**Our weekly online gathering, Macro ‘n Chill is the perfect place to discuss this week’s episode, especially since it includes terminology you might not be familiar with. Or there may be someone who needs your help understanding it. Community-buidling on Tuesday, August 12 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register 

What do you know about blockchain?  Surely you’ve heard our episodes with Brett Scott or the Blockchain Socialist or Rohan Grey. Now we have another one. Steve’s guest is Victor Vernissage, co-founder of the project Humanode, which aims to use blockchain to create a biometric based system. Victor, who agrees with Steve that the US is not a democracy, notes that even "decentralized" crypto systems replicate oligarchic structures, where power is tied to capital. 

They delve into the intricacies of Humanode's capacity and discuss how this can be a tool for building parallel systems outside traditional governmental structures. They also touch on the potential for decentralized governance and the challenges of implementation at both local and global levels.  

Victor talks about concepts like liquid democracy with specialized chambers to avoid tyranny of the majority. He explains Sybil attacks and sockpuppeting. The conversation offers insights into how technology can be leveraged for social and political transformation, emphasizing the role of community involvement and the importance of building new economic and social structures from the ground up. 

***** 

Victor Vernissage is a researcher and cofounder of multiple ventures, with his latest baby being Humanode, an egalitarian decentralised ledger built on the principle of one human = one vote in contrast to capital-based blockchains predominant today. Victor loves macro, complex systems and the intersection of crypto, identity and economics, meanwhile building new social structures as code. Learn more about the project at humanode.io 

@tech_mingler on X  

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today's guest is an

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

interesting one. His name is Victor Vernissage and Victor is an entrepreneur. He's also

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

the cofounder of a project called Humanode. And this caught my eye while back

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

because – I don't think I've hidden this; if I've hidden it somewhere, maybe

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

you haven't paid attention – I don't believe we live in a democracy and

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I believe there is a thousand, million maybe pieces of evidence to prove that

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I am correct on that. I don't believe that I'm stuttering. I don't believe

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

that I'm wonky or off or conspiratorial or anything else like that. I believe

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

that I'm saying things that have been in plain sight that have been documented.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

people have precisely zero, when I say zero, I mean zero impact on policy,

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

zero impact on our government, that our government serves oligarchy, that our government is

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

filled with corporates, corporations, people that serve corporations, and the people that are in

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

elite circles that do not represent the people in any way, shape or form. 

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Now, I have been very critical of crypto in my past. I remain so.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

However, obviously I've worked with the Blockchain Socialist in the past as well. There

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

are opportunities to use these technologies for good and to bring about outcomes that

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

are maybe different than what we've thought of. We've talked about smart contracts with

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

guys like Brett Scott and we've talked about "How do you prove who you

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

are?" and "How do you prove the work you're doing?" And it was another

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

project that I was on years ago where we talked about building democracy through

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

these kinds of blockchain-based worlds, if you will, and environments that allow us to

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

work on things that matter to us. We've discussed these things. We've discussed mutual

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

credit. We've discussed a host of them. But Victor has a unique approach to

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

things. Now some of the stuff they're doing is obviously similar to others and

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I'm going to let him dive into all that here. But one of the

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things that fascinated me was the biometric way of proving who you are without

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

giving up who you are, without allowing your person to be spammed and thrown

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

out there and hacked, but yet at the same time still proving, if you

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

think about it, one person, one vote, and obviously these are incubator-type things, they

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

are not in the mainstream yet. They're not going to suddenly take away the

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

lack of democracy that people funnel billions of dollars into every year for consultants

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

to get rich and other insiders to get rich on. This is experimental. And

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

so I feel it's really important to take the understanding we have of modern

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

monetary theory, to take our understanding of democracy or the lack thereof, and to

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

understand the way that these kinds of technologies can be leveraged to maybe blaze

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

a new path or maybe a shadow of the government that we think we

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

have, but we don't have as a means of organizing people and organizing projects

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

and finding a way to get past the blockers that we all face. So

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

without further ado, let me bring on my guest, Victor. Welcome to the show,

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

sir.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Hello Steve. Thank you very much. It's really an honor to be here,

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

given who was here in the podcast before me, my teachers, let's say. 

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

That's awesome. Victor, you have a unique product in Humanode. And I'll be perfectly frank for

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

everybody to know this. I am not a crypto expert. I am not a developer.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

This is not financial advice. 

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Yeah, this is not financial. Exactly. I am not an investor, you name it. I am also not

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

selling a product here, but I am selling ideas. I am trying to get us to think differently.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

So with that, Victor, tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us a lot about Humanode.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Sure. Well, I'm an economist at heart. I first fell in love with economics

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

when I was 12 and later on started few traditional IT startups, let's say.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Not that exciting. Then I ran a crypto research firm for a few years

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

and that's where we understood one basic fact, that all these crypto networks, blockchains

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

as we used to call them, ledgers of shared truth, right? Because that some

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

truth of the monetary system that we agree on, this is what is kept

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

in the blockchains. They are not decentralized at all. I mean, the technology is

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

decentralized because anybody can use it. Anybody can take it and launch another ledger

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

with their own people running it. But eventually the security, the governance, the management

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

of these "decentralized blockchains," they are all based on capital requirements. You either have

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

to buy a lot of equipment in order to mine bitcoin, which is now

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

you will not need a person who mines bitcoin at home because it got

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

industrialized and also politicized heavily. And then all the other blockchains are even more

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

directly, let's say oligarchic, and just resemble the same equity system we have when

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we run our companies and sell shares and all the rest of the blockchains,

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

you basically buy the token. You launch a small server. You lock these tokens

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in a small server, and this gives you the power equal to the number

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of tokens you have. It really looks like the social structures we had long

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

ago, before we discovered the thing called democracy. And it feels like now crypto

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

is still in the dark ages, even compared to the financial systems we have.

