Decentralizing the Founder/CEO with Kain Warwick

Transcript

foreign [Music] podcast if you're just joining us we are building a coordination and network state of thousands of hackers dreamers and doers focused on using crypto to bring positive some digital systems to the world this podcast features the people who are doing it and it's published every Tuesday and Thursday if you want to learn more visit our website at greenpill.network where you can download the green pill book for free or join the Discord or become a member of your local green pill. Network chapter my guest today is Kane Warwick Kane is the founder of synthetics at D5 protocol that acts as the liquidity layer for an ecosystem of on-chain derivatives and financial instruments synthetics is a decentralized liquidity layer that's

available on ethereum and optimism and has a total value staked at 512 million dollars Kane is a D5 OG who helped to Pure Pioneer yield farming during the 2020 D5 summer and he decentralized himself from synthetics in 2020 to a council that makes decisions so the primary Arc of this episode is talking about Kane's relationship to synthetic style and the numerous times that he has decentralized himself let it go a little bit and re-centralized him himself and this episode is aimed primarily at Founders and developers that want to progressively decentralize their projects but aren't sure about the

Practical realities of doing so so we need to escape the echo chamber of Twitter where you have people who are just decentralization Maxis and don't understand the Nuance of what it's like to actually be in the trenches and to decentralize yourself away from a protocol but also the reasons why you might want to centralize yourself back to a protocol or a Dao that is uh that needs the help that only a Founder can provide so basically Kane has decentralized himself from synthetics and then recentralized a couple of times the first was in 2021 in which he came back to help deal with some of the uncertainty that people at the governance layer at synthetics were feeling the second time he came back to work on a number of product related things a drift and vision on the product

layer of the Dow and this third and most recent time Kane has returned to focus on moonshots revolving evolving in the synthetics ecosystem and a product called infinix that he is helping to build so in this episode we talk about the yoyo between decentralization and centralization as you as a founder of ad5 or Dow protocol need to go through in in order to go on a route of progressive decentralization but also progressively more success in market and we talk about some of the Nuance that that happens the things that the Nuance that happens there the things that only a Founder can bring back to a Dao are that they care a lot or that they have

context or that they have domain expertise and the onus is on them is the people who has who have those things to come back and um and provide value to the project if they can or the onus at least they came felt with respect to synthetics but also returning doesn't mean that you're the founder and CEO anymore it just means that you're a contributor that also is checked by governance and you don't have unilateral control so um what are the ways in which Founders returning to projects that they've decentralized are can add value to those ecosystems is the subject to this episode and I just think wow Kane is such a legend in the ecosystem and the fact that I got him to talk about this on the green pill is is I I think a real public good for Founders out there that

might be struggling with the loneliness of these questions or the question of how to progressively decentralize from their from their projects and then when to return and be a little bit more Hands-On if people if things are going off the cliff after they have decentralized so we really get into the Nuance of that Playbook of progressive decentralization for Founders on this episode and that is why I'm really excited for this episode with Kane Warwick and I think you're going to enjoy it too ballet Dao is an open Global Collective working to finance and democratize the gov governance of synthetic biology Technologies to protect the future of our planet research and progress into synthetic biology is critically constrained by the world of nation-state regulations and bureaucracy from middlemen but the potential that synthetic biology has for

the world is massive it can produce a world in total harmony with nature we can grow stuff using cells like software it's awesome and the best part is we no longer have to pull carbon out of the ground to grow and maintain civilization don't you think we should be funding this Valley Dow does and that's what they're here to do to try and make the solar Punk World of Tomorrow a reality today so join Valley Dao right now and save the planet at valleydow.bio hey Kane what's up how you doing hey Kevin good to see you again yeah likewise really excited to talk about your involvement with synthetics as a Founder who has decentralized himself and then returned I think once or maybe twice now so I'll continue with us the broad

Strokes of that story to tee us off yeah so um you know I got to a point I think um it was probably around like 2020 um where we had uh decentralized a bunch of things we had shut down our entities so we no longer had like an open source software Foundation that I was running and it was sort of a question of like okay what does this Council that's running protocol look like um and when we first launched the council there was a pretty clear uh kind of suggestion from most of the people running for the council that they didn't want me on the council they wanted some space to kind of establish it and see how it went and so for about six months I wasn't on the council I was just an

interested party that was kind of working in the background you know doing stuff but the council um you know was was kind of making all the decisions and after about six months I was like okay this is cool it's worked pretty well but there's some gaps and I think the main Gap is like the sync between the contributors who were you know on the ground doing the work and the council who was making the decisions about you know what should go into the protocol and that that kind of uh communication was just breaking down and so I said okay why don't I run for Council and see how that goes and so I did I came back I wrote Council you know I hadn't really been gone per se I just hadn't been making decisions so I came back and kind of helped make decisions

and coordinate that and I think after about six months it went pretty well and then I stepped back again and then I came back another time because I thought there were different issues um and now you know having stepped back a second time I've come back a third time not into synthetics proper but to actually build a new front for synthetics which is called infidex um so this is a different role altogether I'm no longer making decisions that X I'm trying to kind of contribute as like an outside party it was like you've got quite a yo-yo relationship with the synthetics project which I can certainly relate to um as a founder of a of a dial as well I'm wondering um you know in the times in which you've been yo-yoing out

