Celo 2.0 with Rene Reinsberg

Transcript

foreign ation on the Pod today we have Renee reisberg who is the co-founder and currently president of the cello Foundation cello is a layer one blockchain at the center of an ecosystem of technologies that share a common mission of building a regenerative Financial system that creates conditions for prosperity for everyone so there's been a past green pill sponsor and we did this episode with them to talk about refi refi summer sellos sort of positioning in the market how cello funds public goods and um you know I think that I'm just really interested in people who are using crypto for regenerative means after all this is the podcast about regenerative

crypto economics really want to highlight the ecosystems that are funding public goods that are building more regenerative crypto ecosystem for themselves but also exporting that to the world and there's been some really interesting experiments in and around cello and that's why I wanted to do this episode with this with them and with Renee so I think it's really interesting to hear about how Renee thinks about refi and what are the most interesting Trends in refi are a couple of things that we cover in this episode and without further Ado I give you Renee from Cello enjoy coordination all right Renee what's up Hey Kevin good to be uh good to be here yeah great to have you so um tell us about your work with cello let's start

off with with what is cello and how does it support refi absolutely so um maybe a little bit of backstory on seller so we've been at this for for a little over five years and it started out of really a series of ideas early on where we um initially actually building on ethereum um try to figure out hey this is really powerful technology but how do we use it to do more good in the world like how do we help someone um who doesn't have access to traditional financial banking services you know like have a wallet and be more included um we're thinking about Ubi we're thinking about you know inspired

by Charles eisenstein's writing um you know how do we how could we bring sort of this financial system in this new Financial system that's evolving more in sync with the environment and was um you know societal goals that that we care about um and so so really it was a kind of a series of um different ideas and and sort of little experiments that uh for us hey you know there's there's a big opportunity here and it all kind of points back at you know sort of the same infrastructure um and so we early on forked ethereum and started building out sort of the the different

layers of the stack um you know there was everything from sort of a wallet down to the core consensus layer Cellar was the first evm chain that that launched with spoof of stake um right from the get-go we were using some of the ebook rewards to um to to make the chain carbon carbon negative um and um but also kind of more broadly thinking about what are sort of different Primitives that uh that would help kind of bring us towards sort of this North Star of like a regenerative Financial system um now I think really what I think we didn't foresee

um I think we we kind of hoped with but um what has been sort of most surprising is how much of a community has has formed um both around cello but also more broadly around regenerative to finance refi um and that's in a way led to a shift in how we you know how I see my work now how we responders see our work um and that's that's really to support all the great projects that are building on and we're selling yeah so it sounds like um solo is a is a layer one um proof of stake blockchain that is mobile first I don't know if you said mobile first in there but that's

definitely something that's that's in my brain about solo yeah yeah that's right I mean look that's um you know with all of these little experiments it was very clear like most people out there in the world um are not uh accessing the internet um on a computer right on a desktop but they're they're on a phone on a smartphone there's more than six billion uh subscribers out there um and it was clear to us anything that we do has to really work on on that little device that everyone carries and so a lot of work went into um yeah thinking about how to make that experience better and um I mean some of the more well-known things about cello um are for example the the smart based ultralight client that allows

um you know to to sync with with the chain from say like a very simple uh simple phone uh was very little bandwidth um but but also other you know form factors for example allowing um you know tokens to be white listed whitelists to pay for gas which if you're on a mobile device and you have a simple wallet and you know if I want to send you a stable coin I can simply pay do that and pay the fees in in that stable coin that's a that's a huge Improvement in terms of um you know permissionless UI let's call it that because obviously you could just fund it too but you know um to uh over someone having to then also have a second token right to do that so there's

there's a bunch of things that when we when we say mobile first really come sort of with the mindset of okay how do we make a lot of these great innovations that we've seen uh in webstery work on sort of that limited form factor right oh yeah I mean I think that um the fact that it's mobile first and that y'all are using some of the you didn't say block rewards but I think you said uh Network rewards in order to to fund refi projects I think sort of puts this in an interesting niche of of blockchain ecosystems um so so I'm curious how the the those distributions of funds for public goods within the ecosystem have have gone um and and I'd be curious what you're

