Chat 1: Chats with a new Etherean

Transcript

this is for the okay for the recording this is it yes okay so um I'm gonna set it up really fast okay yeah because I I know you don't know what's happening here but it's gonna be fun cool uh so I'm super Fizz I do whatever communal Organization for ethereum this is my friend Jason and um Jason is just getting his feet wet and so uh as someone who has done this you know for like a lot of years it is really exciting to get to talk to people uh to like hear those very first questions about what are we doing and why are we here and so I thought it would be a lot of fun to record this conversation and

share it um Okay so what do you know well there's I mean um there's a software update that is uh supposed to come out in March called Shanghai um for ethereum there's going to be uh some developments uh let's see there's a bunch of assets that have been frozen that are going to be unfrozen it's going to introduce a lot of uh uh of those frozen assets into the market uh there's gonna be a a lot more coinage that's going to be able to be withdrawn people don't know how much uh withdrawals are going to happen uh I think there's a

little bit anxiety that there's going to be a mass withdrawal and there's some safeguards put into place to prevent that I think uh uh there are some characteristics going on uh so I don't know exactly what an EIP is or what it stands for but there are some significant eips uh that are on the docket some will come out in this particular upgrade uh update and some have been tabled for later um one that is on this particular update is going to uh lower staking costs I don't know if it's gas fees I'm not exactly sure uh if that's gas or not I'm

still I'm still figuring that out but uh let's see three six five one cheaper to build blocks is the note I I have so 3651 is significant there's another one called push zero but I don't know the details of what features it has um there's an eip4844 that's been tabled to a later date but I think there's a lot of anticipation uh uh oh no I think it's eip1153 there's a lot of anticipation because of how it's going to lower transaction fees and I think there's some hopes that with that feature added that it's going to boost the market value of ethereum

um to what degree unsure okay I feel like I'm getting colder and colder I don't know no this is great no Okay so this is uh for me this is like the most exciting golden opportunity that I can get so we should back up like maybe 12 or 15 hours right so you messaged me uh-huh and Temple let's let's give some context to how how we're in this conversation now today and you don't have to reveal anything personal um but just help like set us up for how we're having this chat now uh well you gave me a guiding question with uh it framed as uh you know how best can you communicate uh

Uh current uh events current developments to someone who is not particularly uh familiar or schooled uh maybe somebody that's not embedded in the jargon how could you talk to someone about it and you gave me the guiding question of uh what is let's see I wrote it down what is the Shanghai hard fork and so and before that you were like hey I'm curious about like getting involved with ethereum like can I can I make money can I find a job in it is it is there some way that like you were interested in getting in and even like finding a way to to make a living is that is that a fair assessment

yeah yeah absolutely okay and my response is like creating content is a great way to make a living to get known like I shared that like I felt like if you created great content than money and opportunities would come to you maybe not quickly maybe not instantly maybe not in a few months but those opportunities tend to go toward people who are educating and sharing and like creating content is that is that where we're at uh that sounds like uh an accurate summary and so the first thing I shared was like I I

I didn't know you and I have like you've I think that I gave you some ether a couple years ago or maybe like mentioned it to you you did uh I did some digital art for you and you paid me and ether I believe that was what happened cool cool um and um so like where we are now you're interested in finding out how you can get in the foot in the door but you know next to nothing about ethereum is that is that fair yeah it it struck my awareness when I uh I was like I let's let's just see where he's at give him something to work on and see where he takes it and so

um the one of the things that is important for all of our community in three months four months is uh the Shanghai update that is obviously when with withdrawals will be enabled on the beacon chain and uh to hear the interpretation of someone who is new uh and it'd be so different than the interpretation of someone who's been doing this for years that's what made me feel really excited that we could probably have a bunch of talks about like getting you into the ecosystem that's and I was like Hey hop on can we record this does that does that sound like something we can do yeah that's fine thank you

sure okay so um before we go too far I My Hope Is that you will have a ton of questions and my hope it's like even that you'll have a ton of misunderstanding because uh misunderstanding like that's how we kind of shape and get closer to where we're going leads to clarification yeah yeah um and so one of the things that I noticed I I definitely work from a community perspective from a protocol perspective and not from a markets perspective uh and that that's weird for a lot of people a lot of new people because they're like I'm investing I'm here to make money I'm not like I don't care about your like Kumbaya Community um and that's a fair perspective but

uh what ethereum at its core is a smart contract platform that is only successful because thousands of people around the world run software that make this smart contract platform work if if the only people who were interested in ethereum were investors then we wouldn't have anything there wouldn't be anything to invest in for example like if Amazon were an investor and they wanted to create a smart contracts platform they could create that on AWS and it would have none of the features of ethereum it would be like the centralized monolithic smart contract

