13:37

JP

Awesome. Okay, so, Sheldon, I hear what you're saying about how it was designed and what are you looking to do, of course, and even the fact that you guys are Near Protocol. Did you at any point of time consider why the Octopus Network doesn't have its own blockchain or the integration with near and Octopus seems something that is not just I mean, it seems symbiotic, right, but why that as opposed to your own protocol?

14:12

Sheldon

So having your own blockchain creates a sort of economic demand. There has to be enough value on that chain for it to be worthwhile to try to sell a governance token to make operations between other chains, to make economic assessments to some degree. Right. So Octopus decided a long time ago that the right move was not to make an independent chain that became the layer between Near. And we're still considering the sort of state mine option which know to have a chain that we produce be helping other chains with interchange tooling. But at the same time, let's see, how do I say this? Forgive me, it's early here, I just lost my place. I can tell you that the economic ball and chain is not necessary. At the same time, being on near directly is a significant benefit to us for a couple of reasons.

15:09

Sheldon

Number 130 percent of all smart contract transactions go to the owner of that smart contract, the fees. So that does help us offset costs a little bit. It's not something we're profiting from, but that is a pretty significant benefit to have existing TVL, to have existing DEXs where we can just benefit from operating the protocol and be able to offset costs. And of course, the scalability of near is really valuable if we have a throughput problem today, if we have too much traffic for near, we can have our own near shard very quickly and very easily. And some validators have already agreed to do that with us when necessary. So that modularity and that flexibility from near, it really brings a lot of benefit to Octopus and it's part of our economic design to make sure that we're efficient enough to live on this layer one while utilizing it as a layer 0 platform.

16:04

JP

Interesting. Okay, so the thing is, I find this more and more fascinating because to be honest, I'm not entirely tech bent. But what you're telling me, it begins to scratch the surface of where exactly the entire spread and the utility when it comes to the Octopus Network comes in. I'm also curious to understand some of the ideal kind of projects or the ideal kind of businesses that the Octopus Network will find a close fit with. Could you tell us a little more about that, Sheldon?

16:43

Sheldon

I can I can tell you that I don't have a really precise answer for you because we support substrate chains, but substrate chains that are community projects that have their value proposition contained on chain, that is the main type of entity we want to support. This is not the most common thing, of course, but there isn't a certain use case that we look for. I'll tell you that. We do prohibit sort of regular DeFi at the moment because being able to create assets out of thin air and then sell them against Oct, this is negative capital pressure for us that we don't want to sustain while the ecosystem is young. But otherwise, gaming, health, privacy, social media. Yeah, go ahead.

17:31

JP

For a second, but if you can hear me, can someone please give me an emoji?

17:38

Sheldon

You were gone for a second, but I think you're back.

17:40

JP

All right, sorry. That was me. I lost you at the Oct. Sorry. Go for it.

17:48

Sheldon

No worries. No worries. So there isn't a single use case that we look for. We are prohibiting DeFi at the moment just because we need to make sure that there isn't a capital sort of threat to Oct token while it's young. We do support DeFi tooling. It just means that you can't create the sort of unbounded creation of valueless assets that is something that would not pass us an audit, but different verticals that we're supporting right now include gaming, health, social media, DAOs of different types. And there's a few other projects that I'm really excited about that fit a bunch of different social use cases. My favorite one is sort of trying to upend the concept of a museum, saying that if you can afford to submit some gas on chain, if you can afford to go into a sort of curator's process and talk to them about your artifact, then you've got a chance to have that preserved.

18:44

Sheldon

So there's a bunch of different things, but there isn't one use case that we look for.

18:49

JP

Sounds like you have interesting days at the office.

18:53

Sheldon

Yes, that's true. It never gets boring.

18:58

JP

All right, that's brilliant. Okay. I'm glad you shared with us a little about the type of projects that you guys like to work with. Do you also want to elaborate a little bit about some of the app chains that you launch and run?

19:14

Sheldon

Sure, I'll run it down in order. Debyo is the first chain that we helped launch. They've recently renewed their UX and started offering a product to substitute some of the different period tracking platforms that are centralized that sell your data. So they have a product right now that is, I think, burn 100 tokens. It might be burn $100 worth of tokens, and then you have a public privacy database the same thing that you would be using for their genetic health service you have that protecting your menstrual data. So I think that's very interesting. The second chain that launched is Myriad. That's a social platform that lets you federate your own social network to a larger social network while maintaining a Twitter integration and tipping. So that's a pretty cool one. Also there's Atocha which is Puzzle, Incentivization. You're creating and solving puzzles to sort of, let's say, validate that you're human and confirm that the puzzle can be solved and that the solve makes sense.