seeing develop as the primary use cases of cello these days yeah yeah and I I called it Epoch rewards but that's that's block rewards so no totally totally right yeah that's right that's why I couldn't replace it yeah um so kind of uh with the launch of the network what we did is we we set up the setup Foundation um and install Foundation out of the Genesis block got an allocation a big allocation of cello um to fund public goods that you know are built on on sellers a lot of Open Source infrastructure and and things that we think people will need as they build you know sort of different different applications that that fit with that kind of uh mission of prosperity for all

and more broadly sort of these kind of themes around regenerative Finance um but there's also an on-chain fund um and I think initially we started out it was sort of like the design idea was have it be more or less similar size right and the on-chain fund works as you would expect right people put forward proposals um and my connection dropped there for a second um so you have the foundation and if you answering fund and for the on-chain fund people put forward proposals they get discussed on the Forum and then um when a proposal is put forward right to request that funding every seller holder uh votes gets to vote um and then um you know that's that's kind of a way to allocate funding but also we put this

up and again this is like at this point it's three years ago um there weren't too many precedents about you know successful implementations of that and we were like you know we don't know how this is going to play out how long is it going to take and so let's have both sort of an organization you know more traditional organization like the seller Foundation where there's kind of people managing sort of you know budgets and like doing grants and in sort of more traditional way but let's also have this on-chained way and then like let's just move and see how those two compare and and shake out and I think what's been exciting to see is sort of really um as a seller has grown there's just been an uptick in activity on the Forum people discussing proposals um and uh and more and more funding

getting allocated that way to the point where we're at the foundation you know very actively I mean obviously also in collaboration with you guys right but are thinking about how do we shift some of the grand program um you know more towards the you know in the hands of the community and using things like Bitcoin um and other mechanisms and I think that's that's really powerful but again three years ago the tools just weren't in our mind ready and so we we decided on those two parallel mechanisms got it that's so interesting um I was um just sort of curious to see what the uh there's there's this idea that

um at least in in ethereum in Bitcoin in in these layer ones that uh the people who secure the network uh in Bitcoin that's the proof of work miners in ethereum it used to be for work miners but now it's proof of stake um there's this idea that uh you pay for security the the the block rewards go for security but really there's other public goods that are in the um ecosystems best interest to fund software development is obviously one that we care about but uh I think that the problem has always been that it's really hard to prove that it's really easy with proof of work to prove that work happens and that you created contributed to the security of the network but with something that's like

software development or um you know it's like the software that I wrote this morning I'm not even sure it's going to make it to production and if it does it doesn't even provide value to users like it's more abstract whether or not you're actually providing public good to the ecosystem and so I think that there's been a lot of ecosystems that have been tepid about uh finding a way that to distribute those funding and so I think that Sello is kind of running ahead of other ecosystems and how it's using those those uh those Epoch rewards in order to fund the ecosystem so uh we'll I think we'll be studying the results of your of your campaign for some time I mean look relatedly um I think what you're what you're maybe

also hinting a little bit too is this I don't know if you have proof of impact concept right that's been starting to become more popular and I think that's um I remember my colleague Willie at the foundation wrote this this blog post I think this must go back at this point to 2020 uh maybe even 19 um of sort of theory of change and how do we um you know keep ourselves honest and measure the impact that cello has in the real world uh with respect to impact metrics that you know I think if you look at them they may look um like things that would show up sort of under sort of the sdgs for example um and that's um that's something that's really

interesting because I think increasingly we're um we're getting the tools to bring off some of that data on chain right and I think in the near future we'll we'll have a system that can much more accurately measure impact and in a way um tying that to sort of the funding mechanisms is I mean like obviously you know you're you've been thinking a lot about this but that's really powerful and I think that's uh in a way is kind of the dream state right where you have sort of um you know funding for public goods that are tied to this ecosystem be distributed in in sort of in a way where it's like okay what what things will have the most potential future um impact

um maybe with respect to some of these metrics or maybe in support of the ecosystem achieving some of these metrics um and you know like yeah concept of hyper structures and some of these things just being able to run programmatically even without humans in the loop is is something that's that's really appealing and I'm happy that we're starting to also develop language around this because I think sometimes some of these Concepts can be pretty pretty out there right um and I remember even early on when in early pitch meetings we were talking about Charles eisenstein and natural capital-backed currencies you know I mean people were like okay you guys are like this may happen in 20 years or it may never happen but you know I don't