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If we don't just look at the speed of transactions, but how it is

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governed. And Humanode is the answer to that, because we are the first ones

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

who are trying to build a decentralized ledger which is managed and governed on

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the principle of "one human, one vote." So every human can launch a server

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at his home or buy a cloud server, which is a prerequisite to start

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validating the transactions as on any blockchain. But instead of asking people to buy

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a lot of equipment or lock their tokens, we welcome anybody who does have

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a lot of money to start participating in the system just by launching this

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small server. And important thing, may sound dystopian, but we're working on [the] privacy

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of biometrics. Biometrics became accurate enough in order for us to understand whether the

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person in front of this computer is real and whether the person is unique.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

In a couple of seconds, on a scale of millions of people, it already

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works fine from any device with even really bad camera. And that's how we

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built Humanode. We merge the blockchain with cryptography to make biometrics private with biometrics

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

themselves. And of course, the most difficult part we're working on is the social

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

structure that governs how the blockchain is updated. What are the next things we're

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going to develop in order to improve the system, and even how the treasury

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of the project is spent, which can be 10 million, which can be billions

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of dollars, and how we can build a system without it falling apart. Have

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we ever had the systems like that, which have no autocrat on the top

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who can come in and veto anything other people do? We are asking these

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questions ourselves every day. We're still architecturing this kind of system for the last

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five years. And yeah, in short, this is what we're working on. And the

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beauty of Humanode in economic terms, and I wish I'm going to live till

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the time when such a kind of system can be adopted, at least inside

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a small community or a small island country. Imagine if the banks would be

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

just applications, right? And these applications all run on a blockchain like Humanode or

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

any decentralized ledger like Humanode. So all the citizens become the equal holders of

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the truth of the ledger. And what I mean here every citizen has a

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small server, participate in the consensus and they can know that they have the

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same power in the consensus over the records we have. And these are not

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just banks having different ledgers and sending information privately to each other, but it's

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a transparent system. And the beauty of it is that when anybody sends money

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

to anyone else, the transaction fee doesn't go to the pocket of the banks,

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it gets distributed equally among all the citizens. And this is something I hope

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could be a basis of UBI [universal basic income] built into financial system. So I

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

think that's enough for the interest Steve, and we can delve into any part

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of it.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Yeah, so really obviously we're talking about the difference between private ownership here, in

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this case, in a sense it would be a shadow versus the public space

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which is run theoretically, it's run democratically because we elect these people, blah, blah,

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

blah. And that has been the standard by which MMT has had its authority,

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is understanding that money is a creature of the state. It's a creature of

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law. And as the state issues money and it gives charters out to sublet

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

money issuance through banks, it ultimately still is very disconnected from democracy.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Yes.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

It's not democratically run because we don't have a democratic society. We don't

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

live in a democracy. No advanced capitalist country has a real functioning democracy.

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I mean, the only place I've seen that remotely looks like this, and

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I'm going to just probably blow some people's minds because they want to hear

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the CIA propaganda is I look at China and even if they have

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a bit of an autocratic government, they seem to be never allowing the

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rich to have more power than they should and raising wages for the

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average workers. And again, this is a state that more closely resembles that.

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Aside from that, my plea has been to build parallel systems.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Yes, yes.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

To build out a way of breaking free of the control, to be able to organize.

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Because see, when you organize within the political parties, those political parties have masters and those

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

masters are the ones that kind of get to decide what matters and what doesn't matter.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

And by building parallel systems, we're not held prey to the every-two-year, four-year, election cycle. We

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are able to build up power and build up organizing outside that's resilient. If people talk

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about a general strike, how in the world would you have a general strike if you

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have no funds, if you have no ability to finance yourself and to keep people housed

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

and to keep people fed through mutual aid, etc.? How would you do any of that

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and actually have a general strike against the oligarchy? Which is what every union person says.

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Even the most normie person out there tries to point to a general strike, but they

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never ever talk about how to build up the capacity or the resiliency of the individuals

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that would have to actually participate in that. And if you've ever been in a union

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anywhere else, you know that the minute the strike fund dries up or the minute the

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people's budgets start getting pinched, they start crossing the picket line. Without some form of resiliency

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built up outside of that system, I have no idea how to take on that system.