decentralizing what has motivated you like why does decentralization matter to you and why has that what you know what the Zuckerberg thing would be to like make this an Empire and to and to make yourself the king of it forever uh you know why did why decentralize why not go down that route yeah I think you know you and I are probably pretty aligned on this right that this idea that um you know a group of people who are incentivized correctly with like you know the right incentives um are going to make better decisions um or at least different decisions right um than you know a benevolent dictator right or a CEO or whatever uh and so you know for me this idea that um you know you'll want groups of people that are

going to be involved and be able to participate is really powerful but then there's this trade-off and you and I've spoken about this as well where there might be insufficient motivation for all of these people to kind of come together and that you know a Founder has this like deep connection to a project that you know maybe other people might not have right and and is going to you know really push um pushing further than you know some independent person you're acting distilled and so I think for me it was it was kind of like trying to find that balance right of like we want good decision making we don't want unilateral control by a single person um or even like a small group of people

we want this to be an open thing that anyone can participate in uh but we also uh you know want to make sure that everyone's motivated and incentivized to do stuff because otherwise you just get apathy and you know things kind of fade away and balancing those two things is is I think been the challenge for sure yeah let's go back to this this post that vitalik wrote about why Dows are not just on chain organizations and in that post vitalik talks about decentralization providing credible neutrality decentralization providing censorship resistance and then if you have better decision making in a democratic environment decentralization will allow you to capture that and I think I heard a smathering of each of those things in what you said synthetics as a protocol needs to be credibly

neutral and censorship resistant and also the more democratic decision making that comes from having a decentralized group of actors uh making decisions in your case the council and the governance uh is better than having like a top-down person making all the the decisions so those are things that I heard in your answer there yeah for sure and you know I'm very much in agreement um around credible neutrality I think you know people are biased right like it's unavoidable um and so if you have you know one person or a small group of people uh making decisions you know those biases are going to create that it's pretty unavoidable obviously humans collectively have biases but you know it's probably not going to um be as Stark I think if you've got

this open governance mechanism where anyone can come in and you know it becomes like a Marketplace of ideas and people can really discuss things the price of it it does go slower you know but you make fewer bad decisions I would say decentralization is is credibly neutral you get more voices on the table they might have biases but at least they're they're out on the table and there's a Marketplace of ideas where people can evolve it forward but then in the times that you're kind of yoyoing back and centralization it's because something isn't working there's someone their people aren't synthesizing the information across the different uh different well I guess it's it's changed as synthetics has evolved between your first time coming back and your second and your third but um I'm wondering if you could maybe speak to when you came

back what were the motivations the first second and third time yeah so you know I think um a person who has been deeply involved in a project since its very beginning has a level of context and understanding of that thing that really probably exceeds anyone else right um you know there were I would say within the early synthetics Community probably like four or five people that had a better understanding of synthetics than myself right like they just deeply cared about it and really thought about specific aspects whatever but even those people who really understood synthetics and why it operated the way that it was we're probably missing context you know having not been around in the early days like why did we make certain decisions path

dependency Etc and so having that context and having that expertise to main expertise as well right I felt like there was an onus on me as one of the few people that was in a position to sort of uh leverage that domain expertise to get the right outcome as I saw it right obviously the app the outcome still needed to go through governance right I still need to convince people this all um but there's just a level of efficiency that I think an individual can kind of apply when they really see a problem and a solution and you know come in and kind of rally everyone around that solution say hey everyone this is what's going on like let's fix this right um you know and that it doesn't mean unilateral control it doesn't mean you

get to come in and say we're doing this because I said so you still need to convince everyone and it's still you know a democratic process um but I do think that there's an efficiency in having like a single person really understands the problem of the solution and can convince people and come up with a narrative and really try it so what I heard there was like as the founder and just someone who's been involved with synthetics for half a decade now you care a lot you have context you have domain expertise and that kind of created a feeling of an onus on you as one of the few people who had these things to come back and write any things that were not going wrong that were going wrong with the project and there's a sort of efficiency that comes with that all being in your mind

but you're still as synthetic as decentralized you're you're you're you're you're no longer the CEO and founder of a monolithic entity so the outcome has to go through governance and you don't have unilateral control there so there's like a check on on your power uh quote-unquote there as you're returning exactly yeah and you know what my vision was in the first instance evolved over taught right through that process of you know convincing people you know people had reasonable feedback and concerns about what I was proposing and you know the the ultimate solution ended up kind of evolving into something that was slightly different into what I had of mine but I think that process was a powerful process and again just the

motivation coming from like someone needs to do this I see a problem right like you know and I think everyone sold the problem like it wasn't it wasn't like people you know I didn't turn up and say hey guys there's this issue here and everyone's like whoa what are you talking about everyone's like yeah no we get it it's just no one really was sufficiently motivated to kind of fix it or or you know um had the right incentives or whatever but did the problems get stronger or sorry us smaller as you went from the first second and third times returning like uh it seems like as the network has gotten more successful and more decentralized it would be obvious that the problems that you're solving are are different in each time you return yeah I think so you know the first problem was like the people making decisions and not

