Be Less Worse: Richard Moore (ricmoo) - ethers.js

Transcript

Rick, hi. Welcome to the Human Protocol podcast. >> Thanks for having me. >> Excited to be able to do this. You and I have chatted in cities around the world at different in different years at different times, but I'm really really glad we get to to do this and kind of share um a little bit more about the personal side of building in this crazy wonderful space that we are in. >> It's definitely crazy times. I mean, it's always been crazy times, but now especially. No, especially we will get to that. Okay, so straight off the bat in your GitHub bio, you just called yourself a random developer from Canada.

That's either the most humble thing anybody has ever said about themselves in this ecosystem ever or the most apt description. Which one is it? >> I mean, I feel it's a very Canadian thing to be humble in general, but you can't call yourself humble. So, I guess both. I don't know. I mean, I feel like a random person. There's nothing special about me. Like, I just kind of enjoy developing and open source is fun. And so, yeah, off to the races with it. And random it be. >> Random you. It's really funny. I feel throughout my time in crypto, I have been surrounded by Canadian friends.

Like, for some reason, we have I have a big affinity with Canadians and them to me. It's you're really really lovely. Make >> I mean I just mentioned a second ago how there's like big forest fires like off camera how there's big forest fires. There's this great like video of this like train that's like going through the fire. He's like hey man you know we might die soon. So no hurry but we need you to like get the train uh signals working. Like what I I'm obviously not doing it justice but like it's just such a Canadian thing to be easygoing and so maybe I mean Vitalik's Canadian. There's that too. And uh >> yeah, it's true. Like I don't seek Canadians out, but a lot of the people

in the space are very much Canadian. >> They are. So >> they are. >> Yeah. I had not thought about it. >> I mean my ex-coounder Mark is Canadian. Scott from Goodcoin. >> Artic Jacob. Jan from Life Pier who's who was at Life Pier. Many many wonderful Canadians. Shout out to the wonderful Canadians. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Okay. [laughter] I usually do this because I want a little bit of a a little bit of a glimpse of who you were before, right? BC before crypto and we were chatting about this earlier. I want to start give me a nutshell of what that journey was, but also the Kickstarter project that

didn't really take off and you just wrote the line. I learned a lot. So I would love to know Rick what did you learn? >> Okay. Uh so I mean I guess I'll give the quick TLDDR which is I went to the University of Wateroo in Toron like in water obviously uh a few hours west of Toronto. Did a bunch like did a bunch of co-ops. So I wrote the graphics engine for the Blackberry. I went and worked and we designed the Kindle Developer Zero on Amazon Kindle for those who know of that thing. Um, so I mean I had lots of like really like experience is very compounding like when you get really good experience early on like the next company looks at you and thinks oh wow and d even if the initial oh wow was like a small oh wow they kind of

compound. So anyways I went to work to Amazon for 5 years or something crazy like that. >> It's a crazy amount of time in my mind to work for the same company. >> Yep. >> And then went to BC British Columbia in Canada and wanted to do my own thing. So, like yeah, one of the things was a game engine. I just wanted to try the Kickstarter thing out. Like it failed and I'm so glad it did because so the things I've learned a lot about Kickstarter is like you look at these projects and there's so much additional cost on top of just like like the rewards and everything.

>> Okay. >> Like it it would not have been like if I would have succeeded, it would not have in any remote sense been cost feasible for me to provide the stickers like for $10,000. Like once you're doing the stickers, the mailing, the the all these extra little things. I mean, just shipping. I mean, one of my newer projects is Firefly. I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point. But the point is just to send one Firefly to New Zealand was $35. And so, if I'm covering the shipping, sending stupid stickers to to places around the world, it gets real expensive real fast. I can't remember what the other rewards were. Probably custom Raspberry Pi with a with a version of whatever. like it very quickly would eat up every dollar from it. So,

>> yes, >> Kickstarter is a cool idea, but I think if I were ever doing it again, I would definitely have to heavily inflate the prices. And at that point, it almost feels like disingenuous because who's charging $20 for a pack of stickers in the mail or or like it. I just don't understand how a lot of Kickstarters work. I mean, to be fair, of the like 30 or 40 Kickstarters I've probably funded in my life, I think I've got three or four of them. And so, the success rate is really low. And I feel like those companies Oh, yeah. I'm still expecting a code to dot at some point. Totally forgot that one. Yes. So, I mean, a lot of it I just don't see how it is like cost effective for anyone outside of weird situations to like do the Kickstarter thing. Obviously, it works

for some, but >> tell me, other than the fact that Kickstarter doesn't make sense and the fact that you're glad it didn't work out, what was Was that very close to when you got into crypto or No, >> I don't think so. I mean, I was just trying to throw a ton of ton of things at the wall, see what stopped. Okay. Like, it had nothing to do with crypto. It was just like a random game engine for I mean, it was it was actually a hackathon project from a hackathon called Tow Jam, Toronto Jam. >> Okay. >> And so, it was kind of fun. I was like, I'd like to see if I can turn this to a thing. Um, I mean, at the time, I was just working like contract to contract keeping things together. Like, I always talk about I had this great little like

it was a five- bedroomedroom house. There was seven of us living there. There was two kitchens and one washroom, which is the worst decision imaginable. It was It was a very But I mean, it was like $400 a month rent. So, you could not beat the the It was It was like Bohemian living. It was awesome. >> Okay. Okay. So, then from the Bohemian living in the Kickstarter that didn't work, how did you then find yourself into crypto? So during actually the next hackathon that like the following year, a friend of mine was like, "Yo, have you heard of this thing called Bitcoin?