know if this is like something you know that you can make meaningful progress to in sort of like a traditional Venture cycle and people wouldn't you know this is more like this is over coffee right um but um but then I think what we're seeing is that you know as as we kind of get crisper on and I think this is where rifa summer or refi kind of as a meme is so powerful right I think it it has provided sort of a way for people to talk about this and break it down and like get more people interested and have really smart people come in because they they see it sort of they see oh there's there's not just like this project or that project but there's there's a connection here and there's sort of like a uh really a pool

of really smart people that are kind of rowing in the same direction so um yeah that's that's been that's been powerful yeah that's great well I'd love to to sort of pinch and zoom and expand on that um I know that from hanging out the seller Saloon uh at one of your events last summer that refi summer was a meme so um what is refi to y'all and what is refi summer and and or generally what kind of refi culture and experiments have you seen start to develop around the cello ecosystem yeah so to me if I um it's really um you know goes back to sort of more like the regenerative economics principles and basically starting from

you know this Viewpoint you know if if money is now technology or software right and the ethereum is it's proven that then um hey we have we have a chance to reinvent the financial system and if we if we do that and as we do that let's do it with um you know was addressing some of the shortcomings that we've seen in the traditional system specifically with respect to these externalities especially with focused on the environment but also communities and financial inclusion right that um that that really um largely have gone unaddressed right and in a way like um The Current financial system works kind of in sort of an opposite direction

and and so to me it's really um a you know Financial system that's getting that has sort of like positive externalities um for say the environment right or for poor communities and I think it's it's most powerful when you kind of overlap in these areas right I mean I think you had Luke on the on the show recently and the work he's doing was Colectivo which um really touches on on those through on those three pillars you have on the one hand you have um massive climate impact right by um starting to work accurately price natural assets um you know starting Curacao on the island like coral reefs Food Forest you

have um the impact on the community in terms of bringing these assets into the community as kind of like utilities right and leverage them for like a reserve for Community currency and then you have Financial inclusion because suddenly now people um have access to the financial system and through Collectibles through the broader Financial system right that previously were left out and maybe not because they didn't have a bank account but maybe because they didn't have access to credit right and so I think the most powerful project of those that sort of you know in a way like you know kind of connect the dots between those um and and that's really exciting because I think that's sort of a glimpse at kind of a new a new Financial system

where um really we're um where we're looking at success very differently than we have um today then you know I started my career morning Stanley and um so you know pretty pretty well versed in sort of traditional financial markets and instruments and and all that stuff and you know it's it's certainly it's it's very cute to me that the we're at a point now you know 2023 um but but really sort of Our Generation where we have to make some pretty strong pivots as a society if we want to um you know have a planet to live on in instead of that in in sort of generations to come so to me this is really the moment I think for for this movement

right to to test a lot of things sure because we're early and some of these things are experimental um but um given that this technology is is global I think there's there's a chance that some of that change can happen a lot faster than many may expect from the outside that look at these things now and say oh it's cute that you have like 100 000 people I don't know um using um you know some dap and you know get permissionless access to loans but you know those 100 000 people can grow to a billion people in in a year or two and and suddenly you know that's um that will people will kind of pay attention right so you know the refi refi is sort of this

interesting space because I think there's a lot of people that that really want to see it it work but they're they're sort of skeptical that we can build natural-backed assets and that we can actually use Finance as a tool to heal the environment um and and maybe that's just because of hundreds of years of of Finance uh externalizing harm and I guess I'm just wondering you know what what would you say to someone who's skeptical that that crypto can be good can be good for the planet that Finance can be good for the planet like what are the the strongest examples of it actually working within the ecosystem that that you've seen I mean I would say um you know you've experienced it you were at the center Salon I mean yeah come come to one of

the community events and I would I would even say like um it doesn't have to be like the the big kind of conferences but you know show up to like a developer Meetup in Kenya right where people are thinking about um sort of kind of a holistic ecosystem for example around sustainable agriculture right there's projects now Etheridge just announced they're providing uh crop insurance website permissionless crop insurance um they're people in in Kenya working on um you know basic Financial infrastructure for Farmers there's like really strong on and off ramps patreons just announced um a feature for easy cash in cash out right to Kenyan Shilling which um is uh is really compelling because it