communicating with people doing things like that's pretty fun bro like you know like that just is not going to work very well right um and you know what happened was there was a pretty clear road map for the people doing things contributors and as that road map sort of wrapped up the uncertainty around what to do next just really kind of you know grew uh massively and so like over the course of six months it was like okay we've done this and this and this and this and this and now we're kind of sitting here like what do we do next and the decision makers are like I don't know and they were like all right well so what's happening so they needed to be kind of brought together so it really kind of make some decisions about what was needed um and also muting the people to get

them to understand each other both socially and yeah okay and and I think you know the role of a founder or you know important critical people in a project in my mind is about synthesizing information right you know a a startup is hard enough right but like a dow or decentralized organization or crypto project there's so many different threads and bits of information the role of you know critical people within that um you know Community is to come in and take all those pieces and put it together in something that people can understand because the average person doesn't have time to do that themselves you know like they don't have time to go and read 100 blog posts and every Discord message and put it all together themselves they need someone to put it

together for them write a blog post and say here's our problems here's our potential Solutions here's how we think about things here's why we think about them this way and kind of you know in 20 minutes they can be brought up to speed right um to a reasonable extent and that someone needs to do that and there was no one in the ecosystem or in the community that was doing that and so I was like all right I'll pull my hand up put your hand up and be the synthesizer or yeah the network synthetics yeah exactly so the first time you returned it was because people making decisions we're not communicating with the operators and that was creating uncertainties so you brought those people together and what were the second in in third returns like what problems were you trying to solve during this yeah so

you know I stepped back um again after uh a little while and I I came back because I thought that um there were a number of like product related things that were important and and maybe you know not being addressed um and you know it was It was kind of small things but I just felt like um you know there was a little bit of drift in in division right it was a similar thing like there's a whole bunch of stuff going on people trying a bunch of things as much experimentation um but you know we really need to come in and you know kind of make some decisions and and what's the issue um and decide how we're going to approach these things how are we going to move forward

um and so that was kind of the the second time that I came back to um you know Run for the council and then the third time this most recent time um you're coming back on the treasury and you know building infinix was about okay we need to so I think you know what happens is the more weird ideas the the kind of more outside the box thinking it's hard to get people to do that from like inside the project right someone needs to be mandated to like be like hang on a second let's just really rethink like what are we trying to do here you know is this actually the optimal way and I think that oftentimes from within the project if you're a contributor or a Community member it can be quite easy to just kind of keep going with the

momentum keep going the same direction and to just you know say hang on everyone stop everything let's think is this the right path and should we go somewhere else that's a hard thing for someone to do unless they've got like a level of um sort of cut through and and you know um cache or whatever within the project to be able to like tell everyone to stop and rethink things so I think that that was needed and you know with respect to the treasury that was you know kind of my my pitch was like let's come in and really think about what is this treasury doing why are we why are we doing things this way what are we trying to achieve where do we want to go we came up with like 11 different ideas of things that we could test you know things that we could do

with the treasury that would you know potentially push the project forward um you know obviously only two or three of them in the course of three months will be able to kind of get moving but you know there's still a backlog of things and try and then with infidex it was like okay guys we've actually built the thing it works now like this is on some level Done Right we've got an execution engine that competes with uh centralized exchanges how do we make sure people use it you know like ultimately for the lost you know whatever seven years of smart contract engineering or whatever it is right since ethereum um you know it was live has been about trying to build stuff that works and you know we've had bits and pieces of things

that have worked and and you know are kind of accessible to people um but it's only probably made in the last two or three years I think we've really got some traction and can really compete with the database right like that's ultimately we're trying to do right the wolves run by databases and blockchains are a better way of coordinating and you're more open and all of the beneficial things that come from you know writing things on on a blockchain um using smart call tracks um but they have massive trade-offs and so the idea was like come in and try and smooth some of those trade-offs and show people this Tech is better this is better than a database right we're not going to rug you you know we call it rug you um but you know it's going to be easy to

use right because you can have something that is amazing and safe and whatever but if it's unusable for the average person never get traction so what I heard there was that you've kind of returned to synthetics you've been yoyoing with synthetics in in three sort of rotations the first was about helping the people making decisions communicating with the operator and resolving that uncertainty with the operators and resolving that uncertainty the second time it was because there was a number of products related things adrift in Envision and then the third time with this treasury uh the treasury work that you're doing now um you're you're trying to encourage more weird ideas more outside of the box thinking you've kind of gone up the

Maslow's hierarchy of needs like governance is working product is working what are the moonshot bets that we could do um and and really accelerate what's already working and what I heard that I thought was interesting there is that you have a certain amount of cachet in the project that you can go against the grain of the way things already work and and and that's something that you could only do as a founder or someone with the amount of cachet to get there so did I play back the the three returns yeah I think that I think that's that's kind of it you know um and I I like my sense is that this is something that you know organizations like I don't think this is uh unique to synthetic body stretch right like I think that this is something that you

know we've seen play out in other doubts maker for example right um you know where runes kind of said okay Run free right and then he's like you're running over the cliff and he comes back and he's like don't run you know and you might agree or disagree with like whether they were actually running off cliff and whether you know now he's like got them in the right direction or what but you know there is the power that a Founder has um to be able to come and and really kind of rally everyone to like a vision and say like actually let's try and do this right um and so you know whether or not you agree or disagree but um with you know the conclusion right like there is a sense that you know having this really diffuse responsibility of all of these different