There's this place across town that like like has an ATM." And so we took a break out of the hackathon cuz and got on a a street car. We went a hour across town, got to the building and it was locked. It was closed for the day. Um but there was a sign in the window saying like, you know, weekly meetups on Wednesdays, come on in, chat with like like-minded people, da da da da da. And so started going to that. Uh that's where we met Vitalic. That's where we met like I mean there's lots of interesting people in the space. I mean Jeff Coleman, Anthony Diario, a very good collection of random I mean I'm sure people know Gerald.

>> Yeah. >> From Quadriga CX. I mean we all hung out and had drinks and like everyone just seemed like a normal person and so it was it was just like a fun little club type thing like like I don't want to say club like >> sounds very wholesome. Well, and and that's the thing and that's why I bring up Gerald because it was very wholesome. Like you hear somebody who like embezzled and and absconded and all these things and you think like you know they're a scammer through and through but he's just some dude that you go for drinks with. Like we never even thought of that sort of like Yeah. So, another story I often give to give context of why I really got into crypto was, and I always preface this with, I don't know how true some of these stories are, but

these were the these are the narratives that were given the time that got me excited about it, which was there's these women in Afghanistan who because they're Afghani are not allowed to have wealth. >> How to inspire? >> Well, it's is okay. Yes, that does sound familiar. There you go. So basically these women that could not have wealth because as an Afghani they their father's brother's husband name of name a male figure in their life gets all their their wealth and so they were able to actually acrue money through bitcoin because it's like for me that's the big advantage of things like bitcoin or I mean obviously ethereum I'm more of an ethereum maximalist these days but when you're in it's not for people like us who live in Canada or Portugal or places that are first world countries where

your your visa works your bank is going to more or less do the right thing. I mean, people complain about taxes all the time. It's not a need. It's like it's when your institutions fail you, when your government or your banking system is so corrupt, they will just like like rugpull you. Like the officials are rugpulling you. And so that's who we need to build crypto for. Not to make another billionaire more billions, but to make people who can't have a bank account have a bank account. So that's what got me excited about it in the first place. And that's the thing. You talk to these people at these at these uh blockchain events and it's a range of people who were trying to like skirt taxes with the government. Like there was like random people who'd go out in the forest for a month at a time

and hunt mushrooms. It was just like the craziest group of people. It was so eclectic. Like you have nothing in common other than there's some reason you think money is failing people somewhere. So, >> and you kind of feel an affinity because those values are aligned or rather the concerns you're concerned about similar things. >> Exactly. I mean, not necessarily for myself, but in general, like like Yeah, we were seeing I mean, look at the way the world's gone since then. Like, it's really gone oligarch. So, >> at the time it was just kind of like felt oligarchish. Now it's So, so having a way to like thwart that type of behavior seems fitting. So did you I mean other than having these

conversations and then obviously having drinks and being wholesome, what did you when did you decide to do something? Because obviously we have the my my favorite again another quote with ethers is basically I just threw it up on GitHub to see if anybody would use it. and I mean, right? Well, so I started doing some contracts, like I said, just doing random contracts so I could afford to try doing my own random throw stuff, see what sticks. So, I started getting into like crypto space, like we started doing these like technical like smaller groups, but technical uh meetups. And then I wrote Bitcoin D and Python just kind of to like learn how it all worked from like the ground up. And that's when I started getting contracts from some of

the people in the space. Okay, >> they weren't serious contracts, but they were enough to like, you know, buy ramen, afford rent, like those important like living life day-to-day type things that you really need to be able to do to to go to a Starbucks and just like work all day on on code. And so the guy that one of the guys that hired me, so he wanted he wanted a Bitcoin wallet. So we built a Bitcoin wallet >> that he wanted an Ethereum wallet. And at the time Ethereum hadn't launched yet, but he was one of the early funders of Ethereum. >> Okay. And so he wanted this wallet for the sake of like, oh my god, this story, right? So at one point we got this like wallet. It's like it's written in JavaScript. It's like running in a web page. It's like barely working. And so I

show it to him. He's like all excited. He's like, but you know what? Like it's still like super early alpha. Don't actually use it for anything. Just like try it out. See how you feel. And then like an hour later, hey Rich. Hey Rich, come here. Check this out. He shows his damn wallet. It's got 120,000 Ethere Ether in it. I mean, or no, sorry, $120,000 worth of Ether because Ether was only worth like 30 cents at the time or or 50 cents at the time. And I'm just like, what the hell? And it turned out there was So, luckily that wallet was fine, but there was a 1% issue in that wallet that the funds would be unspendable. So, I'm so glad he didn't hit that like 1% bug, but dude, it was just like it was wild west days back then. So, I mean, that got me into it.

And then I started to realize so at the time we were using Web3JS and Web3JS was like 8 megabytes. It was just mad massive. >> Especially back in like 201 what 13 14 like an 8 megabyte website was untenable. And so um I started writing ethers just to make my own wallet >> better >> on top of >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like so it is just like I wanted to like kind of cut code space down, do my own thing. So I just kind of like wrote my own wallet again all open source. Not trying to compete with the person I just wrote the wallet for.