also connects to um to m-pesa and so if you're in Kenya today and you have a crypto wallet like sellawood like valora for example you can cash in cash out from empeza and more than you know I mean almost everyone in Kenya has an impressive wallet um and then you can buy stuff on nuzo uh which I think has about 100 000 people on their platform and um and get um and get sort of rewarded in um and you know basic and sort of uh yeah getting sort of like a kind of a Rewards program in crypto but I think that the key thing here is that all of these things are working together um in a community and in a way like have an impact right because suddenly we're

we've moved far beyond this oh I have I have a token I have like you know some cryptocurrency and I'm holding it in this wallet and hope that it goes up in value too no actually like stuff is all running on on blockchain Rails but the the actual user couldn't maybe even care less about it right there they're there for the utility of um yeah running their business or you know running running their Farm accessing Insurance uh Saving right making payments to their vendors um taking payments from customers um and I think that's really powerful and and so we're seeing that and especially seeing the growth in in you know in and across Africa we've recently teamed up with Opera

um and you know they have over 100 million users in Africa right and have have a wallet um that people can now use um you know sell currencies to pay for air time and and for example buy stuff on mosul so I think that's that's really powerful to see these kind of communities spin up and and there's refi embedded in there everywhere right from Financial inclusion to um some of the the climate action that people can take so to me that's um I think you know like just you know going to one of those meetups and seeing people present and then kind of connecting the dots between those different solutions um that's where I um yeah get really optimistic about the future because yeah

some of these are small but they also just started and I think um you know in a few years this could be it could be massive could be the biggest applications uh on the continent yeah I I think that the the sort of like Cambrian explosion of talent and use cases that have come out of refi summer and just the last Market cycle um has been really incredible for me just the amount of people who see crypto as a wedge for doing good for the world and are starting projects are it's inspiring to me and and I just want to see them scale already because we have these global

coordination failures around biodiversity collapse and climate change and many other things that I just feel like are increasingly urgent so um I'm kind of of the mind of which ones of these are going to scale and which ones these are actually going to be sustainably good and let's get more and more Cat Let's how do we rotate Capital attention and talent into uh into those projects is and and do it as fast as possible is is sort of where where my mind goes yeah and I think that's I think you mentioned two important drivers here and um talent and capital right um I think we have enough of sort of the early beginnings of something like powerful right and there's enough to say to someone smart hey look at this look

what's Happening Here for them to kind of you know see some of the patterns and see the opportunity and maybe you just personally feel like you know like this is good I mean you're working on something that has like that will do good in the world if it's successful right so it's not too hard to to to get people motivated to work on this stuff um if they take the time to to look at it um and so to me it's kind of like yeah other smartest people working on refi uh products and protocols and I think the answer is increasingly so right and I think that's where the refi and refresh summer and like the memes help just draw attention uh to something that before was just like a bunch of different you know niches

um but but then it's the capital too right I think if if uh if a year ago um you would have told me there's there's a bunch of refi focused Venture funds or or even just bigger funds like having refi and sort of their their deck 12 piece I would have maybe laughed at you right but that's happening right I mean we're um I mean like there's so many funds I mean you had you know Jihad from Cerulean on the show um there's you know Flory Ventures there's um this allegory there's davoa there's I mean Fred Wilson wrote a post on refi right I mean the team over there has been thinking about climate for like a long time and obviously Steep and Webster so I think you have uh really um I think even sort of among

traditional Venture you have uh quite a few you know some of the best investors paying close attention to the space and and funding projects even through the winter um you know I think if I look at cellopho cello kind of ecosystem alone and Q3 Q4 of last year um there's over 100 million Adventure Capital that sort of I know about like projects that have raised right so that that to me is a really strong sign that this is um this is actually happening because in a way like okay you need to tell them but you also need the capital to then fund sort of the the growth of these projects and especially those that have to build some some tech first right and

um especially on the climate side there's some pretty complicated Tech that needs to be built first it's not just like hey let's let's launch a product and see what happens so um all that makes me hopeful right and many of these things are um you know there's still sort of pre-launch or sort of in better mode so I think this year we'll we'll see a bunch of stuff go live that I think will further make people see the potential of this yeah well um that's actually a great segue into my next question which was going to be what's the outlook for web 3 in 2023 and specifically refi in 2023 from your Vantage Point yeah I mean look I I think it is kind of this