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So this is what is intriguing to me about this. Because it is one person, one

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node, one, one, one, one verified across the board equal ownership of the truth, as you

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say. And again, I have my misgivings about some of the right-wing versions of this, but

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from a working-class perspective this sounds like it has potential. And I would imagine you have

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smart contracts written into this. I would imagine you have a host of other things that

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allow people to have confidence in the means of interaction. Would you get into kind of

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the bones of your system? Maybe you even comment back to what I said.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

 The bones of the system. That's a simple blockchain. There is a consensus on

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the level of transmitting the transaction data or any kind of contract data that

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run on top of blockchain. If anybody's familiar how Ethereum works, pretty much any other

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blockchain works the same way. You have the base layer of it, which is

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what we're building as well, which is responsible for all the transactions coming into

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network. Transactions can be anything. It can be a loan. It can be claim

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of the reward in the game, or it can be the result of the

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voting, for example, in your small community of 10 people and basically 66% plus

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of the servers participating in the network in our case have to agree on

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the same state of the recent transactions and that's when it is added through

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the chain of all the transactions that been before. And then again we're talking

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of the basic level. You have to govern this system somehow. This is what

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we call in crypto "decentralized autonomous organizations" [DAO]. But all of them currently are

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capital based. It's really hard to call them decentralized because of that. You usually

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have in popular blockchains 10 to 20 people sitting in one Telegram chat and

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deciding the fate of the decentralized voting, where one venture capitalist who bought in

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early can change the direction of the vote in one second. And really there

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were no very successful experiment on running decentralized organization without the principle of "the

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more money you have, the more voting power you have," even on the level

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of not the blockchain itself, but the smart contract level on top. So basically,

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Steve, smart contracts, they run on top of blockchains because you can build any

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application for organizing your community, organizing your union. Yeah, it would be an application

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on top of the blockchain that we built. But what's the reason to try

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to build a democratic experiment if the base layer is purely capitalistic? This was

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our question all along. We're still asking this question to other people and they're

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like, they don't have an answer to it. I mean, people from crypto.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Take me through this. When I think about autonomous groups getting together voluntarily, coming

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together, thinking about ideas, coming up with ideas, using their one of one power

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to develop ideas and bring them together in these working groups. You know, for

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people that aren't really familiar with this, can you walk us through a day

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in the life of, you know, start us with "Hey, I've got a neat

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

idea," and how that plays out on something like Humanode.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

You got an idea. You go to the forum first and you post this

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idea. You get into discussion with the community whether this idea is viable at

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all. And eventually people say "yes," this idea goes to a voting. And this

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voting, if it's simple, if we're talking about an application, yeah, an infrastructure on

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top of blockchain, on the blockchain itself, then there are pretty simple tools to

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

set up these kinds of votings. Usually I would have let's say 10 tokens,

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you would have 100 tokens. And we vote with these tokens. If the quorum

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of 10,000 tokens is passed, then the vote is valid and it's either yes

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or no. Basically, when it's yes or no, the idea gets funded. And eventually

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there is also a vote after the implementation of the idea is ready, whether

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we want to merge the new thing we just developed or the new rule

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we came up with, with the current structure or not. And this voting would

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again be like, you have 100 tokens, I have 10 tokens, we vote again.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Of course, you decide more. And my vote is almost unheard of, and it

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

would act almost the same way if we're talking Humanode. But instead of having

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money as the proxy of voting power, we would have a more complex social

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structure, let's say. Because you see, when you have just one parameter that decides

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who can vote on what and which vote will be accepted or not, it's

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

pretty simple to build this kind of structure without it failing in some small

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ways, but it will be always failing in a big way, because people don't

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want to live in an oligarchy. And crypto right now is purely oligarchic structure.

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And in case of Humanodes, Steve, it would be a more complex procedure, okay.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

So first of all, not everyone can plug in and vote. Why? Because we

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can all agree democracy has never worked. And there is a wisdom of the

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crowd, of course, but there is also stupidity of the crowd. And there is

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

also a very huge bottleneck in terms of we can't have every person vote

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on every proposal, otherwise we would be still voting, and we would have to

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

be experts in everything. This is why in Humanode we approach the governance like

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

that. So, in order to get the vote, you first have to propose something

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

which is accepted. And it's again, you're going on forum. You discuss it with

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

people. If some people in the decentralized organization who already have some respect tell

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

you, "Yeah, let's go," your proposal gets accepted eventually. And then dependent on what

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

kind of proposal you had. Engineering proposal, marketing proposal, design proposal, you get what

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we call a cognitocratic score. [measure] Okay, this is just a score, let's say

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

from 0 to 10 for how valuable your proposition was. If it was a

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

minor optimization, you get one if you created a great fix for the system,

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

otherwise it would be destroyed. It could be 10. It doesn't influence your vote.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

You still have one vote, but now you at least can vote in your

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

chamber, for example, engineering chamber. You will not be able to vote in the

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

design chamber because you're not an expert there. You will not be able to

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

vote in other chambers as well, but only in the engineering chamber. And the

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cognitocratic measure you got, as we call it, is just signaling for people to

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

understand that you did something very meaningful for the decentralized organization, let's say. And

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eventually you have all these different chambers with people inside it. And each voting

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

goes through two stages. The first stage would be the proposal pool. The proposal