>> Okay. just in general trying to write a wallet including more like similar to what frame eventually became. It was basically a web page that would have your wallet in it and you could load pages inside the page and the wallet would be exposed over this like x-frame protocol yada yada yada. The thing is so that was called ether's io because it was like the input and output of ethereum. >> It never took off but the library I wrote for it kind of started getting track getting traction and then like you mentioned Scott Moore Scott Moore cuz well okay sorry I'm all over the map. another use for ethers.js because at the time there was no JSON RPC protocol like public things like Infura and so ethers scan existed. So basically I made something that looked like what inferior's API was on top of ethers scan

and that was useful because we also do this weekly meetup again from the same group of people where we would make a smart contract. And so the first week we sit down in this this big room they rent a big classroom. There's probably like 50 of us there. And the guy at the front, Nick Dodson, he's gonna teach us how to like, you probably know Dick Dawson as well. Uh he's going to teach us how to like make a smart contract. So he's like, "Okay, download this thing called GU. Start syncing it on your laptop because we're going to make a smart contract." So we made a smart contract, deployed it to the real network with real ETH. It was live. And then the next month we do the same thing. He does like kind of the like every month is like you have the same

primer and move a little bit further. So the next month he's like, "Okay, uh, so start, so download GU now and start syncing cuz it's going to take 5 or 10 minutes before we've sunk the entire blockchain, sync the entire blockchain, and that way it'll be ready for when we get to that part." And then the following month, it was like, "Okay, come prepared because it's going to take like 2 hours to sync the blockchain." And so this was the advantage for Ethers is because Ethers didn't need to sync the blockchain, it could talk directly to Etherscan and look enough like the same API that the same code would work. Okay.

>> And so that was one of the parts of like it was a whole collection of like kind of the right things coming together. >> What year is this? >> I mean whatever year Ethereum came out. Maybe the year after like 2014. Does that sound right? 2016. Oh, maybe 2016 was the >> 2016 if you were already this. Yeah. >> Yeah. Maybe it's 2016 cuz I think 2016 is when the first release of like the public release of Ethers came out. I mean this was originally just like a random script. I was sharing internal to this group of people who were like, "Yeah, wow. Ether's been 10 years."

>> Are we having a party? What's happening? >> How do I I have to look up what date actually came up. We probably missed the birthday already. So, maybe we'll do an 11th birthday or something. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Off by one air. So, yeah. I mean, that's kind of how it took off. And that is what got me into crypto. And then well the thing like once Scott Moore got involved because at the time I mean I'm still doing contracts because again ramen and rent matter and >> that massive pyramid of needs needs to be taken care of. >> Yeah. Like like living I won't be able to code if I'm living on the streets.

>> Correct. >> I could probably live coding in my parents basement. But that's got other concerns. >> Yeah. >> So yeah. Scott's like we have this thing we're doing called Gitcoin. Like he's explains it to me like so many times. I'm just like I don't get it. I use every open source library in the sun. I've never donated a thing to any open source library. There's no way in the world anything remotely like Gitcoin would ever work. I'm so convinced. Like there's no way anyone's going to pay when they don't have to. It's open source. But he convinces me. So I'm like fine. Sign me up. Like like give me a profile page d fill it out. And I mean I think that first round I made like $3,000 which is like more than I'd ever seen ever for a single line of like open

source code I wrote. And like I had I think even still today the number one AES library for JavaScript, the number one AES library for Python, the Script for both like it's just like I've written a lot of open source software and I'd never seen a dime. And so like the idea that three so now also like in my mind like maybe this is like tenable. I mean maybe this is like something and like fast forward like a year I think one round made $80,000. Now it dried up real quick after that. like basically yeah but at the time it was exciting at the time like wow open source is a thing and I mean most of the money I've made off that I put into endowment and that's what I'm paying myself today with so I mean it kept ethers alive for a good

while. >> Yeah. And so when from that moment or from when you launched it cuz then you went and I think that's where we met at one of the early events where you basically went around to show people or talk about it and so on. Where was the moment where you just went to like boom in terms of downloads and what was that like? Was it gradual or was it overnight? >> It was so it was so gradual. It was like definitely a frog in a boiling pot of water. Like it was I never even noticed it. Well, cuz the other thing is keep in mind that Ethers was made for me more or less IO on top of Ether's JS.

>> Yes. >> And so like just seeing other people using it was already like like crazy. Well, you know, one thing that made me feel kind of big was when Bitcoin was taking off. >> Y >> again, not because like people were paying for it. The thing I thought crazy at the time was there's like 2,000 people who donated a dollar and crypto at the time was non-trivial to use. Someone taking the 18 minutes out of their life necessary to like install MetaMask, do all the MetaMask things, figure out how to fund the damn car. >> Gas was ridiculous >> and gas was absurd. and to do all this just so they could send me a dollar.

Like having 2,000 random strangers is like the money is is one thing, but the time the time investment on behalf of these the manh hours for them to get that $2,000 for me is is bizarre. And so yeah, it's uh so I mean that was definitely the warm fuzzy moment of like, okay, this is more than like this is actually something I can do. >> Yeah, I forgot the initial question. Sorry. >> It just basically it was more how did it like grow and grow? cuz at one point it like clearly surpassed the Ethereum Foundation web 3JS in download. >> Yeah, that's true. I do recall I mean and that happened kind of earlier on than I very much expected.