20:19

Sheldon

So there's a whole curation and governance around that. There's Discovol, which is literally a curation DAO. So that is any content from any social media or any link anywhere, you can post it and say, hey, I think this about this. Can you guys give me some, you know, incentivizing an attention economy there. And also Fuzotao is doing DeFi tooling. So that I think was one of the most recent chains to launch. And their model is on chain execution of an off chain order book. Basically, if you're a small centralized exchange, you can put your order book on chain so that the chain validates that you are not front running your customers. So as a point of building trust, you can sort of preserve your order book with this trust paradigm. So I think that's a really interesting suite of variety. And there is also an artist collective launching with us very soon.

21:11

Sheldon

But the pending Appchain candidates, they're also all very interesting different gaming tools. That museum concept is coming up there's, I believe. Ten appchain candidates that are all working on different products that don't compete head to head with those first five.

21:27

JP

Well, I'm certain that the last one that you mentioned was something that probably FTX should have used apart from QuickBooks, and that would have been and I'm certain that we wouldn't be in the state that we are today.

21:42

Sheldon

Absolutely agree. And to the degree that we don't expect to be an FTX killer or to take over the world with billion dollar liquidity, starting small with that sort of thing is the way to go.

21:53

JP

Amen. Amen. I hear you. Super. Okay. So, Sheldon, I like where you put a spotlight, too, especially where the development aspect comes in. The kind of network that you're building, the utility use cases. And you've already created that art for us in terms of where your passion lies, how you got into web three, what Octopus is doing, and all of it, of course, is linked quite well together. I'm curious to understand what is the next block that's going to be added to this, that's going to be linked up to this. So where do you see this going from here? Where do you see Octopus going from here?

22:41

Sheldon

Well, I want to be transparent that there is a lot of things that I was talking about this year that I wanted to see completed. This year. Some of them aren't going to make it. There's different dependencies in different places. So I'll highlight the most critical one in my opinion, which is ICS-10 from the IBC standard. The Interchange Foundation gave us a grant to work on this, and we did start working on this, but ICS-10 was designed for block headers and not for block finalization. So that means that it was sort of known to be incomplete, and that was okay. But after doing some auditing and understanding substrate a little bit better, the move is to make ICS-10 and ICS-11 happen at the same time. So that's the work I'm really excited for next year, because once ICS -11 is validated, our solution for IBC between substrate chains and cosmos chains can be used by anyone.

23:32

Sheldon

So that's what I'm looking forward to the most next year. And we did have that on the map to get done this year. But like I said, there was a series of different dependencies outside our control, and of course the solution has to be validated and confirmed to be secure before it's sort of safe for the open world. So I'm really excited for that.

23:52

JP

Fair enough. Okay, controversial question. You don't have to answer, but are there other chains that you're flirting with?

24:02

Sheldon

Other things that I'm flirting with, you said? Oh, yeah, of course. So I was active in Polkadot Ecosystem and Cosmos long before I had heard of Octopus Network, so I'm still pretty present in those communities. I still like the way their economics and their culture work. I've been keeping an eye on FTM a little bit recently. I did not expect Andre to sort of revive from the grave again. It seemed like he was tired of this engagement stuff. But he's back, so I'm keeping an eye over there. And there's a handful of other interesting entities I'll just point out really quickly. Cube Network is an example of a modular consensus concept that also has IBC Hyperledger, not Hyperledger. Sorry, Datachain JP is working on IBC clients for Hyperledger, and eventually IBC for ethereum as well. I think that's probably the shortlist of what has me the most intrigued that I'm keeping an eye on besides ICS-11, I have those GitHub updates to read every day.

25:06

JP

Okay, super. Of course. Thank you for sharing that with us out there. I'm also curious to understand about now, if the way ahead is something that you've shared, the expansion is something that you shared as well. What about the economy? I mean, what constitutes the economy at Octopus Network?

25:36

Sheldon

So we use lease proof of stake at Octopus, which means the Oct token is really a collateral tool binding validators on these other blockchains to Octopus Network and to near. So that sorry, I'm looking from the old questions. I need to stop looking at the old write up. Sorry. Can you ask the question more time? It's early here.