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

pool is the way for us to filter spam so that you don't have

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

voting on every proposal there is, but it has to go through proposal pool

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

and get some core enough attention there. Even if many people said, "Oh no,

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

this is an awful idea," but it still got the quorum of attention of

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

well, I won't delve into numbers, okay, but this is some political science experiments

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we're doing. So these numbers can change.  Eventually if you even had a lot

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

of downvotes on your initial proposal, it can still go through to the DAO

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

because we know that sometimes the majority can be blatant to truth, and then

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

it goes into the real voting, after which the proposal will be funded, will

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

be accepted, and you as a person will be accepted to participate in this

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

democratic process. But I would say it's still permission-less. Anyone can join, but people

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

have to be smart enough and people have to have time for this in

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

order to really end up as a part of the system. And a really

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

important part of the system is that you can delegate your vote to other

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

people. Because even if we only have those people who got into specialized chamber,

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we only got them to vote. Maybe they only want to work and come

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

up with ideas and never govern, but they are sure that, for example, I

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

am a good governor. I am seriously reading every proposal and I am commenting

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

on them, making them better, contributing to getting the system going. They will just

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

delegate, let's say, design to me, but then can delegate engineering to another person

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

and I will vote on their behalf. But compared to the "democracies" we have

246

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

right now, it would be a liquid democracy where if you see that, yeah,

247

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

you believe the person, he was acting completely rational, he was making great decisions,

248

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

but then something wrong happened to him and now he's taking the opposite direction

249

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

and you can unvote him and get your vote back anytime. This is what's

250

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

really needed. Well, let's say when we scale to the millions of, as we

251

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

call them, Humanodes, it would be already like a pretty decent country size and

252

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we would have dozens of proposals there every day. You have to first filter

253

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

them out, then you have to make specialized chambers for this proposal to not

254

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

go through all the millions of people, but just through 1,000 people, let's say.

255

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

And you have to have this liquid delegation in order to make sure that

256

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the voices of the people are heard, even if they don't have enough time

257

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

to vote on every matter in the decentralized organization. This is like a bird

258

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

view of how it's going to happen.

259

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Okay, I'm just informed enough to ask dumb questions. And hopefully my dumb questions are questions other people would ask.

260

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Sure. These are the hardest usually.

261

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

 It really is. But I think some of these you've kind of spoken to. But

262

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I'm unfamiliar with the kinds of attacks that systems and platforms such as Humanode might

263

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

face in this space. I know there's one thing called a Sybil attack, and I

264

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

don't fully understand what that means, but I know it's a big thing and it

265

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

take us through some of the types of attacks that you guys would be anticipating

266

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

and how you would defend them, at least at a high level.

267

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Sure. Steve, I will always be starting with the systems that we have

268

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

right now, [right] before Humanode, let's say. And these are based on proof

269

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

of work and proof of stake, like Bitcoin and Ethereum. So Sybil resistance

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

in general, let's say Sybil attack in general, is a way to cheat

271

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the system to get unproportionally more power in the system by creating multiple

272

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

accounts. For example, you are on the forum and let's say my daughter,

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

she is trying to win a contest in her school, and the voting

274

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

for those who are going to win the contest is, is happening on

275

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

a regular forum without any checks of the identity of the person. And

276

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

this is when I would set up an automated army of bots to

277

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

vote for my daughter and she wins. This is a Sybil attack, as

278

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

simple as that. It's happening all the time on Twitter. It's happening everywhere

279

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

in the web too. And this is how people pay for Sybil attack,

280

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

to get them up in the algorithms and do the things like that.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Then the Bitcoin and Ethereum guys, they have the thing that we call

282

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Sybil acceptance. They accept that there can be a Sybil attack, and they

283

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

say, "You can do a Sybil attack, but it would cost you a

284

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

lot of money." So in terms of blockchain, Sybil attack is a really

285

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

hardcore thing, because at the minimum, if you get either 34% or 51%

286

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

depends on technology, of the stake in Ethereum or the mining power in

287

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Bitcoin, you can at the minimum, stop the network, which is a really

288

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

bad thing for a financial system. Okay? And you can also change the

289

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

history of the transactions, which is the worst, or you can double spend,

290

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

which means that you're sending the same one coin to a few people

291

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

at the same time and creating few [many] coins out of one. So

292

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Sybil attack is a very serious problem for blockchains, for the base layer,

293

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the one that we're also building in particular. So these guys, they have

294

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Sybil acceptance. They say, "Yes, you can Sybil attack, you can create a

295

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

lot of accounts, but it will not change anything because you don't have

296

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

more money." And the more money you have, the more power you have.

297

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Actually, there can be a Sybil attack on Bitcoin or Ethereum any day

298

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

because the capital is not decentralized. And it's really easy for the biggest

299

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

holders to coordinate and have an attack on the network. The beauty of

300

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

it is that it is not in their interest to do so because

301

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

they're earning money off the network every day and they don't want to

302

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

stop.

303

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

You want to build a network based on human identity, not on capital requirements.