>> Okay. >> Like I cuz I remember starting to give talks at Devcon's on it. Devcon 3 was the first Devcon I talk on it. I think it was Cancun. Yeah. >> And then you did Prague cuz I think I met you in Prague. >> Yes. >> And then >> and then I started doing like basically like Yeah. basically every DevCon, every every interesting event, people wanted to hear about ethers. And I mean, again, for some random developer in Canada, it's pretty exciting to like we want you to come talk for for half an hour about your thing and like okay, like I never stood in front of people or talked about a stuff that I did. Like it was a fun I enjoyed it. It was I mean I'm kind of an attention I love being the center of attention so it worked out very well.

like I I have no I mean obviously I was nervous at the beginning but I feel like I'm I'm less worse now and I mean often times I just get excited and forget I'm even there and just like going off of random tangents and getting lost and yes >> and forgetting what the question was >> and I forget what the question is all the time. I really need some sort of that's the AI need some like little bar at the top that says by the way this is what you were asked you're currently talking about granola bars get back to the >> to the point and then it zaps you with a tiny bit of current >> that would be wonderful oh my god you yeah once we get neural link it'll it'll just be like all automatic just like >> that's going to be your new weekend

project done >> so as all of this was happening and then obviously for a random developer in Canada you're like you know people know who you are and you're, you know, like want to talk to you and want to have you on stage, etc. Was there as cuz again, you started traveling, you started going to all of these places and so on. You were still and as far as I'm as far as I know, you are still maintaining the whole thing yourself. >> Yes. Yes. >> What was that like particularly when you were having millions of downloads like the responsibility? Was there a weight of responsibility? Was it keeping you up at night?

>> It wasn't keeping me up at night, but for sure like I mean and now I'm especially so concerned with every release. Like it's definitely like releasing is a big deal cuz you're just afraid you're going to break something. you're gonna in some way that just I I mean well and nowadays I am beyond paranoid of even having computers with logging credentials for npm like running this this session right now because like we're seeing npm is so that's actually another random side project I'm working on a little bit too is to like circumvent the necessity for npm but that's like where a lot of the that's where a lot of the attacks are coming from now like people doing supply chain attacks on on npm. I watched there was

one yesterday was some crypto guy on on Twitter where he thought he was doing an interview did like a yarn install from some thing he downloaded from from GitHub. Like I mean to me that's an obvious no no. But there's a lot of things I read about that in hindsight were an obvious no. But maybe at the time like I've got friends who I consider very very crypto adept. >> Yes. and they've run the wrong Zoom link and next thing you know they've got things that were taken. So >> yes, >> so I mean I take it seriously. Um I also try to put money pots anywhere that matter. So you basically have like a pneummonic.ext file sitting somewhere.

So at least if any of the computers I care about are compromised. >> Mhm. >> Somebody's going to find that pneummonic, they're going to be like I'll just steal this one ETH. And once they steal the ETH, then I know, okay, whatever keys are on the computer like got to be slashed and and nuked and replaced. Okay. >> So, I mean, there's some mitigating measures, but it is definitely for sure like it I don't know if keeps me up at night, but makes me very apprehensive about cutting a release for no good reason. Like people are like, "Oh, we made a bunch of docs changes." I'm not publishing to MPM because like it fixed the smallest of bugs and and uh fixed the typo fix a typo in some documentation somewhere. So, yes.

>> Were there So, obviously, like we said, you started this to scratch your own itch and be able to to build ethers.io. Was there anything that you wish you knew before you started this and everybody and every app is using it and is dependent on it and so then any bug and any release and any whatever is your responsibility. >> I mean, there definitely are. I don't know if I know of any, but there's definitely unknown unknowns. Like there's definitely things that if I was learned them today, I would have said, "I wish I would have known this 5 years ago."

I mean, I guess the one thing is do not ever change APIs ever, no matter what. as hard as they they may seem like going from V5 to V6. There was already a fundamental change where we're moving from like was like ethers had a big number class that it used for doing the addition and all that but then in like 2019 they released like officially JavaScript added like a support for it and by about 2022 it was like widely adopted and so I switched over to using that class and like so I because it's already you have to change everything I made a few like bigger changes in the APIs people did not like change I mean I think about one quarter of the people still use a version of ethers that's like I'm going to say like four or five

years old now just because like a lot of projects don't have I mean cuz if it's working they're not going to break it and so and a lot I think a lot of them are are semi derelict you can imagine somebody who threw up a website in like 2020 that takes a pneummonic and converts into an address >> I mean there's no need for them to change anything the the algorithms haven't changed for that but yes like changing APIs definitely is a is a big change and I guess that's the Yes, when you've got millions of download like there's 16 million downloads a month I think right now and so like when you have that >> amazing >> well it's amazing and I love it but the momentum means that any change you make just has so much resistance against it because like that's mpm that's

developers installing it that's not like like that I feel that's the thing that's not really appreciated mpm is such a lossy metric I know we use it for like figure out what grants to do and all that but it really does not measure like real world Like when you install MetaMask, it doesn't bump the mpm number at all. Like ethers is living in MetaMask doing its own thing. Like when you deploy your like you mpm install it once and you deploy to your your website and you a million users that just shows up as one download on mpm. But likewise, some random person who's just like, "Oh, I wonder what this username is." And they type npm install. That has as much weight as that website, even though that person used it for 11 seconds said, "Oh, I don't like the the code style, and so

I'm going to abandon it." Like, it it's such a weird number cuz it doesn't mean what it's supposed to what people treated as meaning. I mean, I I feel like most of the changes in my mind I'm thinking about are like structural changes, things I would have done on the logistics side to make managing the code easier. I feel like there's not really anything like personal I can think of that like I mean in my mind I always imagine in the same way you imagine yourself being on a spaceship going off to Al Century and you're just like what movies do I take with me cuz I'm watching these for the rest of forever >> right >> like I feel like that whole example just blew my entire like mind story I had my >> abstract right exactly >> let's do let's do another question

>> doing all of this and maintaining it and going to the events and doing all of the work and so on what has that cost you on a personal level if anything >> but I mean in terms of time in terms of things that you could have done and you didn't do because there was a bug because you had to do a new release because etc etc >> right and so the one thing I was going to say is like I can imagine what my life would be like if I was never doxed like imagine if people didn't know who Richard was and ether is just like some random thing out in space >> that I mean I wouldn't trust that at that point >> would you have loved to just be anonymous and nobody would ever know.