people can lead to like just kind of slowing down and and you're not motivated to really push things forward or do crazy things call crazy ideas yeah I mean I think being slow and unimutable is a feature at like the foundation of things that need to be credibly neutral but like the innovation in the labs side of things you almost get this like tragedy of the commons where you're not innovating in some cases the product isn't even working anymore so like separating the concerns of what are the things that actually need to be decentralized critically neutral and slow and hard from the things where you actually need the people to be motivated um is something I'm starting to see across all these different ecosystems that have the as they expand and from

one monolithic project into many modular projects you're gonna have your parts that are credibly neutral and you have your parts that are more political and opinionated and that's just sort of it's almost like the the big bang creating solar systems and universes like some of the they're just different from each other yeah agreed and and this is you know I wrote about this in like 2019 or whatever this idea that like people were so caught up you know the people who were still around in 2019 were you know Die Hard uh decentralization Maxwell's right like you know especially in the theater ecosystem like people you know the boss majority of people in my mind were were really focused on that and so synthetics as one of the few projects that kind of survived 2018 there were a

lot of Skeptics right they were like but wait you're not immutable you're not doing you know like look at auger like auger is like immutable you know whatever right like you look at you know these projects like that had really gone out and and you know tried to do everything as readably as possible and I just said synthetics doesn't matter right now like it just doesn't it's not important so we can be not decentralized right now like I'm not saying let's make ethereum less decentralized right like I'm not saying you know let's try and centralize everything that's a better idea I'm just saying that the things that don't matter right now let's experiment and and move quickly and if they actually become important then let's say which was a fairly you know novel idea I think back then but I think people you

know and there's a problem with that of course which is that like people go sure like sure you're going to decentralize it over time like sure you know you're just gonna get it important and then you're gonna be the dictator I would have not ever let anyone touch it right get the Zuckerberg yeah yeah and like you know it's hard sitting in 2019 to be like no no I'm really serious about this I want to do this you know um yeah and even every time I come back people have been like here we go he's just come back you know and it's like well no each time I've come back I've had less and less power like you know if I've had more less control each time I've come back and needed to you know do more politicking and it feels like it's Progressive decentralization it's not

just a meme anymore and you can actually show that line of having less power um the visualization I've got in my mind I'm just gonna try to paint a picture for listeners is like a two by two Matrix between um if you like the x-axis is decentralization in the y-axis is Market success there's a trade-off here where like you you aim for Market success at certain times and then you kind of ebb and flow back towards decentralization you're like oh wait this is we're not getting decentralization and Market success so we need to turn back towards centralization and Market success and then once you succeed with that you go back towards decentralization you kind of zigzag across the Matrix from not decentralized and not Market success to decentralized in Market success does

that visual do anything for you um it does but I would I would tweak it just a little bit and say that as you get more Market success the things that were not previously concerning like centralized centralized aspects that we're not previously concerning become more concerned right so it's almost like you start off with something that's kind of centralized and then if it gets successful what was previously not concerning is now area concerning right there's like pressure to decentralize and so then you're like okay well let's decentralize this aspect and that has this inevitable thing where sometimes you know you go in the other direction Less Market success and then you got to work out like how do we you know come back up and and you know as you try and solve because it's easier to do things if you know just build a

database right like you know but then if you start out with the database and you're like in Flight try to like remove bits of control or whatever that's hard right and that can kind of lead to stagnation for a while and I think we've seen that with synthetics um you know as we've gone more successful we said okay let's change this that and then you know things slow down for six months or whatever and then eventually find the new equilibrium and then it can kind of roll a debt yeah that's sort of interesting so it's like the pressure builds to decentralize the more Market success that you get and and so it's like where is the stress coming from is it from a lack of Market success or a lack of decentralization and that's what causes you to turn along that Switchback and I think we saw this like you know

globally right with D5 everything was run by multi-cigs for I mean everything was run by EOS for a while right yeah right you know that's just someone in the background signing all the transactions on the deployer account or something right and then you know we were like okay guys like that's not okay right enough people shouted about it and and we said all right let's you know replace that with multi-cigs right and then we're like okay let's play some multi-cigs with like multi-sigs control my Snapshot controlled by snapshot right um and you know all of those things were kind of driven by pressure where it's like wow D5 actually is working it's kind of cool and people like this is not okay you can't have this thing that's like got you know billions of dollars of TBL and it's run by you know a few

multi-cigs we need more you know and so I think we've kind of seen that globally as well and like each time you do that and you move away from just an eoa that's you know one engineer that kind of controls everything it can kind of quickly move and now it's a multi-sig with 18 people on it and you can't coordinate them and you know it slows down like that's just made it harder for us right and and yeah we need to find a new way then in this new paradigm but more decentralized you know control okay how do we progress there right um and so you know I think that that's that's kind of been that Global device story on some level as well yeah well speaking of the global D5 story I think that you're in kind of a rarified category with I'd say you know