304

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

This is when Sybil attack can really destroy you. And we do have biometrics

305

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

as the first mean of stopping Sybil attack. So that one person sitting at

306

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

home could not create multiple accounts, could not generate a lot of deep fakes

307

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

and pretend he is using the video camera, but in fact he's not. So

308

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

this is not possible with the private biometrics we have without knowing who the

309

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

person is. But there is a big problem of sockpuppeting as well. And sockpuppeting

310

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

is when you go, for example, outside and you ask people to scan their

311

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

face and now you control their identity in terms of Humanode network. And now

312

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

you can get the rewards instead of them. You can vote instead of them.

313

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

This is selling your identity. It's not exactly theft because the person gave it

314

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

away for some money, probably to you. But this is what is happening and

315

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

there are ways to stop it, by of course tracking the history of the person's

316

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

contribution to the network, tracking the history of his on-chain transactions and his participation

317

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

in the voting, all these things. But if there is a big incentive, there

318

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

will always be a Sybil attack and especially a sockpuppeting attack, okay?  And this

319

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

is a really important issue for us because if, let's say there is a

320

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

million Humanodes and 34% of them coordinate and download malicious or just a different

321

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

software to their servers, they will be able to stop the blockchain.

322

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Okay. So Victor, one of the things that jumps out at me is

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

that these things tend to be with very techie people with very unique

324

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

kind of personalities that tend to be attracted to these things as early

325

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

adopters. And for you, obviously you're in the exploration phase right now. You

326

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

guys are developing these things as we speak. Do you have laypeople that

327

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

are not indoctrinated in crypto kind of lingo as test people so that

328

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

this can be expanded to more common use? Or is this always going

329

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

to be intended for niche kind of groups? And I guess as a

330

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

follow up, would your intention to be a single standalone platform, obviously decentralized,

331

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

or would your goal be to build bridges with other crypto spaces or

332

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

other blockchain spaces to create a connected ecosystem?

333

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

We do have people who are not into crypto and they're like 77-year-old professors

334

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

of English who are also writing books on the future of the world, how

335

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the world could look like if it had humanotechnology built in it. There are

336

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

examples like that. I'd say for the scale that we have right now and

337

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the resources we have right now, we are not really trying to include regular

338

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

people in all of this because we don't need more Humanodes for now, unfortunately.

339

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

It's a dynamic system that grows with the number of transaction fees on the

340

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

blockchain and we first have to build on the economic part of it and

341

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

then go to the scaling the infrastructure, scaling the number of Humanodes. But Worldcoin probably

342

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

proved that any cryptosystem can be targeted at regular people. Because Worldcoin, they just

343

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

created the software so simple you don't even understand you're using crypto. You don't

344

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

need special crypto wallet, all these things it is possible to do. The better

345

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the user experience is, the more resources you need to build it. Right? This

346

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

is the constraint we have right now for the less techie people. But eventually

347

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

you would be able to launch a Humanode using your phone by clicking one

348

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

button and the payment for your server would automatically go through the blockchain without

349

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

you even seeing it. So yeah, it's totally possible to scale it and to

350

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

make it usable by normal people, not crypto natives or early ambassadors, let's say.

351

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Sure.

352

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

And yeah, it is possible. And your second question, Steve, was whether we are

353

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

interconnected with all the other chains? Yes, of course, you cannot survive without it

354

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

basically. And there is no reason to not be interconnected. It actually takes a

355

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

lot of resources in development and working with all these bridges between blockchains. But

356

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

right now crypto is already very interconnected. In one click you can take the

357

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

asset on one chain and turn it into another asset on another chain. It

358

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

already happened. And what we actually do to other ecosystems, which is out of

359

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

scope of the current podcast. But in our ecosystem we have an application which

360

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

basically allows you to register just one blockchain address for your like physical identity,

361

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

which stops Sybil attacks for all the other applications out there in crypto on

362

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

different chains. And yeah, this is what our tech brings to other chains besides

363

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the social experiment that they can adapt later. But, I think they will all

364

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

be looking for us for the next couple of years. How we do it

365

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

first. And nobody dared to risk so much. Yeah, of course nobody ever pulled

366

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

it off before in this space. What we're doing with Humanode and decentralized governance,

367

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

this is one of the hardest things not in terms of cryptography computations. This

368

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

is just a hard thing to work on just by talking for hours and

369

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

hours and hours, years and years and figuring out for some reason there is

370

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

no paper on how can we build a robust system without autocracy or without

371

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

some shadow rulers behind the system.

372

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

It's funny, I interviewed a gentleman named Dr. James Fishkin who wrote a book and

373

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

does these seminars around the world and has actually worked in like small areas like

374

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Mongolia for example. They were able to create deliberative sessions with random people through sortition.

375

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

And they had experts, but the experts were only able to present their ideas to

376

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

the folks that were picked. Kind of like jury duty almost. And those individuals then

377

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

would enter into deliberation. There was no rhyme or reason. Some of these people would

378

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

be absolutely opposed to the idea. Some of them would absolutely be for the idea,

379

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

but they would enter into a period of deliberation. Deliberation brought people together for a

380

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

change. Unlike we are in today's very weird social media world where we're just stuck

381

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

with ADHD meme-level understandings of subjects and never take the time to really dig beyond

382

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

that. It seems, based on your description of how an idea comes to be, that

383

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

a lot of that is based on deliberation as well. It's not going to happen

384

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

if you don't get people convinced the idea is a good idea. And then once

385

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

people back the idea, then there's an idea to go through this. My focus on

386

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

this is as much on democracy enabling as it is on anything. Because I do

387

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

believe there needs to be an opportunity in there for people to transact without fear

388

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

of the government. And when I say this, I'm not talking like some black market

389

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

mafiosa. I'm thinking of it as an activist who's trying to organize against an oppressive

390

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

oligarchy and build robust capacity outside of the electoral process. So within that, how do

391

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

you envision that deliberative process enhancing democracy at a governance level like your island example.