>> I don't know if I would have, but I always imagine what it would be like because you meet all these people. Yes. >> I mean, there's some big people in the space who just you have no idea whether they're even a human. Like it could literally be like like some alien side project where like let's watch let's see what these people think about this this crypto thing [laughter] and watch them spin their heads as they realize that this completely solved math cuz P equals MP is like super important and we're just going to like mess with them in 10 years time. Like so I mean it's it's interesting. I I'm not saying I wouldn't want to be doc again attention But like I just feel like it's interesting to me how people do it and like would like that's the question like would I want to be completely unknown or

or have an anon account somewhere in space doing something. I guess I just told the world I don't have an anon account but like it's a like what if you had some sort of like like secondary unless I was a mislead. Yes, there we go. It's just I don't know. I I think about it a lot. I just imagine when I'm like man cuz right now like everything is doxed. everyone last week there was that ENS vote and the people works like for the the security council and the person's like I'm fully doxed I'm just like huh I never even thought about that fact but I you don't get much more doxed than than me like >> so anyways it's just more of interesting thought um so yes but your other question was what I would have done otherwise >> what have you sacrificed personally and

time was one of the examples that I gave anything like relationships things that you could have done and you couldn't because again bugs, releases, etc. >> I mean, I actually feel like I'm definitely net ahead because I was doing this as able to travel while I was like like it's been great being able to travel >> and do work. My wife does the same sort of work. So, we've been able to travel to Prague together for for two weeks at a time and just find like what we did in ETH Prague and just like work from a Starbucks. So, I feel like net ahead I am. I mean obviously I put a lot of time into ethers and I have like I have a massive bucket of like other projects that you know I find interesting I started but just did not have the time

because I think another important part with like a a side project is that momentum. You need to really dive in hard, dive in early to get far enough ahead that you kind of want to keep going. And so there's definitely like random side projects that I would have enjoyed doing otherwise, but I mean, [clears throat] yeah, Net definitely I would not have exchanged ethers for anything else. >> Okay. Aside other projects, what and who are you when the laptops closed when you're not coding? I know slime molds and snowboarding and penguins and >> what who is Rick when he is not coding a

million projects and ethers. >> So that's true. I mean I guess like slime molds fascinate for so long. I want to get into them. Okay. The time just wasn't there. And I mean it's not like I couldn't have made the time, but to be honest, most of my most my spare time not working on Ether's things are coding other things. Like it's like even from even when I was like a kid, like like I started programming when I was nine. It was just the pastime like on the Vic 20 like poking away on a that crazy loud keyboard. Like it was just it's just it is my pastime. It is what I do. I mean, if I'm not doing that, I'm either watching random TV shows. The Good Place. Best show ever, by the way.

>> The Good Place. >> Highly recommend. The Good Place. >> Um, but otherwise, like I watch like YouTube channels on there's this one that's great. He takes like old retro video games like Nintendo and like finds a bug that was put in it back in 1984 and like goes through and shows you why the bug happens, how to fix it, how to identify it, and then like the necessary game gen codes to undo the bug so that you have the version of the game that probably should have been released but because of rushing and so like like everything is code in my mind like it's just I like watching woodworking too or like all these DIY tiny houses. Um, I mean that's kind of my my post retirement plan. We just got like, by the way, if you're looking to buy real

estate, if you buy it in the middle of nowhere, it is so much more affordable. So, we got like 5 acres of land in the middle of absolute nowhere. And so, like it's fun cuz you get to like build a fence or like chop up a tree that falls down. Like, it's So, I do enjoy that stuff as well. Uh, figure >> this like you're basically this is a version of touching grass, right? You go and chop. >> Exactly. Fantastic. Okay. This is like grass chopping wood, building fences. That's beautiful. You're outside. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it takes about two hours to cut the grass and so like it's also very therapeutic to sit there and just like your brain is off. Like when you're on a lawn mower trying to avoid rabbits, like it's it's not coding. You are right. Like it is that is exactly my

touching grass. Like I have to be focused because there's too many frogs around to like poor frogs. They're so hard to hit to not hit. Like they just they just there's only so fast you can hit that button to shut down the lawn mower. Anyways, yes. Good times. Good times. >> Good times. Good times. Touching grass and cutting grass. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> Beautiful. Okay. So, what? Because you mentioned retirement. What would happen if you stopped tomorrow? >> You mean to me or to ethers? >> To everybody? >> I mean, I think it would be fine. there's other systems out there that are like VC funded that are really aggressively trying to like conquer the market.

>> Okay. >> And so I mean it doesn't quite feel the VC world is really aggressive at seeing like the Gitcoin. I feel like VC's really moved and I think that's one of the things that really hit Bitcoin is the VC backed projects moved in or what was that one we were part of? remember we voted on on giving funding from something and there was like a handful of like uh that alchemy wanted to take a big chunk of the funding even though they had a ton of money in the bank. >> Yeah. What did they want? I can't remember. >> 3 mill 3 million I can't remember.