the other D5 Founders I really look up to are arroon and uh with maker and stani with Ave Robert with Robert Lesner with compound and then Hayden from uniswap I'm wondering if you see any sort of I mean I think most famously brune has decentralized himself from maker and then come back with like a giant end game plan and then um Emin tried to implement it I'm not sure if I've seen the same thing from other D5 Founders but have you have you learned anything from the way other Founders in in that cohort of upper echelon D5 Founders have decentralized and come back and what are the similarities and differences between uh between synthetic's story and the in the other ones yeah like you know I would say I'm probably you know friends or at

least acquaintances with all of those guys right so I've had conversations with you know multiple conversations with them you know so I'm closer than others um Hayden's interesting because he really has never stopped right like he's the only one Adam that group of people that that you mentioned I think that's never really stopped it was kind of crazy right um it's it's pretty impressive track record you know starting from basically like early 2018 um you know from the moment those contracts with Lloyd I don't think he's gone anywhere like in the office every day for like six years nuts um so which is you know and I think maybe that's partially due to UNI swap feeling more like a normal startup yeah well they've got Labs which is like he's

the CEO of and then the protocol is is like a there's like a firewall between them I think it's just set up there yeah and I think that works well right like maybe it's maybe it's a little bit like more mentally sustainable or something like that like I I still go back to like um Larry Ceramics uh um Tweet back in like 2018 where it was like I can't even imagine the stress that D5 people are under where like every day we had that we had that tweet like on our uh on our wall for a long time where it's just like every day is just pure chaos and it's true like 2018 2019 like every day we would wake up and be like oh is this the day we die right like is this the day where it all blows up and you know

and then there were acts and things would break and stuff so it was incredibly stressful and I would say you know obviously uni swap has had a lot of stress but to something there's something about deploying immutable code and not upgrading it that probably you know makes makes things a little bit easier um I think you know I learned a lot from Robert and the way that they deployed their governance um you know this this idea of like um you know basically allowing anyone to deploy new code and you know having it as like this open pathway it wasn't controlled by a deployer I think that was one of the most Innovative things that we sort of saw in in terms of governance um you know of that like you know pretty deep by somewhere to Deep by summer period um that was pretty amazing

um and what that I think allowed Robert to do was to kind of get out of the way in a similar way that to to how I had you know um to say okay let's hand over governance and control deployments to someone else so that I'm not sitting in the deployment pipeline and that you know that that's something that I think is quite powerful um roon you know Rune and I interestingly had like a pretty fractious relationship starting off right like I remember like sitting in like the D5 um that first D5 Summit in 2018 like basically cackling it right because he was talking about real world assets and like all the stuff and I was like this is insane what are you talking about um and uh so we you know we didn't get along

um that well but I think over time there's been like a mutual respect that's kind of broad on it um he's probably the most similar to me in terms of like just really pulling back and saying like let's see what happens and then going okay cool here's my thoughts I'll come back and and try and you know uh contribute again um so I think rude and I are probably probably the most similar in that respect and then I think the last person of that cohort we didn't talk about Aston a inave which you know it's interesting to me that stani's just going from like Ave being a huge success to like pushing our web through social uh would be my commentary on that but I'm not familiar with the Dynamics of his relationship with Ave at this point yeah you know it's it's funny like I'd say

standing and I uh are probably like the closest like I've I've known him the longest and you know we've hung out a lot and like going you know like he's someone I've like socialized with like quite a bit um and I had no idea what's going on with lens like it's just really totally unclear to me like what the what the relationship is there um I would say he's unique um you know even though um I've kind of you know done Angel Investing and stuff like that like I think he's the only one of all of those people other than maybe Robert now um who's going from like one large-scale D5 project like trying to build another large scale project with like very high aspirations

um it's pretty crazy like I couldn't do that like that is like I needed some time off you know like I couldn't I couldn't just go from one thing to another to be fair I had been doing startups for like 15 years before or you know Haven so I was pretty burnt out even when I started it um but yeah there's something pretty shocking about just being like YOLO I'm doing lens now right like I remember when I saw that I was like you're yeah well once you've accumulated capital and talent maybe you just see opportunities everywhere and you can you're uniquely positioned to to pick them up but uh for sure yeah well I'm wondering uh so okay so why I wanted to do this episode is like I think D5 projects were one of the first things to reach product Market fit and

to feel like other than layer ones and and in things in that category are they're the first things to really feel this pressure to decentralize out of the founder CEO role um you know maybe with the exception of all layer ones and layer twos like things that are lower down the stack um are are feeling the pressure to decentralize and for the founders like the charismatic founder to to check out and my theory is that like as software eats the world as soft reads Finance with web 3 there's going to be hundreds of other dials that have a similar sort of thing where you've got a charismatic founder that gets it off the ground they're beloved but also maybe they're like a little bit of a bull in the china shop and and and so as they give away governance rights to the community they

decentralize um and and and maybe I I this episode is for them for the the ones who want to yell yo-yo back uh but genuinely are committed to Progressive decentralization over time so um you know maybe the target audience for this right now is like there's like 100 Founders out there in 2023 but uh as this grows over time there'll be thousands of people and and I guess if you could speak to that audience like what is your advice for someone who's either going to decentralize away from a project or is going to centralize back because the you saw that the contributors you gave them the power and now they're walking off the cliff with it um you know like what have you learned that you that you would want the next people to Pat to to go down this