platform that we would find worthless and the the only reason like I push that is um I I heard you like being interested in predicting what the market is going to do and my my real only Market prediction is like in 50 years I think Ethan's gonna go up yeah like that's it I you did learn a little bit about Shanghai uh that is uh the hard Fork we're doing in I guess March that's when uh it happened because in 2020 people deposited 32 ether deposits uh in order to be validators on the beacon chain and

so as someone who deposited 32 ether every six minutes I get a tiny tiny payout it's like a fifth of a Cent and those actually stack up uh and they have stacked up now for over two years and so people who deposited 32 ether now have like 36 ether they have earned for ether on that uh and your suspicion is when withdrawals are enabled those people are going to claw all that back and spend it but what seems more likely is that those people have made a really deep contribution a deep deposit a deep in interest involvement in ethereum and while they may take that four ether back

uh we don't have any suspicion that like everyone's going to take all their money uh that just doesn't seem like a thing that's likely I ranted what uh what did you get from that I don't know man that's too much uh that Market predictions are not a priority uh uh and uh if it is it should be in a long-term sense that there is not a lot of anxiety about a mass withdrawal of that accrued interest I I suppose um and that uh the freeze has been going on for about two years

yeah yeah so that's an absolutely perfect summary why what caused you to to steer in the direction of like hey maybe I could get involved with the thing that Biz is doing but how did you get there well like you want my personal narrative uh like uh I've been uh I've been involved in public education for 16 years and uh I sort of felt like I was at an impasse and uh was at a point at uh in my life I'm in my early 40s and I I felt like uh if I stuck around I was

going to be yoked to uh that profession uh and that this was sort of a I feel like I've reached this point of maturity but not uh Decay where if I want to venture out and maybe take a risk and uh see what other options uh are out there and try to think outside the box and work independently and uh maybe uh utilize my creative skills and uh to try something unconventional uh this would be maybe a good time for it and uh I knew a little bit about your professional background and uh because of some shared uh history I wanted to

reach out to you and get some advice and and just see uh maybe you know like what we're doing now clarifying some some questions and some Curiosities I had about uh about uh this about the opportunity to uh learn more about the cryptocurrency market and uh just where it's at right now cool yeah so um I know you know this but I'm going to say it anyway for everyone else's benefit I was a school counselor for 15 16 years at some point in that I I discovered Bitcoin in like 2011 and I became really obsessed with it I spent a lot of time

with it but I continued I I didn't at that time you don't like quit your job and do Bitcoin um but from 2011 to 2018 I spent my days at work and I spent my evenings obsessing over cryptocurrency um and of course now that's now that's ethereum but for a while it was like Bitcoin and then like any of the other thousands of um altcoins or clone coins that kind of came up you know was it was uh Litecoin in 2012 and then like branched into a thousand different things in 2015 I I like got really interested in ethereum

and I started instead of just like accumulating I started educating like I I found opportunities to talk to other people about like um hey this is what's happening with the network uh maybe like creating videos I did I I do a lot of Reddit and Twitter just kind of helping people understand what's next um and I'm never really talking in fact I never talk about the markets that's something that that doesn't excite me but I'm talking about like why we're doing this the philosophy and the ethos behind it okay that's a thing that uh really resonates with

with knowledgeable people and with people who are not yet knowledgeable they recognize actual value there like when you tell someone a coin has gone up 10 in a month they're like oh I should buy that it's a good investment um but they don't know why they don't know why it's a good investment they're just trying to make money but when you tell someone you know ethereum has over 10 000 nodes spread around the world we have a proof of stake consensus mechanism that is more secure and versatile than any other consensus mechanism okay they don't understand that either but when you tell them we're building

like this really go ahead I did that yesterday that uh you know as when you prompted me with this I spent a lot of hours listening to Talking Heads and a lot of those Talking Heads as I regurgitated to you were had concerns about Market behavior um so I think my putting that at the Forefront of a talking point is regurgitating that being a talking point for them but all that to say that the security and uh care that uh was taken into uh this update uh and also in I think just the reputation of ethereum as uh a secure uh

currency that was also mentioned as well although more as a side point and not necessarily as the uh Maine talking yeah so those Talking Heads I I I'm thinking of like I want to say an offensive thing about them but you know I don't really attack anyone but they're not they're not uh ethereans they're investors they want more money uh I'm not against anyone who wants to make more money I just I believe that we'll all be more successful if we build something rather than just trying to get money out of something it's the analogy for me of a cow uh you can have a cow and you can uh let's say you know the cows in or is it you know

what is a young cat what's a baby cow a calf yes you you can try and milk that calf and get as much as you can out of it you're not going to have a lot of success and you're probably gonna kill the calf right but or on the other hand you could feed the calf you could care for it you could give it Great Pasture um and that Cath is going to grow up to be a healthy and valuable cow and that is the difference between me and some an investor Speculator uh an investor Speculator sees ethereum in its infancy and wants to get something from it I see ethereum in its infancy and I I recognize that if we