>> It wasn't Octant. It was it was like a Was it Optimism? I remember it was being voted for Agora. Agora was the system we were using to like figure out who to anyways. >> So I mean we see we see a lot of VCs are just like oh look it they're trying to help fund like small grassroots open source projects. We can take that and so I feel like a lot of those VC money moved into extracting money that was kind of earmarked for the complete opposite of who they are. >> Mhm. >> And so I mean I'm not too worried that if if I got hit by bus tomorrow. Now that said keep in mind I do have an endowment. There is I've been putting a lot of the money I've been making off of ethers aside so that when Richard does hit by a bus, there's money to give to

someone else to keep it alive long enough to like transition or whatnot. So, >> okay. So, you have a contingency plan. >> I have a contingency plan for being hit by a bus. Um, it's absolutely or a car, whatever. It's like, you know, [laughter] >> so I mean there's definitely >> it's not like weighing on your mind that you can't go and build more fences and build house and focus just like >> Exactly. Well, the thing is >> I mean the the second backup plan like the other reason why I we're focusing more on thinking like obviously I don't know what retirement means cuz like I said my spare time projects are writing graphics libraries for for Arduinos like this is what I do in my spare time but in terms of retirement I'm thinking it's

more important to focus on I mean a crypto winter's dried up so I think ethers received a grand total of 0.25 25 ETH in donations last year. And so like the space has dried up pretty holistically. And so the reason why I think it's important to look at even retirement is because AI is going to absolutely chew us up. Like excuse me. Uh the example I I mean I I give this example to a lot of people. I mean I spent a month trying to use a quatronian library. It's not important to really understand what quaternians are. They're basically special math. They let you rotate an object in three space. I spent like a month trying to get this random.

I tried like seven different libraries. They're all massive. Just to get a little like PCB rotating in a video. >> Okay, >> I bit the bullet and decided to try this vibe coding thing. And like >> god damn, like it gave one example and it included the entire relevant parts that I would have even needed from the library. So rather than incorporate these massive libraries, it was like 50 lines of code. Did everything beginning to end. I think I needed to tweak one thing just because the coding style wasn't how I liked braces to be. Like it was like something so trivial and maybe like there was a typo. They had like a variable that didn't exist. And you know what? An hour later, I had the full working whatever whatever. After a month of like struggling with various quadrroning libraries and reading way

too much on Wikipedia about like various compliments and all those sorts of things. So AI is a gamecher. Not the sense that it's going to replace everyone. It's not like there's going to be no developers, but if a company right now hires 100 developers and they now need three, well, this becomes an employer market and capitalism really knows how to treat an employer and they're going to like use those 97 people at the bottom to drive the price down. They're going to find that sweet spot. They'll hire five people and they'll be off to the races. So, trying to stay employable to me seems pretty difficult. So, I want to be able to like if I need to tomorrow, you know, Skynet wakes up and it's like, you know what?

Time time to take you out. I want to be able to like enjoy my remaining three months left on Earth before before the T8000 finds me. T800 and uh you know, make that one last fence >> and kill with that one last frog. >> No, I try not. Okay, I killed one frog. I feel so terrible about it. >> When was this? >> When I killed a frog, it it was like it was like two weeks ago. It was so sad. Like I have this like zeroturn lawn mower and I saw it hopping and so I pulled back but one of the wheels like doesn't engage as strong as the other.

So rather than the thing backing up, it spun right and I now I never found the body. I searched for the body. I was like crawling through the grass trying to figure where it was. >> So it's possible that it it just hopped. But I I don't know, man. It's it's it weighs on me. It weighs on my conscience. I love that frog. >> No. >> Have you seen leopard frogs? They are the most beautiful. They look like they're like a green. Imagine it what a what a leopard looks like, but they're green instead of orange. They are just beautiful shiny. >> I think it got away. I think it got away.

>> Fingers crossed. Again, tangents. I'm really good at tangents. >> No, I tangent questions. >> This is This is You know what? This is your human protocol and I am loving diving into all of this wonderful stranges that is Rick. cuz we're talking about funding and we're seeing so many of the projects suns setting obviously I just sunset >> oh god another big one yeah >> so many so so so many and the ns public goods working group has >> been sunseted the EF is cutting its funding and to your point from earlier about how much you raised last year of

2.5 ETH what do you >> 25 ETH 0.25 ETH. That's the funding levels we're talking about. Sorry. Sorry. We keep your question going. >> I mean, even worse. Even worse. What does what do you feel that says about this ecosystem when this is the value or the relationship to the value that foundational projects provide? I mean, I definitely feel capture like I I the whole thing that we got into this in the first place. I mean, I I feel like you're probably the same. You got into it because you wanted the finance system to have competition. Well, and the finance system does what when finance when finance has competition, they buy

the competition. And that's kind of what I feel has happened. I mean, I think two things happened at the same time. I think basically finance I mean, we see the DeFi. You see all these big companies >> who like but at the same time AI also sucked a lot of the the talent a lot of the >> true >> people are super excited about AI like it's like uh it's like self-deprecating like I'm going to make a a tool so good I don't need to ever work again and you never will >> and so I feel like those two things kind of happened at the same time it was to be fair again like I told you I didn't think Gitcoin would work I would actually say the anomaly was when things were actually getting funded like >> that's >> okay

>> we're now in the status quo we are in the point where capitalism has figured out how to capital and uh it it just took a while for a while grassroots things for a while like money was going where we wanted money to go as a society and that it was just captured but it was it was a fun ride while it lasted I mean I still have faith that it will maybe get back there I mean even in my mind of mines I'm hoping someday the ENSA is like given back their power and they're just like, you know, like we had our fun. It worked out well. I would love to see like a a rebirth of the ENS. We're we're the Treasuryy's given back to it and we're like, you know what, not to say we were wrong, but we've done what we could. We've fixed things the

direction we want them fixed. Let's let's build the the correct conflict of interest policies we need. Let's build the correct whatever and let's like let's like reboot this again. Going back to like the good place, like when they reboot all these, like every time it gets a little bit less worse. And that's the goal to be less worse. >> Less worse. Ooh, that's a good sticker. Or or a really good comment to somebody just be less worse. Oo, I like that. Could that be the title of this episode? >> Absolutely. I mean, it's a good goal to strive for it.