this path to know so I think two things that I want to say to be like really transparent and honest right with you know that group of people are just after all right one thing is as I was going through 2018 and 2019 I knew that we had to decentralized right I I knew that that was critical for all kinds of reasons right um and and you know I wrote about it a lot whatever um what was funny though is the people in my life who know me are like what are you talking about like I've never seen you give up power in anything like if anything you want more power more control like you know you you really feel like you want to just drive things forward as much as possible and I actually kind of psyops myself right as I was on podcasts I was like no we need

to decentralize and I kind of convinced myself that I really wanted to do it um and so you know that was a really interesting kind of realization I think I had late in 2019 of like wait a second this is actually not me like it's what needed to happen but it was not in my personality but I somehow convinced myself that it was right um and and so that that was that that's one thing that I think maybe people who are startup people right and and you're really driven I'm guessing that that would be a struggle a lot of people would have right and so you're just calling out that like this is not natural to me like it wasn't my natural state to be like let me give power to the world and you know give it up right I was probably

more like a Zuckerberg style thing but I somehow was able to like buy into the ethos enough and realize that this was critical enough that I thought myself into thinking that I actually wanted it so that's one thing the second thing is I think giving up power at the time when I first did in 2020 was a little bit self-serving as well right because I was burned out yeah just so you're decentralizing stress with these decisions it was like I can't actually handle this stress that's why you know I look at Hayden and I'm like like that's amazing let's do that for so long but like I really you know I was I was genuinely burned out and I I felt like I was sort of incapable of contributing in the way that I wanted to

um but and this is the critical thing right if we had still been under like existential threat right like existential startup risk which most startups exist in for a really long time right you know previously in like traditional startup world you kind of live in existential stress until you get to a public company right which was like five years then six years and seven years then ten years and so Founders kind of got used to this idea that we had a successful startup you really had to get public company status and then you could kind of hand it over to the markets and maybe a professional CEO comes in or you know whatever right um I felt like I was at a point where if we had still been under existential threat mode like

if we hadn't reached escape velocity in like had sufficient Capital to survive I would have kept going I would have absolutely just kept grinding it out but I didn't need to you know we had gotten to a level of success and we had enough funding and you know the treasury was sufficient that I could actually step back and so it was a bit self-serving it wasn't like you know if you put a gun in my head and said you know you need to keep doing this otherwise the thing fails I would have absolutely kept on um but you know I I it wouldn't have necessarily been at my full capacity and I wouldn't have said that it would have been the best thing for my mental state or even the project or whatever but I could have kept going but I had the luxury of not keeping going so there was

an element of like I need to step back for my own sanity and that I did and I could um you know and I think that's an important thing to recognize probably in a Founder that like you know if you get to a point where you're sufficiently successful you have the luxury of decentralizing that might be the best time to do it you know to to take some time and see how the project goes um I think the other thing that I would say to Founders is like back in the day three years ago right um you know we didn't have the tooling we didn't have snapshot even like we didn't have any trades we didn't have Dow tooling we didn't know what the hell we're doing and so you know today handing over power to a community there's a bit of a Playbook

um and you know which doesn't mean don't experiment I think we should still be running experiments and we by no means salt Dao governance right like we still have a lot of problems and doubt confidence and I really think that Founders should have their own idea of what they think their project needs in terms of Doubt competence and decentralization and so those experiments are still important uh but we're much better off than we were and so the risk of handing over control of the community I think um is far lower than it was back in the day and so you know I would say put all of those things together in your own mind as a founder and work out like when is the right time to do this and do it in a controlled fashion and then be prepared to come back like it might not be a it might not be a

one-time thing you might need to come back and course correct yeah and I think there's agility in coming back multiple times and serving a different role in in each of those times I mean I I know that as a Founder my agility has been tested on multiple Levels by just the number of things you need to be like above competence level at in order to be a viable founder um and going from being like a VP engineering to to being a founder and uh it has has meant that you have to pick up a lot of things but um what I'm just impressed by is that you've come back three times and each time you're doing something different and serving a different role and being mindful of that and how you relate to people it probably requires a lot of Consciousness and and Agility

yeah I think you know there's a level of like um and I'm I'm you know I'm not saying I'm a humble person by any stretch right but like there is a level of like existential um and like you know uh just like sort of accepting that we don't know what we're doing like like I added just a like a global level right that like we really don't know what we're doing and to not get too caught up in it and to not get so worried about trying to appear like you know right and you know so I would turn up and be like this seems like it's not going well but I would try to not be like super opinionated or like arrogant about it um you know just try and like have like a you know a sort of approach to the world of like we don't know what's

happening yeah be humble about that one of the things that I've sort of seen is having been in web 3 on six years now um I'm always struck by people who are sort of new to the ecosystem where they come from web 2 where there's more of a Playbook like in web 2 you just you literally like you acquire a user base and you either turn on ads or you turn on a subscription model and then you scale it so that cack it cost of acquisition of a customer is lower than LTV they turn on the marketing phone and they tell to sell to Google for 300 million dollars like that's the Playbook and then web three it's just like there's no Playbook and the amount of uncertainty that you have to be comfortable with and still execute without having like 100 airtight plan like I think that training people up on