26:03

JP

I apologize no worries because it is overwhelming, right? There's so much that's going on. There's so much that has to happen. There's so much that has happened. But at the same time, the question that I was coming to you is of course, tell us a little about the Octopus economy. How does that work and what are some of the good stuff to the highlights from there?

26:29

Sheldon

27:22

Sheldon

To say, hey, you agree to this relationship? You do want to participate in this economic loop which is leased proof of stake the Oct token being leased out to people who need proof of stake for economic security so there is some other operations for the Oct token but we can come back to.

27:43

JP

Yeah, sure. So it's interesting, I'm curious to understand why choose this model if you were part of the decision that made to do that because it's in some way different from a standard use case.

28:02

Sheldon

Sure, I'll be transparent that I'm not a founder, but I'm pretty certain that we're on the same page about this ethos, this mentality. There's lots of different, hey, I'm the best thing out there, you can trust me to talk to all your favorite layer ones type of projects and bless them. Some of them are doing really interesting things, but they are making themselves important in order to help users. And we just don't see that as a worthwhile relationship. Of course, it's very direct and linear to say, hey, if I profit off a beneficial relationship, then I can keep doing it. But at the same time, we think that asynchronous relationships and open source development make more sense as a way forward for web3. And that means building cool stuff has to happen first. If you have sell pressure on top of it from the beginning, you can expect that to put a damper on things, right?

28:52

Sheldon

So that's the way that we see a need to develop tooling between different ecosystems that isn't necessarily us in the middle and hopefully we'll be other people utilizing the endpoints Astro Network and us have a partnership because we need to help them develop those endpoints. One of those endpoints is not going to be us. So that mentality is really to push the building of the space forward and not prioritize our market cap in the short term.

29:21

JP

The reason that question struck me was because not just it was unconventional, but as you said, right, it's open source, it's asynchronous, and it's more along the lines of moving together as opposed to living off each other or profiting off each other. Because the moment that one of the two parties don't profit or whatever number of parties don't profit, that relationship cease to exist. But the way that you've and hats off to the team as you've structured this, that you're really looking at this as not just something different, but in a way to develop the ecosystem where a rising tide lifts all ships.

30:06

Sheldon

Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the reasons I'm really proud to be here, is that the shared vision that I'm sure that we all host is not a Web3 where we get rich. We've been in crypto for long enough. The majority of people in this project. We're not chasing the bag. We're chasing web3.

30:25

JP

That's brilliant. That's brilliant. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. It's a real pleasure to hear this. It's refreshing to hear this as well. So kudos to the team at Octopus Network. I'm glad that you have that orientation. There's too few of us in the industry that think this way, but I'm glad that you guys are at the forefront of that.

30:47

Sheldon

Yeah, thanks so much. It's a little bit hard to be in the space and not have a very direct business and profit model, but at the same time, it's part of why I'm here and so passionate about this.

30:58

JP

Well, certainly it is a long term game, without doubt. So that being said, Sheldon, I want to pivot back a little to the point at which you said that the orientation that you have when it comes to small businesses and of course, one of the challenges that most developers face is, of course, understanding commerce in that commerce or business or having the entrepreneurial mindset in addition to an engineering mindset.

31:40

Sheldon

Right.

31:41

JP

But do you find that as a challenge, or is it one of those challenges that really excites you?

31:52

Sheldon

I think that there's pros and cons here because it's easy to get caught up in things that are not necessarily economically viable or that may seem economically viable, but have very obvious flaws. So I think that there does need to be an engineer back to the other end of the scale and completely nontechnical person back towards the engineer. Me, personally, I'm very lucky that I live in the middle. That's part of how I'm helpful, is that I understand both sides pretty well. But you're right that the average person doesn't come to the. Table with those skill sets, both. So I think that there's a lot of room for nontechnical founders to collaborate with engineers. But at the same time, nontechnical founders can be I don't want to say lazy, but they can be intimidated by the tedious nature of stuff that they need to learn to really sync up with that engineer.