>> It absolutely is. And it actually, you know what? It's definitely more accessible than don't be evil. Just be less worse. >> Well, because the thing is don't be evil is like just guaranteeing to line you up to become evil. I mean, Google's whole I mean that that was Google's mantra and it was just like it was like a march. It was like like the whole march with good intentions yada yada yada like uh-huh. Yeah. until like your VC. Well, and again, it goes it all goes back to VC or or the the shareholders or whatever you want to call it like that that party of interest the >> Mhm.

>> the you do things to change it. So, for instance, like again, we're talking open source, we're talking foundational, we're talking infrastructure. How would you do it sustainable and fair? >> What would you change? >> I think about this all the time. I don't. So, one thing in general I think any government system needs is like dice rolling. The second you have a set of rules that's static and not changing, whether it's tax codes, whether it's whatever, once you once you've got those those rules established, people are going to minmax against those rules. So, in my mind, okay, this is not an actual suggestion, but just kind of like trying to to uh like give an example of how I imagine things might sort of work.

Imagine a capital gains. So in Canada, capital gains is like 50%. And so as a result, businesses buy and hold things to benefit off of capital gains. This d basically these rules are established and their accounts have figured out exactly how to like minmax this process. And so that it stops working like capital gains was there to help encourage people to hold things for a long time, not to be like speculating. And so people then build weird vehicles on top of these so they can speculate again. So, what I want is imagine capital gains, but you don't know how much capital gains is. At the end of the year, we're going to take your your business number and we're going to hash it together with the we're going to roll a die and we're going to hash it with together and that's what your capital

gains cap is for the year. All the different variables. And so, as a result, you can't play the game. You can't like you have to follow the rules like this system is in place so people will hold things for a long time. If you're in a position to hold things for a long time, then you will. If you can't, you won't. you're not gonna, you know, do the calculus to figure out, well, we need to hold on to this asset worth this much for this example. So, I just want more like the rules have to keep changing. Like, if we if you let any I mean, we saw this again with ENSAW. Anytime you have a set of rules, once people figure out how to how to ruin them, it just keeps sliding in ruinage. And so, what you want is to like you want to shake up that that ant

farm. And like every once in a while, you don't want to shake the whole ant farm. You don't want to just kill them, but maybe you have like a mini earthquakes. So maybe the air has like five sections and you earthquake one section once a month and that way you're kind of like they it gives them a chance to rebuild without having to like start from scratch and even that is a great example. So you maybe you come up with this idea that you're going to you're going to uh earthquake the the ant farm once a month. Once they learn that once a month they're going to start planning around it. They're going to do the calculus and move all their parties ac like and so you need to make it once every >> one over random. Exactly. It has to be fully randomized like confounding

variables and all. >> Why do you think I mean I don't know about the ants but why do you think humans have the tendency to do that? To your point coming back to the Dao and many other examples. >> I actually don't think humans are innately like that. I think it's very much like a trained behavior. Like the average human does not hoard wealth like we see a handful of people at the top. And I mean, you you see for every for every Elon Musk out there, you see a Dolly Parton, you see a dozen Dolly Partons. Like, there's way more people who are far more kind. I mean, my aunt will she'll go off and she'll buy food for the food bank. You see far more

people who aren't in a position to help as much as they want to helping. So, there's way more people that are anti-Elon that are that are the polar opposite of Elon Musk to the Elon Musks. The problem is the Elon Musk is a compounding loop. Like it's not that they like by not giving it gives them even more power, more compound interest, more compound influence over time. And so it's only a very small chunk of people who are actually the problem. The thing is the problem that they are is like self-reinforcing and so it kind of forms runway. So in my mind, I mean this is all my like random philosophical brain randomness. Uh, and so any system

you want for funding needs to kind of like, and this is why I think it's almost unsolvable. It's you really need to shake up the pie. You need to make sure that alchemy, if they go off and invest a bunch of money into trying to wealth extract from optimism, that it has as much a chance of failing as needs to to make it no longer feasible for them to even decide to invest the resources in trying to like capture the wealth. I don't think this is possible. I think it's still going to be the same sort of once you have a trillion dollars, it's really easy to get the next billion. If you got a $100, I mean, even proportionally, if you've got $100, it's not as easy for you to get the next 10 as it is for him to go from, you know, a billion to the next 10 million.

>> Do you think there is we are essentially recreating what cuz we said about the status quo earlier? Are we just recreating everything but just over here? >> I think so. I mean, and again, that's because that handful of people want it that way. They had a system they had great control over. This thing came along and threatened that control by empowering other people. And so, >> it's and I think it's going to keep happening. I don't know how to solve it. I mean, obviously, there are ways to solve it that I'm not going to be in favor of. I mean, the French Revolution invented the guillotine. There was lots of solutions. They had a lot of other problems that we don't want to get into.

It wasn't just the bad people that got put up there. It was uh and so it's not a good solution, but like that's the the the the shaking of the ant farm type of like >> intense shaking. And did you mentioned this because it was like Bastile Day yesterday? It was the French National Day. >> I did not know that, but that's also good timing. Yes. Yes. Good to know. >> There you go. But I mean that's what I mean like you basically need we need legislation that makes it so unpalatable to be >> just evil like because people the people who are going to be evil are going to be evil regardless. I'm I don't think the average person is evil. Like the average person is very considered like gracious and goes out of their way to like do

what's right. But the people who are the patholog have you seen the movie invention of lying? >> Yes. >> I feel like it's that type of situation. the person who can lie has this unnecessary advantage over everyone else. The society as a whole, I think, would be better. I mean, I'm not saying lie, but yeah, I feel like that's the thing. Like, basically, that one person being so asymmetric really broke everything. And so, it's the same I guess I'll use that as my analog for this. It's the same sort of thing. Like, one person being so asymmetric can ruin an entire society of honest people just because it it gives them so much power.