the ability to navigate that ambiguity is is maybe one of the roles that you as a Founder could play in one of these projects and you know maybe that's only Alpha while web 3 remains a wild west I'm sure it'll it'll grow up over time but I don't know if you have any any thing that you want to Riff on there yeah like I think that's very true what's interesting to me though is that um you know I'm now watching um if the next kind of take shape right um and there's a group of people that are working on it I'm kind of helping and Advising I guess right like I'm not a founder of it in in the sense of like day to day doing all of the stuff right there there's you know at the moment like five or six people that are that

are kind of contributors on that project and I'm watching it take shape in a fashion that is very different to like what you know Haven was or synthetics was or even some of the other projects that I've you know helped out with or you're meant for it or whatever and I think part of it is that we're getting closer to having a Playbook right we're getting closer to like these are known problems and there's like a known solution and you just need to like build things and go out and do it right um and I do think that this will become easier for people over time like it won't be as much uncertainty as we kind of dealt with in like 2016 in 2017 18 whatever so you know I'm I'm I'm hopeful of that and I'm kind of watching this in real

time going wow like you know these people are just putting together a pretty clear plan and you know the uncertainty around the plan is there's a little bit of like uncertainty around like product and implementation details but like it's very small compared to like is this even the thing that the world needs right you know which is what we're kind of dealing with back in the day right up like do people even need stablecoin like a stablecoin's even a sensible thing to do is this you know there were so many open questions yeah I feel that for sure um although maybe working on regen web3 and public goods it still feels like a little bit out there like people don't understand why I think the world I think you're still out there right like this I think there's elements that are like a

bit more understood um but you know public goods funding and all of that stuff I think it's still there's a ton of uncertainty around it so you know I don't envy you there yeah well I think you know there's a bunch of dollars that have large treasuries that you can figure out how to allocate them in their public goods you know is is is I think figuring out how to build a decentralized ecosystem is I think that's the next step for public goods funding and having more crypto native path to reach that escape velocity I think will be important if we're ever going to get to the dream state of having governments use protocols to allocate public goods but um you know I'm at least starting to see the path and maybe that's a function of just being there and synthesizing the vision like you said

um that that only someone who's been around for a while can do and and you know I think this is part of it as well is like it's only in hindsight right like it's only retrospectively that you can kind of even see the pattern right yeah people you know that's one thing that I I do get really frustrated with in the community is people turn up and they're like you guys are idiots like why didn't you just do this thing or this thing or this thing you know three years ago right and it's like well like on some level that thing didn't exist right so someone needed to invent it first of all right for us to even know to do it and then also we didn't even know what the shape of this like there was just like it's hard to even communicate I think how little we

understood what this stuff even did right like even D5 emerging as like a category was a bit of an accident right it was like three guys in the telegram Channel they're like oh there's a bunch of money stuff going on like what is that and then like coming up with this like thankfully defense set of open finance or whatever the options were but like you know it was like okay we didn't even have categories we didn't have names for what we were doing it's just we're doing some random stuff and it kind of coalesced into this thing right and so I think that when we look back you know even 10 years or 20 years we'll see the early glimmers of things that made sense but the world will be using these tools in a very different way than we maybe expect or tried to

build or whatever right and you know that's always inevitable um but I think that ultimately it will make the world a better place it's just that you know it's going to take a lot of false starts and dead ends and you know missteps to kind of get there and just keep experimenting really yeah for sure well um you know having been in the trenches I know that success is not always linear and especially as a Founder a lot of times it's one step forward and two steps back for a long time until you catch a break but that break can be once one step forward that turns into a thousand steps forward because you're just carried by momentum and a lot of it is just going through the ideas of trying stuff and not dying in the meantime so it's it's quite interesting but it's like that it's like

type 2 fun where it's where it's like very stressful in the moment but it's very fun when you're on the other side of it and you're I'm just such an admirer of synthetics and and how you've come around the other side of it and can't wait to see what you do with your third uh with your third Adventure here with infinix in the in the mood shots yeah awesome yeah thank you it's pretty exciting it feels like I definitely feel a sense of like motivation and like excitement that has been missing for a while you know where like I'm actually like getting out of bed like ready to be like all right what are we doing today like I'm excited about it so you know that yeah and I think part of that excitement comes from like I feel like we we can actually go out and really

make an impact like even though we're building a trading interface right we've we've existed for the last 10 years of crypto right of people trading in database which is just Madness when you think about like that like that's just not you know on some level it was inevitable and it couldn't have been any other way because we did have the tooling to do stuff with crypto in a crypto fashion right we had crypto but we didn't have the tools to do crypto stuff with it and so like now we finally do and we're going to actually have this like phase shift from like using centralized tools to interact with crypto to using decentralized tools to interact with crypto and even if that interaction is just trading and speculation it's still better and if we

can get to that point and really make a big chip in this like centralized database driven reality that we've been operating in that's huge like that's a that's a next kind of in my mind like that's an inflection point for crypto and you know we've seen uni Swap and and other people you know kind of achieve some level of success with this but there's still a long way to go you know we need to I mean even watching bass right like watching coinbase morph itself from this database reality to base where they've got their own yeah you know uh chain like we're seeing that we're starting to see it so I think we're in an exciting base right now and it crypto yeah for sure well I know that you're a boomeranging back and uh maybe other people are boomeranging back right right now but I am wondering

um about the boomerang away from the project in what kind of like did you ReDiscover that you could have hobbies uh in that time like did you how did you unwind from thinking about work and ReDiscover whatever it was that that lights you up out outside of work um because I know that some people have told me they've had problems with that yeah look you know I've I've told you about this a little bit um I I definitely had some issues um you know I've I've struggled with addiction my whole life and all of a sudden not having the addiction of War right of you know having a place to be every day where I had to like be functional um opened up some opportunities for me to just like let things go in a dark