392

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Let's pretend like we've got an island called Humanode.  

393

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Okay.

394

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I mean, we can name it whatever and we start a government there using

395

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

this kind of system for our voting, for our ability to democratize the commons,

396

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

to create a commons, whatever. Walk me through that on your island example.

397

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Oh, that's a hard one. Basically, about deliberation. We had actually the same question

398

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

just yesterday. We understand that the system we have right now in terms of

399

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the decentralized organization, how it's structured is not perfect one. Nobody has the answer

400

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

to how we could structure the system not based on capital or power given

401

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

to you by representative voting. And we were thinking, should we spend another half

402

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

a year on deliberating between each other? Like it's usually six people talking to

403

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

each other for three, four hours, two times a week. Or should we just

404

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

build what we have right now and give the people talk about it later?

405

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Because we'll have more people involved, maybe we'll have brilliant political science guys involved

406

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

and they will see more than we see. Or, or we have people who

407

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

already run these experiments helping us fix the system. I would say that how

408

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we build Humanode is not how I would build a Humanode island, most likely.

409

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Or maybe I would. That's a good question. Because...

410

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

That's the point, right? Every time I think about this, I hate our fake democracy.

411

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I hate when I see true believers with their Styrofoam pork pie hats and their

412

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

red, white and blue and, and they're little pom-poms and they're cheerleading for non-people. These

413

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

fake focus group tested lies that come out as messaging. They call it "message discipline."

414

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I call it a lie. And they go out there and these people just cheer

415

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

and cry when their person wins or loses. And then nothing changes. It's still the

416

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

same garbage war. You're still murdering people abroad. You're still stealing from the poor. You're

417

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

still fattening the rich. Nothing has fundamentally changed. And it just keeps getting worse and

418

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

worse. So when I think about this, I genuinely am thinking, "How can we make

419

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

something like this work as a shadow government?" as a means of organizing the proles,

420

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

so to speak. I am a socialist, period. I mean, that is who I am.

421

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I'm flat out a MMT-informed socialist. So I am tired of the neoliberal order. I'm

422

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

tired of the people that celebrate it. I'm tired of the people that treat it

423

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

like it's an okay, reasonable system. I'm looking for change. And obviously we're not voting

424

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

our way out of this, but maybe there's a way of getting people organized.

425

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

There is. I really think that we actually shouldn't even start on a distant

426

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

island, because nobody cares about distant islands. We should probably start at the community

427

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

level, which is like the local level. Okay? If you have a small area

428

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

that sometimes even has its own funding because you pay taxes to the local

429

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

government, which is not a currency issuer, we should care about these taxes, at

430

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

least about this one. Unless the federal government can give them money directly. And

431

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

this is where people can already self-organize. Let's say you have, well, ideally 10,000

432

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

people. Otherwise the experiment would be too hardcore. And they are all plugged into

433

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

a common software where they can propose ideas of replacing old benches with the

434

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

new ones, of cleaning out the lakes from the dead bodies dropped there 10

435

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

years ago and all these things. And then they can get accepted by other

436

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

people living in the community and you could delegate your vote to your neighbor.

437

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

If we're talking about the local community and things that we all use our

438

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

common goods like parks and things like that, we shouldn't even have the system

439

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

as complicated as Humanode is because you don't have to specialize in building benches

440

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

to vote on whether we should place a new bench under this tree. And

441

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

this is actually what we could easily start with.

442

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I love it!

443

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

It probably takes just the political power of the person who's currently in power

444

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

on the local government, right? And he could say, "Hey guys, from now on

445

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

our area is using this application and you can propose things. I will propose

446

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

things too. You can vote on them. Let's say it's not right now if

447

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we all vote yes. A pure yes, but it has to be confirmed by

448

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

a person who's keeping an eye on the budget and by me, for example,

449

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

who's now in power in our local government." But this is how we can

450

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

run tests. And what is stopping us from this? I don't know.

451

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I think I do know because the folks that are, how do I say this?

452

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

People that get "elected", and I hate to use the term deep state, but like

453

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

these deep party operatives, they kind of control the power of the party and power

454

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

of who gets the support and who doesn't. And you can see it in the

455

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

United States specifically.   You can see the insanity with the Democratic Party, you can

456

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

see the insanity with the Republican Party as well. And third parties were just not

457

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

geared for any kind of meaningful multi-party democracy. We don't have ranked choice voting. We

458

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

don't have any means of bypassing oligarchy. The system itself is run by oligarchy. So

459

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

at a local level, that might be the only way to get it. And it

460

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

would have to be something part of me wants to say. I would like to

461

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

see it done separate from the actual government in a way of gathering the people.