32:43

Sheldon

So I would say if you want to bridge the gap, if you want it to really make sense, having that person who is an economic architect who is not necessarily the developer, or if it is the developer, do. Some war games with your concept, and let that be the way that you go about it to sort of assess if it makes sense. In order to conduct those war games effectively, the non technical person is going to have to learn some stuff. So I think just some glossary, some basic design stuff, it should be enough. At the same time, if you're a nontechnical founder and you have a token project design or public asset project design of any type, cryptocurrency or otherwise, it's worth consulting an engineer before you really set that design in stone. So I definitely agree with your statement. There's some need for both of these skills, and they don't always live in the same, let's say, like, right brain heavy space.

33:38

Sheldon

But yeah, there's definitely a need for both.

33:43

JP

Well, certainly. And of course, one of the challenges for most developers is the ability to take that aspect forward. Because I remember when you said about the hackathons that come out of the near hackathons that had happened earlier and there were some of the projects that you associated with one of the dimensions. And I'm glad you're on the show today because this is something that does need to get a spotlight on. When you have a team that works into a project, you have all of them sitting around on a hackathon coding it. Right. They're developing a solution, and the people sitting in that space tend to have the engineering mindset. Right. No judgment here. It's just that's what the team comprises of at that point of time. I often see that there is a large requirement to take those projects out into the real world and turn them into businesses.

34:46

JP

And that brings me to the question as how do you at Octopus Network help projects like those expand further? What is your orientation? What do you guys do with that?

35:02

Sheldon

Sure, so we like the hackathon bounty kind of vibe, but at the same time, it is associated with some mildly exploitative, let's say, framing. So we don't want to set up an environment where people are spending money to come to a physical in person event and then are sort of spending all their time on hackathon type activities. Our accelerator program is basically a one month engagement that says, hey, we're here for you. Whatever we can do to support you, just pop up and ask, and we'll do what we can to support you, I think that's much more productive. And I totally understand incentivization and camaraderie in the way that hackathons have been put on, and I'm not talking shit about that. But simultaneously, the way that we help projects is our accelerator program. And that also means that if someone doesn't make it through that accelerator program and is still applying for what's called Appchain Candidate status, meaning that they're sort of like an acknowledged entity building on Octopus Network, then we give them one on one support in the chat.

36:01

Sheldon

So there is a private lobby in Octopus Network's discord. You can only see it if you actually work for an Appchain project or if you are an Appchain founder. And anyone who is building an Appchain at Octopus Network has a lobby that they are effectively sharing with somebody else. I set this up on purpose. I decided the permissioning, and I said it wouldn't make sense to create a small private enclave for every small entity that we want to interface with. We need a semi public lobby that makes sense for people who are actually doing stuff. So that's the sort of tiered balance right now is the accelerator program substrate education for developers who are looking to get into it but haven't brought a project forward. And then long term, if you do sort of come forward and say, hey, we are interested in building with Octopus, it's our duty to help you.

36:54

JP

Epic. Okay, I like that. I'm not going to say just tentacles in that area, too. But you've also been able to create a good circular loop where this is concerned in the ecosystem, bringing hackathons to becoming projects, to becoming solutions that have real case utility. Right. A real world.

37:26

Sheldon

I lost you for a second.

37:27

JP

It's left hanging. Don't you think?

37:33

Sheldon

I lost the middle part of that. I'm sorry. I'm not sure if it was you or me, but I lost the middle part of your sentence. Sorry.

37:42

JP

Right, okay. Sorry. I think for some reason it may be me. Sheldon.

37:51

Sheldon

Just a second. Let me see.

37:53

JP

Oh, there you are. Okay, I lost the sound, but the good thing is that on the phone, what I do is I keep the captions on. So I know that you've lost me somewhere in the so, as I was saying, so coming back to Hackathons and you know, at Octopus network, having a circular system where you're able to take a project, develop it into have them close the solution, but also turn them into a project that has real world utility and in that manner foster something further for the ecosystem.

38:34

Sheldon

Yeah. So the mentality and the model is really that whether you're in the accelerator program or you're working with us on the side, we want to help you realize your minimum viable product, your MVP. So sometimes that means that you have decided that your sort of initial feature set has to be pretty deep for it to make sense. And that's really common in a bear market right. Is that you want to have very significant value, not just an initial starting point, but we're trying to help the understanding between that and our audit process. So every chain that launches an Octopus is manually audited by us. So instead of leaving that audit to the last second and saying, oh, surprise, this isn't allowed, we would rather just collaborate with you while you're working, it's more efficient for everybody. Right. So that model of, like, hey, we want to shoot the gap between what makes the most sense, which does have an on chain value proposition, which is a self contained value prop.