Foster the growth of this thing we can have a very valuable cow in the future and that means so much more than just you know cutting up the calf and getting what you can get now gotcha so the uh focus is not on immediate gains or immediate gratification yeah I mean when you look at what ethereum is now it is speculative there is there is little little tangible value right now you like um anyone who is participating is participating for the future value of ethereum not not the value that it's

bringing this moment so at the same moment like why would you focus on the the future Market when there's no there's no real substance to the market let's build something and then it has value sure yeah so that that for me like that's the whole difference between the Talking Heads who were like hey if went up five dollars today or it went down I don't care about any of that it doesn't matter it'll matter in it'll matter when we have substantial value uh like not just implied value like I think ethereum can do neat things but

there's no real um at this moment there's no real like Financial use well thank you it's complicated people will say well there are nfts and there's you know we have all of these pumps and markets all of that is speculative uh when when industry and commerce and traditional markets began building on ethereum that's when it will have an actual market value I follow you I see what you're saying and

it is about a uh difference of perspective how I mean uh a community perspective in building a community uh perspective is different than uh sort of a a profit focused uh uh Market speculation perspective I follow you uh up today that's where I see value for someone who is interested interested in participating instead of being a talking head about markets there is plenty of room for Talking Heads about why we're here right and so when I'm like hey Jason create content the real value of that content is is about

why we are bothering to build this thing because it's not about a get rich quick scheme it is about what is ethereum going to do what is it doing what is it actually not what is it worth but what is it um I'm writing I I think if you could bring that to people if you can really teach people what we're doing and they can be a part of doing that then in the long run everyone is enriched because you know we get away from this focus of uh trading in markets and we get into the focus of building this really cool

thing it's largely when uh my investments have uh occurred in the past when I've uh when when you've posted content that essentially gave that same message you know it wasn't uh necessarily speculative about Market Behavior but it was an open invitation for people to be uh part of that community and that you know uh I didn't have a lot of uh um Expendable income but I was able to invest a little bit of that around 2016 and uh was able to catch a little bit of that uh bump that occurred around uh that time uh not a tremendous amount but that was due largely to you and those uh

open open invitations that uh you uh you send out yeah I put this for people who don't know uh Jason and I are Facebook friends I don't I I like once a year I'm like hey everyone I can't shut up anymore I need to tell you about this really exciting thing and I to be honest like I delete them half the time because I I do embarrass myself because people people it's hard for people to get it um but my my engagement is this is not a get rich quick scheme uh like if you whether you bought it 4 000 or whether you bought at a thousand or whether you bought you know when it was

97 cents for three months in 2015 whatever it doesn't matter because all of this is it's the beginning it is it is a preparation for what ethereum is likely to become in five to Fifteen twenty years um and you're like well I'm gonna be dead then probably but it's it is like it's a thing that has to be built and mature and the only thing I'm telling people is it's it's probably going to happen well that sounds exciting to me uh uh your your uh

optimism you know optimism is uh contagious and uh in this day and age uh uh it has its own uh value because there's uh a lot of negativity going on one of the things that enough time dealing with are uh investors who have lost money like you know what I'm sorry for anyone who's ever lost money on ethereum but from the optimistic perspective you haven't lost anything until you sell so we still have like plenty of time for things to change we also have like a lot of competing coins coins that like to be if killers

I struggle with a lot of them because you know I'll read their white paper or look at what they're doing and it feels very derivative it does not feel like it has the same substance that ethereum has and to be honest with you if I did identify something that had similar substance to ethereum I'd look at it I'd look at it carefully but I I don't think that with a number of or the quality and quantity of people working on ethereum that it would ever be easy for someone to just like one day do something better the quality and quantity of people building this thing right now is so

substantial that I I just I don't see like I don't see something knocking it off anytime soon Bitcoin it's like the top Market uh whatever market cap do you know much about Bitcoin like where it is now what it is uh well I mean I looked at it uh the other day on coinbase looks like it's down to about uh 17 grand coin forget forget the price remember what it is uh I mean it's just early blockchain currency it's uh sort of like the granddaddy or uh or like in terms of successful ones I don't know if it's the first one but it was the first one to

achieve uh you know financial success notoriety uh yeah uh and to appreciate in value I I love what you said it's the granddaddy I I frequently regard Bitcoin as as Grandpa coin uh and um we recognize grandpa is old and he's feeble and one day we're gonna wake up and he will have cracked the bed um but uh right now he still exists and and that's fine um Bitcoin the reason that I I no longer get excited about it is because they they stopped innovating like years ago they they said we created this thing it's