462

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Because, you know, I interviewed Christopher Shaw a few weeks ago, and he talked about

463

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

464

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

these were people, they were everyday farmers. They were not brilliant, smart banking people. They

465

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

were just determined to not let bankers foreclose on them or withhold funds when there

466

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

would be a drought or when crop yields were hit by pestilence or whatever, and

467

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

those bankers would come in and seize you. So they were looking for a different

468

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

kind of banking, a different kind of understanding of democracy and a different kind of

469

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

understanding of the way that money worked. And so if you think about that building

470

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

resilience outside of that system and bringing it to bear with the actual people themselves,

471

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

saying, "Hey, listen, we've had enough. We know where the power lies. We are the

472

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

power. And you either deal with us in this way or you deal with us

473

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

in a different way." And I'm willing to go down that path at some point.

474

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

This is actually what I heard about Vietnam when I went there. Because...

475

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Really?

476

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Yeah, in some countries, the people in power can do anything to the people. Right?

477

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

But in Vietnam, the people are still so strong after all that have happened to

478

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

them in the last century, that the government can't actually do anything they want because

479

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

they know the people will rise up if they go beyond the limits.

480

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Beautiful. Beautiful. For real at this point in time, obviously you made

481

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

a great point of the idiocy of the majority as well which

482

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

is a terrifying thing when you consider the idiocracy kind of scenario.

483

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

At the same time. I'm sorry, Steve. Yeah, at the same time, I'm talking about the wisdom of the crowds.

484

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Yes!

485

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Because it works. We see Polymarket, you know, one of the best things created

486

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

in crypto, the prediction market, and it works better than any expert out there.

487

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Interesting. I think we need to rethink how we gather as

488

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

people instead of kneeling and bobbing down in front of a

489

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

sellout candidate, talking to one another, who only have our lives

490

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

to concern us. So with our wellbeing, our survival, and then

491

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

putting those demands to these "representatives" of our "representative democracy", which

492

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I just laugh about. I have so little faith in what

493

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

they call "democracy" at this point.

494

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Exactly. Why couldn't we just start with a simple thing? People in one local government demand that

495

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

10% of the budget will be spent on the things people want and 90% still spent by

496

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the guys in power. It's kind of a nice tradeoff for them. We're not asking for everything.

497

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

There should be something, but we have to take a step. And I think the problem

498

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

is people are afraid of change. They're afraid of things that they don't understand. And I'm

499

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

not any different. I have trepidation about our conversation right now. As much as I'm trying

500

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

to understand, I know that there's enough that I don't understand that I struggle with... How

501

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

do I cipher through some of these issues when I don't have this specific knowledge to

502

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

really understand every bit of it? Right? I know enough to be dangerous, but not enough

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

to be truly conversant. So I gotta have trust in you, Victor, and others.

504

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Well. And I have to have trust in my engineers because I'm not the best engineer.

505

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Yes. So we're all interconnected at some level. And to me, things like this. And

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

again, I'm not saying this is the cure all or even the answer. It might

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

be. It might not be, but it is an opportunity to explore ways of organizing

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

people. And I really do like the idea of in whatever fashion, there's gotta be

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

something other than what we're doing now, which is just horse crap, it's just not

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

real. So in the spirit of making sure that people walk away with a good

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

understanding of not only Humanode, but I'm also hoping they walk away with some "aha

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

moments" of thinking differently even if we can't spell everything out for them, that they

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

walk away thinking that "There's more to this story. I need to learn more. I

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

want to learn more." Take me through what people really should get from Humanode and

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

what the possibilities are that you really would like folks to focus on.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

I really liked how you talked about the parallel systems and this is

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

why crypto is a great space. We can build parallel systems which we

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

can engineer and that would work even without us. Right? And the beautifulness

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

of it is that we can go forward as a humanity in building

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

new economic social structures without being killed by trying to change what we

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

have right now in the whole world. And when we do it on

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the internet level, in the community of 10,000 people, we can just take

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the same application and give it to a local community in a developed

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

country. And of course these kinds of changes, they should be bottom up

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

and ideally without any blood spilled, at least in the beginning. And the

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

takeaway would be that we all hate our, sometimes our governments, sometimes our

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

financial systems and we feel like we cannot do anything about it. Which

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

is true if we're talking on the level of a country, especially the

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

big countries like US or China or even UK. But we can change

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

things on the local level, on a scale of one thousand, ten thousand

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

people. And nobody will say, "Stop," or kill us by doing that. But

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

then if we try it on the internet, if we try it in

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

local level, it can be scaled 1 community, 10 communities, 100. And then

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the whole state can work on a new political, social, economic structure. This

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

is possible. People just shouldn't forget about changing the world because they can

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

change it from top down. Of course nobody will let you do that.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

But we can build parallel system, test them, work on them until we

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

die because one day they may become global.

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

That's really fascinating. Do me a favor, Victor. Tell folks what's next

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

for Humanode and where we can find more information about it.