39:29

Sheldon

39:48

JP

Fair enough. Okay. All right, so let's go a little bit into more of the substrate projects before, which I did remember that there was a question I had to ask you about how let me see. I had it written down, I'm sorry about the OTC economy. You gave us one use case. What else is there?

40:13

Sheldon

Sure. So the main purpose of Oct is to act as a simultaneous governance token and collateral token. Right. So that collateral token is the least proof of stake model. It really is borrowing value from the root layer of near. But the other opportunities available with that are mostly governance based. So that means that anyone who holds Oct can give their opinion, can be part of a veto type vote when the app chain goes to launch. That means that if the app chain literally doesn't get the thumbs up from the community, they don't get to go forward. Additionally, because that's for all Oct holders. Additionally, if you are a whale or if you're looking to sort of take a significant stake in the economy, there is a supervising governance council that we've designed. Maximum number of seats, I think, is 25 people. But if you are so bold as to occupy 1% of the Oct supply, then we would like to entangle you in some deeper governance.

41:11

Sheldon

We want to know more about what you think about the ecosystem. You're a big enough token holder to the point where it makes sense that your voice matters. Right. So that is a higher level of governance, but we're also playing with a couple of different alternatives and things that we want to build in. I think a pretty easy example of what I've been talking about internally at Octopus is Spree S-P-R-E-E. This is a sort of cross chain governance concept that comes from Polkadot ecosystem. And basically each of these chains has their own governance on chain and that is integrated with their products. At the same time, it may be purposeful for them to have like an Astro DAO, a very easy to use DAO on near based on their validator set. So having a sort of public council between the people who run a blockchain and the people who are working on new software for it, that's the next step that I can see is some better DAO integrations with near and just making that make sense for more people to raise their voice about the protocol.

42:13

JP

Super okay, that being said, children, I'm also curious to get your ideas about where do you see Web3 going in the industry, for example, over the next five years? Even though I agree it does look bleak. Now we've spoken about how things are going, but over the next five years, what do you envision is going to be pivotal. What's going to be the shift from your perspective?

42:47

Sheldon

Let's talk it on mute there for a second. So I come from a cybersecurity background where I was used tokenization outside of crypto a lot and I know how corporations use that stuff. The most common use cases for credit card data because it's very easy to have a hash that represents a credit card instead of actually moving credit card data around on a non compliant network. So I think that outside of compliance, that tooling and the way that has worked for corporations is something that's coming to people. So what does that mean? A person doesn't necessarily have a SAP system and a giant database that they need to share with somebody else and charge a fee to access, but they may have a social relationship that they want to quantify, that they want sort of publicly posted or rated by somebody else or entangled in a larger reputation economy.

43:35

Sheldon

So I think that's the way forward that we can expect is that people have been working backwards towards use cases for a while. We're going to have to work from use cases down for a little bit to make the bear market make sense. Really easy example that I've been leaning on is DAOs as a solution for unions. On the one hand, it doesn't actually change anything, but on the other hand, having an individual registry where each union member is posting their votes publicly makes it very hard for union leadership to go against them, as I've seen in a few recent instances in the US. Where the leadership of a union literally voted opposite the entire body of the know. So I think that those kinds of social needs, they're still very real. It's not necessarily work oriented, but it can be. I think that's the immediate future of tokenization of Web3 that we should expect is that a social dynamic created by an NFT project doesn't make as much sense as a social dynamic that already existed where someone makes an NFT project to go with it.

44:40

JP

Fair enough. Yeah, I would look forward to a future where the exact same model, the transparency of having a boat, exists. Right. Because as much as we can rely on system spade, being able to publicly see that is a whole different ballgame. And I'm hopeful, just as you are, that it's a matter of time before we see that happen.

45:11

Sheldon

Absolutely. And I think this sort of hiding in plain sight mentality is the way that tokenization is going to work. And of course, with roll ups and privacy and fungibility all improving in different ways that'll get more compartmentalized over time. But I think that's a really exciting destination for us is data standards, social groups coming into web three and saying, hey, I do want to be on more than one chain because I see value here and I see value here. I think that's the future.