It's really interesting because again this is in our conversations about everything that's happened and happening and whatever. It's that des I don't know if it's the desire or like you say learned behavior of wanting to be close to power as well that basically as soon as you have somebody in power then there's other people wanting to be in that zone of influence but that is also must be trained behavior right or things that have been like perpetuated for so long that that's just the way some people behave. I definitely think so. And I also feel like I feel like a lot of these like the people who are kind of like kind of

stuck in the in the vacuum behind this like people who get swept along. I feel like a lot of them they're they're not necessarily even themselves. They see this thing it looks really cool. I think a lot of this could be fixed even with like marketing like it just because we all have those movies we watched as a kid where you know you got the big strong bad guy and the the weak good guys they succeed by doing what's right they by by working together by by not being greedy like I feel like and I feel like great examples of this sort of thing is Japan like when you like when you build the marketing of being a good co good person into your culture like it it survives much more than like so I

mean I think a there's going to be the Elon Musk of the world who I just think are like I yeah I am being very oblique anyways I feel like there's Elon Mus who are basically they're going to be evil no matter what like they entitled to to slaves they're entitled to my diamond mind is how I made my money like they they just have such just crazy ideas in how the world works but the people who kind of like get swept along I think if you like if they maybe just saw more after school specials as a child. They could have probably been like saved a little bit more like like just resisted a little bit longer. I mean, yeah. I mean, Trump is a great example. You see all these people following him to no end. I just think they just really need

a really good after after school special. Maybe like a nice high budget one. Like something that really makes you want to the the Marvel the Marvel Cinematic Series Cinematic Universe as a after school special. >> Okay. Okay. Right. I love >> which it already kind of is though because if you think like the heroes are always they're more or less doing the right thing. They're risking their own >> more. Yeah. >> Yeah. Maybe we just need more Marvel movies. That's the problem. >> Isn't Is that what we need, Rick? I don't I don't know that I agree with that. [laughter] >> I mean, I don't know if I agree with that either, but >> Okay.

would you say are because we're talking about um values to an extent and um I guess character and integrity. What would you say are some nonnegotiables in your human protocol? Like in terms of who you are, what are some non-negotiables that you wouldn't stray away from? And this can be anything. This can be boundaries. This can be like beliefs. This can be you can pick one.

You can pick more than one. Don't mind. >> I mean, I would definitely need to think a lot. Like I've got so many ideas for this, but um I mean I think the most important >> Yes. >> Yeah. Like the most important one I would say is like be kind like and you have to it has to be like holistically be kind. So going back, so for example, the frog thing, be kind to animals because >> I think Vital like Vitalik had this great I I'm not going to do it nearly justice, but I love the way he described it, which is like why are people like people are saying it's important to be kind to AI because someday they're going to come back and look at your history to whatever whatever. And he made this like point about it's not being kind is not

to get something. It's not to make the AI treat you nice in the future. Being kind to the AI is for your own internal aspects. If you stop being kind to AI, it makes it easier to stop being kind to this and stop. Next thing you know, you're just like a dick in general because you're so entitled. And so if I mean I build live fruitfly traps. You take a little cup, you put some banana in there, you like make sure there's a a cloth in there so they don't drown with water >> and you can trap them, release them outside. Like it's those little things I feel build this like this if if you're going to go through so much work just to make sure that you escort the fruit flies outside safely. Like it means it's going to it it's going to extend to

other things. If if you can't hurt a a fruit flight, you're not going to like go dump a bucket of cold water on the homeless people in the winter, which is what Tim Hortons in Canada was doing. Like >> what? >> Exactly. Like that's the thing. Like imagine the the mentality of a person, a manager of a of a coffee shop who's again probably only making minimum wage themselves or a but like deciding that it's their right to ruin this person's like so you need to really like marketing wise, culturally ingrain be kind. You need to make sure that everyone is always kind no matter and kindness and gratitude. Be thankful for the things you have. Yes.

>> Yes. I will say those in my mind seem like the two most important. >> I don't know which one's more important. They're both pretty important. They might somehow be sub subsets of each other. I don't know, but I would say those are Yeah, those are my two non-negotiables. Non-negotiables. >> Very nice. I like it. And I agree. I fully agree. [snorts] Um, one final thought there, although we could end on this because it's very beautiful. Is there anything that you have not said publicly but would like to about anything? I'm pretty vocal and loud.

>> Yeah, you are. >> I don't know if I keep secrets from myself, let alone the public. I mean, there's probably lots of things I would like. There probably are things. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, though. Uh, yes. Yes. >> Okay. All right. Is there anything you want to add before we close up? >> I just be kind. Be happy. Like, I don't know. Touch grass. There we go. I like touch grass. Yeah. Yeah. Touch grass. It's really important. like like it touch grass, put your your feet in the ocean, whatever available. I don't know where you are, but if you're wherever people are, just enjoy the world is crazy. Like, enjoy it while you got it.

Yes. Thank you very much. I like touch grass. It's a great term. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. >> Touch grass. Be less. What was it? Be less. >> Be less. Less crap. What was it? Yeah. Less. >> We'll have to replay the video. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Less worse. Less worse. >> Less worse. Yes. Okay. We need touch grass and be less worse as stickers immediately and ship them for $20. All right. Thank you so much. >> Awesome. Thank you, Simona. >> [music]