crossing the chasm moment maybe where um I think people have now heard of refi most people at least in web Suite I would assume have heard the term and maybe have like could name a few projects um but I I doubt um you know I think the number of people that have participated right is probably still low and and I think uh there's there's kind of two drivers for for that to really kind of change in 2023 one is a lot of um you know kind of the most popular applications in web Suite

um integrating um some refi capability right whether it's a programmatic offset of like on every transaction or you know things like stuff that for example spirals is doing uh with um sort of impact staking and um you know so I think there's there's kind of like that sort of more um yeah project driven uh adoption in the broader ecosystem where me as a user um I'm like oh cool like I just did this swap on on uniswap and you know like there's a small I check the button for like a small part of that fee to go towards a refi kind of use case great right I would say

yes to that um but then there's also I think we'll see probably more and more consumer applications that will uh reward people for example for taking climate positive action right or for doing good in their communities um and some interesting examples there are [Music] um thinking of for example wheel coin which is incentivizing people to um I've been playing with their with their app for for a little bit um to you know for example take the bike to work instead of drive right or things like Plastics which is about you know reducing sort of the use of plastics and kind of doing uh kind of plastic offsets in a sense and tying that also took more kind of consumer applications

um and so to me uh 2023 is is probably at the end of 2023 I would hope that we have millions of people that are actively participating in sort of this refi economy and that are in a sense then also going out and recruiting their friends to do the same and um you know I think that can really get to a point where um you know it's kind of like you and you're in the you're in the local store you know I'm in Berlin now and you know it's obviously you have a lot of these uh organic supermarkets and it's almost like you you you feel bad going to like to just like a little or an Audi right because like well no you should you should not buy there right you should

you should like everything you should buy should be kind of organic should be local and um that's great right I mean it's a massive shift in how people think about like the food they buy and like I think similarly here I I could see this happen with money you know it's like hey you know like you have a choice of what Financial system to use so why wouldn't you use the one that's that benefits the planet right and that has some of these positive externalities for your community and um and and I think that's I think if we kind of get that sort of mental model shift happening uh with sort of a broader audience I think that can be really powerful

yeah I mean I think that there's there's a lot of interesting traction that's happening in this space and and like I said I just want to see it scale um and you know one of my other hopes for this upcoming cycle is that refi is part of the mainstream story right now I feel like I'm kind of banging the drum in my own little weird corner of web 3 niches but like you know if if 2017 was about icos in 2020 in 2021 was about defy and nfts what would have to be true for 2024 or 2025 to be about refi um or public goods or you know uh crypto being good for the world and so that that's kind of what I would like to see uh

uh the market cycle B and in by the market single B I mean we want to rotate attention and capital and momentum into these things because the planet needs it and because our communities need it and so um I'll be really curious to see if we can pull it off um or or not I don't know if you have any any sort of comments on that yeah look I mean I think in a sense we um you know let's let's be honest they're you know FTX has been a setback right we've had you know um people you know influencers famous people who have a Folly who can shape sort of Matt's opinion go out there right and

um you know uh and endorse it and and I think that's um with what's happened I think that's I think created sort of I think it's created a different environment right I think if you had um someone right now someone popular say hey rifa is really cool you know you can do this and it's crypto or it's web3 you know I think people oh but wait a second like if we just you know wasn't there just something like bad happening there and um I I've been surprised by you know people who sort of casually follow how they sort of are distinguishing you know and they you know they almost like hey

but Renee like you know this is different from what you know you guys are doing with sort of you know permissions infrastructure this is like failure of Institutions and fraud and so I've been I've been positively surprised to not have to explain like how FTX is not the same necessarily to to friends and uncles over over dinner conversations yeah but uh but at the same time right there it's still a setback and so I I do Wonder um what uh what will be some of the most effective path to just get get the word out I mean like our megaphones are just not as as big and so in a way it has to it has to be more of like a Bottoms Up type thing right where people use one of these cool uh applications and start

telling their friends and they're you know convinced them by showing them what it is what is what is the impact right what is what what does it do and like I think to me that's um yeah I mean that's a strategy that works that can work really well and I think it just takes a little longer um but you know I mean we you know I wasn't like you know uh I'm not like if 2023 we don't get there you know like give up no I mean it's like clear from the beginning that this would be uh a pretty a pretty long journey and in many ways it's been faster than expected right if you had told me five years ago we'd be here um I don't know I would have not thought that's possible