45:40

JP

Yeah, well, in a bright future it will be if that does happen. But let's stay optimistic, right? Let's stay optimistic and just keep working in that direction as much as we can because that is certainly a future that will empower more people since they understand that their vote matters, their voice matters in the way that it should, not just the way that the propaganda is built around it. Right. Fair enough. Okay, Sheldon, I've had a great time speaking to you, but I know that the rest of the audience in the room and myself as well, want to know what's your personal philosophy? What makes you tick? What makes you wake up in the morning and fires you up? And don't say coffee.

46:28

Sheldon

No, I love coffee, but it doesn't love me, so that's off the list. So honestly, what gets me out of bed every day, what gets me going and staying productive, is this idea that comes from a slight religious upbringing. I'll skip the details, but basically I believe that I have an obligation to make a better world because I want to have kids, because I want to be happier with what I see when I'm dying than what I was seeing while I was growing up. So making the world a better place really is what gets me out of bed in the morning. And I know that sounds like terribly effective altruism, so don't take my word for it. Trust what I do, not what I say. But at the same time, I think that the sell pressure in society is very real. Watching my friends sort of go through COVID challenges and not just struggle in a bear market, but have a hard time in the current labor market.

47:25

Sheldon

It does make me keep going because it makes me think about what we're working on in web3 today and how unions and different social organizations can benefiting from this technology if only we had a little bit more resources and time to work on it. So, yeah, I think that the industry has been racing against the profit motive for about six years, maybe eight. And honestly, part of getting out of bed in the morning is understanding that force will always be there, but that it's not the truly dominant force in web three. So it sounds silly to say because web3 is such a label associated with extractive behavior and all this stuff, but I genuinely believe in read, write, execute as a model for web3. And that means that we need to talk about the profit motive more seriously over time.

48:13

JP

Well, thank you for sharing that, Sheldon. I'm certain there's a lot of us that will agree with that same mindset and that same philosophy. We're all here to make a better future. Some of us are here to make a better future for ourselves. And some of us genuinely still feel that making a better future for everybody else around me is touching on that secret to happiness, is that if you make someone happy, then that's what really makes you happy.

48:42

Sheldon

Well, I would say that being externally happy can be very unhealthy. So grain of salt with that, but at the same time, doing good for other people, it should make you feel good, especially if you're doing that in a healthy manner. And yeah, I do genuinely like being a helpful guy. And it's not necessarily because I love seeing the world a better place. I just like being a positive influence. It does feel nice.

49:08

JP

Fair enough. And God bless boy scouts. They you know, they did give us something to there's still too few of us left, but hey, Celebi, right? Celebi. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to open the room up for questions. I know that you've got tons of them for Sheldon. What you can do is raise your hand or request to be a speaker and our team will get you listed. If not, you can also send in your questions to AdLunam Inc. or the speaker directly and we'll pick them up for Sheldon to answer in a moment.

49:42

Sheldon

Excellent. While we're jumping on that, let me grab some water really quick and I'll be right back.

49:48

JP

Sure, go for.

49:51

Sheldon

Wow.

49:51

JP

Okay, I can see that there's a few questions that are already piping. Okay. Okay. So, Sheldon, when you're ready, I've got the first question from ND, says you've mentioned how right, okay. So you've mentioned how Octopus network helps small businesses to take it one step larger. How do you see blockchain helping emerging economies? What's your take on that?

50:37

Sheldon

So I think that in the west we're used to SaaS applications. We're used to sort of like one person being the center of attention because they have all the collateral and they have all the tooling. I think that's something that's going to get skipped in markets like Africa. That means that there are sort of similar business needs that exist here, but there aren't similar systems in some cases. So instead of joining two SaaS platforms and then calling three different people to try to integrate them together. I think it makes a lot more sense to say, okay, all three of us care about this good or service, let's track it together. Basically go back to triple accounting. That was the real thing that made this industry start become worthwhile, make a splash, et cetera. So I think that's the way forward is that the thing to expect is that these needs still exist, but at the same time it's not going to be Hyperledger fabric for everybody.

51:33

Sheldon

It's probably going to be smaller blockchains that are just for their purpose. So basically what I'm saying is that I think the Cosmos model of ecosystems is going to be the most strong in the way that this kind of modularity works because people will have these business needs. And the way that makes sense is just to save money and to sort of take less steps in a process that needs to be collaborative.

52:00

JP

Fair enough? Okay. Yes. And I'm certain that has answered the question. Okay, I've got two more. Five more.

52:07

Sheldon

Okay.