541

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

The website is Humanode.io. Go to the "Learn and Paper" section right away where

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

we have the white paper describing the system, which can be a little bit

543

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

technical, but we also have purely political paper on the governance system we're building

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

called Vortex. The main takeaways from this podcast would get people especially there. What's

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

next? We're working on somewhat boring things of adoption helping projects get to our

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

chain because in order to scale the network you have to get the resources

547

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

scale the network. And these resources come from transaction fees going through the network.

548

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

And this is a lot of work on many sites. But the most exciting

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

thing is that by the end of the year we expect to launch our

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

one-human, one-node, one-vote governance system, at least on the testnet. Then we're going to

551

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

play with it, then we're going to give it a little bit of money,

552

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

something like hundred thousand dollars and we'll see how the wisdom and stupidity of

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

crowd and the system we created will play out. Eventually a few years later,

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

transitioning to the full treasury being in the hands of the egalitarian system, not

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

completely democratic because we have to come up with some new things. Pure democracy.

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Hard to imagine it works.

557

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Yeah, yeah. I mean the challenges just from a technology perspective have to be

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

immense. But then just purely a design approach. I come from an IT background

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

though, not a developer. But you've got that whole requirements: design, build, test, deploy,

560

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

recursively doing that over and over again and I'm sure with more agile development

561

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

work you're coming up with things and testing things based on sprints and ideas

562

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

and so forth. I find it fascinating that we get anything accomplished in this

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

world because it's so hard to gain consensus, much less getting people to work

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

in a structured way or even a decentralized structure. The Agile approach to project

565

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

management, I'm a Scrum master. It does provide some opportunities for building small things

566

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

and not waiting till you've got the big thing fixing things as you go

567

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

so that when you see something doesn't work, you can change and pivot quickly.

568

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

That kind of the approach that you all take to development or is there

569

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

a different way? I know we're kind of talking past the close, but this

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

is exciting to me.

571

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

It depends on what we're developing because in building blockchains, if you are moving

572

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

too fast, it can be not secure enough and well, it will get hacked,

573

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

everyone will lose their money and the project may die. So when you build

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

infrastructure like that, financial infrastructure that also manages the treasury of tens of millions

575

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

of dollars, Agile development is not something you can do. Yeah, that's why I'm

576

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

telling you that we're sitting for years spending three, four hours twice a week

577

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

talking about how we build it and it doesn't fall, in the next minute

578

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

it launches. And you know what I noticed in this world, haven't you noticed

579

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

that 10, 15 years ago we had a lot of books coming out, a

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>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

lot of articles coming out on circular management where there is no head manager

581

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

and people are actually talking to each other, making decisions together and then during

582

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

the last five years it all disappeared somewhere because all the projects run by

583

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

a tyrant, Elon, are actually working pretty fine when he can just come destroy

584

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

everybody and say, "Your ideas are bullshit. We're going to do it my way."

585

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

It's an interesting turn in the development of the management theories, to be honest,

586

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

because I don't see anyone talking about decentralizing the decision making in corporations.

587

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

That is very true. That is extremely true. I really appreciate you helping

588

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

me tie that together because that's been a challenge, is that you got

589

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

all this theoretical methodology and in practice it sometimes falls apart, huh?

590

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

 Yeah, everyone forgot about this. I haven't heard any book on this for a long

591

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

time. Maybe we will be like the next ones already because we will at least

592

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

test it from the ground up on a decentralized structure. Probably these things just don't

593

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

work in the corporate world at all because they don't belong there.

594

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

That's an interesting point of view. And on that note, Victor, thank you so

595

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

much for taking time with me today. I hope that I was able to

596

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

get enough of the Humanode story out there for people to get excited about.

597

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

Sure.

598

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

I hope that people find the idea of building parallel systems in a world where there is

599

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

no democracy. I hope they find that to become more than just some catchphrase, but begin to

600

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

think in the world that way. We're not going to change anything until people think differently, until

601

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

people are willing to conceive of a different outcome. And I think this is at least one

602

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

way of looking at it. Right? I'm excited. Thank you so much for your time, man.

603

>> VICTOR VERNISSAGE:

People like you keep me going and still excited after five years of building Humanode. Thank you for that, Steve.

604

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

You got it. All right. So folks, my name is Steve Grumbine. I

605

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

am the host of Macro N Cheese. I am also the founder of

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>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Real Progressives, which this podcast is a part of. Real Progressives is a

607

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

501[c]3 nonprofit that relies 100% on your donations. We do not paywall. Maybe

608

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

we should. We don't paywall anything that we do because we feel the

609

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

information is too important to put it behind a paywall. Maybe if we

610

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

made it scarce and you had to pay for it, maybe people would

611

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

find it more appealing. I don't know. But we're trying to do it

612

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

a different way. If you find value, become a donor. Become a monthly

613

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

donor. You can go to patreon.com/real progressives. You can go to our Substack,

614

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

become a monthly donor there. Or you can go to our website, realprogressives.org.

615

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Go under the Donate link and become a one time or a monthly

616

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

donor. We appreciate all donations. And with that, on behalf of my guest,

617

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Victor Vernissage and myself, Steve Grumbine, on behalf of Macro N Cheese and

618

>> STEVE GRUMBINE:

Real Progressives, we are out of here.