Direction and so I found myself you know doing a lot of crazy stuff that uh was not healthy for me or my family and you know like it was it was definitely some hard times uh I ended up going to rehab and and you're kind of you know I'm sober and I know drink or do drugs anymore or anything like that um and so you know it was it was a bit of a trade-off like all of a sudden I had time and then you know my go-to was like be chaotic in that time right unfortunately that's all I knew it was just chaos and stress right and so what I didn't have stress in my life I meant um but at the same time I also was able to like take up you know some hobbies that I hadn't had time for as much when

I was like deep in startup reality which you know like freediving for example or something I absolutely love um and so I spent a lot of time last couple of years freediving uh which has been amazing so you know it's definitely been trade-offs certainly the last year of Being Sober has allowed me to have a lot more time to do healthy things um pretty great so if you're feeling pretty good how long when you're on the decentral or the decentralization part of the yin yang uh does it take you to stop thinking about work are we talking weeks or months probably months honestly like yeah it like you know it's definitely it's something that you kind of need to wean yourself off and like really like you know even those times where I did disappear right I was still in crypto I was still doing transactions

every day I was you'll find stuff so I never really got out of it it was only the most recent time where I went to rehab and like really you know like got clean and like to time to like get my mental health in order where I I don't think I did I don't change transaction this is really funny actually so I didn't do a long chain transaction for I think like three months right um from like uh basically October of 2022 uh all the way through to like January right and then January I'm back in Sydney uh you know I'm I'm like struggling to like be sober and like just live my life and everything and I had to do a transaction and I was like okay I gotta go to do a transaction I plug my Tracer in got my computer ready to go and I was like oh

do I want to use zapper or D bank because I wanted to go and like unwind some your problem it's like I'll use DPAC so I type in D banking people and uh uh like fake debank link pops up I click it I go to this thing and I literally am about to sign the transaction to like lose all of the funds in my like k.e wallet which at the times you know probably a big chunk of money and I was just about to like click sign transaction where I was like wait a second why am I citing a transaction and I almost got I always robbed myself like so three months out of crypto and um yeah so you know I I recommend keeping up with your op SEC and not not forgetting how to do crypto is probably important as well when you take a break

uh yeah but yeah that was the longest that I'd gone without doing any old chain stuff or you're playing with beer yield Farms a deep pasta yeah that's fun well um I think that this episode will serve as foundational subject matter for Founders that have complicated relationships with their work and with their projects and uh I know that I see some reflections of myself in the work that I've done in in what you've done so um yeah uh thanks so much for agreeing to do this episode I'm wondering uh as a final question is there anything I didn't ask that you want to say no I think I think um I think we covered all the stuff in relation to to governance that um you know is I'll probably to talk about um it was pretty comprehensive so

hopefully it is so valuable for people that are building stuff in space uh you know just to maybe even normalize some things I think that's kind of a critical thing right like you know being what did I found when I did my mentorship program uh is that you know being a startup founder is very isolating oftentimes you know even you and I oh yeah right um yeah so I think that it is even though you know a lot of people in crypto and a lot of Founders are very public and caught up on Twitter and like doing stuff I don't know that they're um you know as open about some of the struggles that they have and so I think that normalizing that like it is a struggle like you're not you know you're not the only one right like everyone's struggling everyone's trying to figure

things out and not trying to pretend like you know everything or have you know omnipotent or whatever so um hopefully that's that's kind of the final thing that I can I can be better on with like you know this is a struggle it's really hard the work that we're doing is is difficult and you know it can feel isolating but there are people out there who are going through the same thing and you just gotta find your support network base yeah it can feel really lonely being a founder and um isolating just to be in that seat and I think just knowing other Founders and comparing and contrasting struggles and having that support group is is something that's that's valuable in and out so I think that's a great place to end it awesome well thanks so much again really appreciated this

yeah my pleasure your phone all right peace foreign [Music] we just heard from Kane Warwick the founder of synthetics I was really excited to talk to them to get into the Nuance of decentralizing and re-centralizing yourself from a Dao or a D5 project for Founders I think the progressive decentralization is a great north star and a great ideal but I think that as a Founder it's really confusing to know what your relationship with your project could be and just hearing from Kane and the struggles that he's had has for me as a Founder helped me feel a

little bit less lonely so I hope that you enjoyed it as well thanks again for listening to the greenpill.network podcast again we are building a coordination and network Society of hackers dreamers and doers who are focused on using crypto to bring positive some digital systems to the world that Kane is a shining example of this as a successful D5 founder who's willing to pay forward his lessons that he's learned through the next generation of Founders in the ecosystem if you value this work if you value the green pill Network please subscribe create a review it really helps other listeners in the web3 ecosystem to discover the work that we're doing to build more positive some ventures in the world so please subscribe rate in review peace and love I will see you next time