52:07

JP

So first one is for a new developer, is it easy to transition into web three or to get started with blockchain technology? And also, what is one of the biggest misconceptions about blockchain? Second one is can you jump into blockchain?

52:30

Sheldon

Sure. So I think jumping into blockchain quickly is a little bit more challenging than more traditional development. If you were looking at JVM in a small environment just a few years before the start of Ethereum, then of course, moving on to EVM, you have some advantages and some similarities. There's still a lot you need to learn about Ethereum bytecode, about the way these networks operate before you can make an application that really makes sense if you're working in JVM. And that's a non block producing structure and that's just a Java virtual machine that you're working with inside a business that is going to behave differently and have different requirements and different challenges. Honestly. So I think that it does take some upskilling. It can be a little bit difficult to directly switch. What was the other question? Sorry.

53:24

JP

Right, so the first one was are there any misconceptions about blockchain?

53:29

Sheldon

54:26

JP

No, fair enough. Okay. Yeah. So there are multiple use cases we got to watch out for, so I hope that does answer your question. Right, okay, so the next one is all right. Okay, so this one comes in from Nadja, and she's asking, is there still a future for someone who wants to work in Web3?

54:47

Sheldon

Yes, I think so. I'm pretty enamored about being in the space. I left corporate it for this thing. I think that there is going to be this period of uncertainty while macroeconomics are difficult, and the larger narrative for crypto markets is sort of up in the air. I don't think it's up in the air, but I think people see it that way. So I think that in the short term, getting web three jobs isn't necessarily difficult because there's still lots of very many people active in the space. At the same time, it's a small market. So when you look at the difference in engaging in trading on forex versus engaging in trading on a DEX on a single layer one, even if that layer one is ethereum, that's a very different market size. So I think that's the one thing to know is that it is still quite worthwhile feasible.

55:33

Sheldon

It's productive to operate in this industry, but it is very young, so know that it's a small market when you're coming in.

55:41

JP

Fair enough. That's good advice. Okay, next question. The next question comes in from Gloria, and she asks, will you also support projects and other chains in the future? Will you stay on near? I think you did answer that one, but for Gloria, I'll cover it.

55:56

Sheldon

I'll cover it. So we have no plan to leave near. We like the way our integration works with near and when we plan to be here. And definitely near is our biggest investor. And just personally, I'm a fan. What I can tell you outside of substrate chains, is that Cosmos chains are next on the roadmap. So if you want to look at our GitHub and keep an eye or follow some of those repos, you'll notice that Cosmos SDK is the next ecosystem that we want to support, because we see what's going on in Cosmos and Polkadot, and we think those are both productive ecosystems. So that's how we'll be supporting them is through the scalability of near.

56:36

JP

Fair enough. Okay, I think that was our last question for the day. Sheldon, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your thoughts. More power to you guys over at Octopus Network. And one last thing. Where do people find you? Give us a shout out to Octopus Network, but tell people where they can find you if they want to follow for more.

56:58

Sheldon

Sure. So come check out our website at octnetwork, you're welcome to also PM our Twitter account here that's in the spaces, we're open to questions just about anywhere. Discord, Telegram, we try to support anyone on any platform that has a genuine interest. Me, personally, I'm pretty active on Twitter. I'm trying to figure out a new social way forward because I don't like just living on Twitter and giving that information system my thoughts and feelings. But at the same time, that is where you can find me these days. So if you have a question for me offline or there's something that you want to work on or know about Octopus Network, you're welcome to contact me or tweet at oh, I think I might have lost JP again for a second. But, yeah, I'm a relatively open guy. Sheldon I'm also a privacy advocate, so please respect if I need to backpedal a little bit.

58:04

Sheldon

But at the same, I'm just I believe in this concept and I'm happy to be here if people have questions about it.

58:10

JP

Super. Sheldon, once again, thank you and Team Octopus Network for being on the show today. That's it, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. Please remember, we will be back next week at the same time at the same place. Tell us what you think. Drop us a comment, send us some love for all the stuff, the good stuff that you've heard on the show on the wonderful people that come here as well. Remember to tune in on Tuesdays for our other podcast, the Future of NFTs, hosted by Nadja Bester, our co-founder, and she talks about everything that's in the NFT space. Also, just to bring that out there, we'll be coming up with an internship program at AdLunam, so stay tuned. All right, that's it, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Cheers.