perfect nothing else ever needs to happen um and that would be like to me it would be like saying the Model T is like the Pinnacle of Automotive achievement all right and you're like it's the Model T uh so the link in the chain uh maybe a significant link or you know uh like we were talking about forking yesterday maybe that was a a point of a of a hard Fork uh you know theoretically speaking where an important Direction was taken but it was not the Pinnacle yeah so Bitcoin has actually had several Opera several like Forks that uh there are now several I didn't know Litecoin was a fork of uh Bitcoin yeah so even

more interesting Litecoin is is a as a total Fork uh but there are Community Forks within Bitcoin uh like Bitcoin cash who they're like they they still say we're the real Bitcoin um but they well it's funny that I said that in quotes Bitcoin itself has divided into several Bitcoin communities who all have different beliefs about what Bitcoin should become and many of them believe that they are the true Bitcoin uh we regard at this moment Bitcoin core or small block Bitcoin has uh as the one true Bitcoin but it's just so funny to think about

like there are a lot of split-off canoes ethereum even has a split off Community uh there is a a split off Community well there's two um ethereum classic uh and uh Eve p-o-w so ethereum classic split off in like 2016 and Eve pow split off whatever three months ago uh because when when ethereum went from proof of work to proof of stake they were like uh we want to stay on proof of work so we're going to make our own change those are just things that I get really excited about and things that I would love to chat about and it makes me wonder like do we have potential to have chats about

it I would be yeah I wanted to run that by you uh yesterday and this morning like a q a uh you know where I do some looking around on my own and then come to you with questions yeah that would be uh and you can provide some clarification that would be great I would love it because you're not alone there are hundreds of thousands of dudes in their 40s who are aware that this exists they only know about the markets and they don't know like how they can be more a part of it uh they think that they're a part of it because they bought some on coinbase but they

don't really know what it is or what they're doing and I see a tremendous opportunity to onboard those people onto the smart contract platform to have them use the smart contract platform to really be a part of ethereum that excites me have you ever used metamask you know what that is uh I believe I have uh in the past uh to I think with some nfts maybe I mean I've used it when I uploaded some of my digital art uh to try to uh sell it as nfts uh that's right I don't remember if it's a wallet or uh if it's a currency exchange

um I'm not exactly sure I don't recall oh uh metamask is a browser wallet it has been the most popular browser wallet uh for a long time we're having some concerns excuse me some concerns about their their respect for privacy or or maybe I don't want to call it a lack of respect for privacy they are owned by a company who is required to obey privacy laws and because of that uh there may be somewhat conflicts with our desire for privacy but yeah it's just it's a browser wallet there's another one called frame.sh that's becoming popular that doesn't have those same privacy concerns it's really just the difference

between like you buy ether on coinbase and you're like I own 10 worth of ether but you know nothing about it versus actually using it and saying you know well now I have nfts I have poapps I am playing in D5 I am really participating or I'm staking that's mostly what I talk about like I'm being a part of what ethereum is versus like I just put money in some exchange and I hope it gets bigger foreign I follow you on that I mean uh would you say D5 what was that or uh

yeah decentralized Finance it is it's it's not something that I personally get deeply into but it's the idea of um of using ethereum or ethereum stable coins or ethereum derivative coins uh as financial instruments uh to do things like gain yield uh to take loans to get leverage um they're not really things that I participate a lot in uh but they are like a subset of financial instruments um that allow people to to be honest with you to take bigger risks uh so and that's you know I'm risk averse uh so I don't generally get into

that but it is a really interesting sector uh that I would love to talk okay uh and I'll be down for that sometime uh I don't know if you feel like entertaining any of the questions that I had based on yesterday's stuff or a few and uh so your your Zoom timer ends in about seven minutes so I think what would be best to do uh is publish this put it out there share it um we'll get some comments on the YouTube and on you on the YouTubes uh and you know you can feel free to hop in and respond to those comments or we can just uh you know put it out there let's plan a time to do it again we go

over those questions and just kind of dig deeper together okay I think there's such a wide number of people who just want to start this journey and Bank list is a great um a great podcast for getting into this as well as the daily way uh to be honest I was in a daily way every day I often listen to bankless because they have really great episodes okay but I'd encourage you or anyone to just kind of like get started there sure type it into my Spotify cool um all right so I'm gonna put this up I'll send you a link to it uh and um because well I'll put it on eatstaker

uh that's the name of my organization okay and I'll also post it in a few places and uh we you know we can expect a few people to tune in but the most important thing is like figuring out what where you as a beginner want to go to get more involved in this like how do you how do you become an ethereum and not just someone who thinks of it as markets okay yeah that sounds good I mean I have a at least a preliminary idea but I guess the more I learned uh the the more that'll develop and refine and evolve you know like you said about the Model T

I don't want to fossilize uh on day two with uh where I want to go with this yeah and that's um I would love if we just spent a year having open-ended conversations I I think it would just be so rich and valuable um well definitely I feel like I have a lot to gain from that all right uh so I'm gonna end the recording and okay hold on there we go