just in terms of the even just the technical innovations necessary to get here so um I think I think it's fine that it will take longer um I think it will reward people that will kind of join this burn on the earlier side right Builders early adopters um and and so I think that will kind of create um a drive but I think it's also it's a real test right I mean this stuff has to have real world impact for that to work otherwise my my uncle my cousin is just not gonna like tell their friends about it right so I think this is where maybe the bar is higher for us to ship good products um but if we do it's also going to be

more sustainable um growth than it would otherwise be so I'm yeah I'm seeing 2023 as as really a year of like just seeing a lot of these great projects um kind of you know launch or if they've launched get to sort of meaningful meaningful adoption and um and my hope is too and we we had this kind of I went to a impact investor conference at the end of last year and we we kind of said hey like you know everybody here in the room like you all manage like billions tens of billions of dollars uh just start getting two percent to Webster impact projects and here's why I gave some of the examples

and um you know to my surprise not everybody just walked out but people came up after and like even from some of the very big funds introduced themselves and um so we started these conversations and my hope is that as a lot of these smaller projects kind of grow and show progress show traction show like impact metrics right um we actually um we also at the same time can develop more of like a kind of capital infrastructure to to then support that growth right I mean we have yet to see um 100 million dollar investment run into like some impact web 3 project right but that's gonna happen right and when some of these things start happening I think that's when

that's when you also I think you know you get sort of attention and work even more Capital more Talent uh flowing uh flowing into the space and uh so yeah I think the answer is you may not get everything we hope for in 2023 but I think we'll we'll make a good step forward and um yeah it's it's a year filling nice I think that's probably a good good place to start wrapping up um is there anything that I didn't ask that you want to say Renee um having a lot of ground um I mean one thing I maybe just a call out um and I know you sometimes ask folks on who they should have on the show I I

really I mean you know a lot of my kind of immediate circle of Founders and and friends and sort of refi are you know in in the Bay Area or here in Berlin um but I I think there's there's a really big ecosystem out there uh especially across Africa across Latin America um parts of Asia southeast Asia and so uh I would love to um you know for us to also make sure those voices are heard and are brought into the conversation so um and happy to kind of also make some connections there but I but I feel like oftentimes I learn the most when I um spend time with a Founder in in a different market and just hearing kind

of the underground uh story and like the challenges right and like um sometimes you know we're like okay what's what's still needed from a technology perspective you know and we're talking we're quick to kind of go to sort of the cryptography but then the actual problem in the ground is just you know a better kind of off-ramp right and like um and and you know I think I would love to see more of those voices be brought into the conversation but then also see more funding um go towards you know some of the basic Plumbing right like on and off ramps and we put a big program forward last year but you know it's still moving too slow right still too expensive to on an off ramp in many markets and so I think

that's kind of a part of the discussion that sometimes you know maybe gets left out a little bit because it's less sexy right like someone just building like you know I'm not friends like okay great but uh that's really um you know if we ask ourselves what will it take for this to go mainstream that's that's a big piece of it yeah totally that's that's great perspective um well Renee um if if people want to get involved in cello or refi summer where should we direct them to online yeah uh I mean definitely we we just um we actually just went through this um so the website seller.org um we just went through this uh amazing exercise in the last half year um of um overhauling our brand and the

entire identity and this was uh done uh Worcester Community um a pretty interesting process um and you know kind of like this concept of like a headless brand and like really having many of the people that are building Salo and have sort of shape what cello has become um you know having having a voice in that process and I love the outcome and as a Founder I'm always I feel like you know there's like a set here you know I mean very attached yeah initial brand but I absolutely love the new brand and so if you haven't seen that definitely also for listeners check that out socell.org uh chat.seller.org uh for uh uh for for Discord and then um I'm uh regen Renee on on Twitter so

feel free to find me there send me a note and we are always happy to chat to builders and people in the space and investors too you know I think we got to bring more money into the the space and we um we also at the foundation one of the things we do is help projects um connect with investors and and so we um that's something especially in 2023 I think is um something I'll spend a bunch of time on nice well we have links we will have links in the show notes to those resources so that people can check out cello and thanks so much for coming on the Greenfield pod thanks Kevin always quick to chat with you yeah likewise [Music]