S7 Ep. 6 - Code, Law, and Art W/ Primavera De Filippi

Transcript

the idea with the plantoid is to create a blockchain based life form so something that has a degree of autonomy AO like self-sufficiency and that is also capable of evolving and reproducing basically whoever wants to host a plti is welcome to do so provided that they feed them oh nice they feed them enough so can I get a plant toy to San Francisco for exhibition let's discuss that would be cool if like every planted has their Twitter or even Instagram and like posting those pictures right away yeah they could tweet all the seats that they generate I mean there's a lot of cool stuff exactly and if they are like it's an evolving process if they're in a physical space they can also provide

some of the like nice scenery pictures you know where they actually are when you contribute to a d you're basically Contracting with a smart contract which in some way is more secure but in other way it less clear like I know you know now the administration in United States is changing you know the commissioner it's uh leaving but maybe also beyond the US like maika and other regulation do they make it like clear more clear welcome to the green pill. network podcast if you're just joining us we're building a coordination a network Society of thousands of hackers dreamers and doers using crypto to bring positive sum digital systems to the world this

podcast features the people who are doing it and we publish a season of 5 to 10 episodes every couple months this season is about how to Dow I releasing a book with my co-author pun car who is also a dow native person and we are really excited about helping people find prosperity and to help them thrive in the frontier for time in Memorial people have gone to the frontier in order to find new prosperity new opportunities and our generation's Frontier is the internet we want to teach people about the future of Dallas the future of Internet coordination and this season of how to Dow is all about how do we do that how do we Dow how do we find more prosperity in the internet Frontier and

this guest season of five to 10 episodes is going to be about how to Dow um the next voices that you'll hear will be myself or my guest co-host punar talking about how to Da hope you enjoy this season see you peace welcome to the how toow podcast brought to you by Green pill. Network today we have Prima Vera De Philippe on the podcast she's renowned legal scholar artist and internet activist whose interdisciplinary work Bridges blockchain technology law and art as a director of research at the national Center of scientific research in Paris and faculty associate at Harvard's

Berkman Klein Center primova has become a leading voice in blockchain governance law and art her work including research on polycentric governance and onchain accountability offer groundbreaking insight into the challenges and opportunities of decentralized systems recognized globally she has also brought blockchain into art through her plantoid Series so primar Vera welcome on the PO hi well we can start actually with your art series uh that seems like the most fun From blockchain perspective uh so

can you let us know what actually plantoid uh is uh and how it's how it's this art if I understand correctly it's actually a physical plant is connected to blockchain yes yeah yeah it's cyborg in some way um so it's uh the body of the plantd is a metallic sculpture that um has like all of its physicality and then the spirit or the soul of the plantd is a smart contract on the ethereum blockchain and those two components interact with each other in order to enable the plantoid to reproduce itself the idea with the plantoid is to create a blockchain based life form so something that has a degree of autonomy Auto like

self-sufficiency and that is also capable of evolving and reproducing and the way it works is that uh people can feed the plantoid with cryptocurrency with it and then uh when they when they get fed the plantoid activate itself so you can then interact with the plantoid you can speak with it it has like a llm based discussion can touch it you sometimes some of them have like cameras and they take a picture of you so there's different ways different Planters have different ways of activation some of them make music and things like this and so you have a particular amount of time in which the plantoid is interacting with you and through this interaction you are co-creating creting an art piece uh so

you can create like a musical piece sometimes you speak and then the planto will create a poem based on the speech sometimes it's going to take a picture and then it's going to make a portrait out of you so there's different ways but basically you feed it it's kind of a jukebox you feed it you interact with it and then you are the the interaction becomes the seed for creating generative art and then whatever is generated is then Minted as an nft and this nft is given back to the human pollinator that nft is the digital seed so you have collected a digital seed from the plantoid and then your role of course as a pollinator is to disseminate that seed and dissemination is done obviously on

the secondary Market by selling and distributing the nft uh and every time the nft is being sold there is the royalties that are feeding back into the plantoid account uh and so the plantoid is basically accumul ulating funds either from the primary Market by acquiring funds directly or by the secondary Market every time the digital seeds are being sold and then there is a point in which the plant will acquire a sufficient amount of funds uh so every plantoid has a particular threshold once the threshold is met the smart contract activate as a dow and so it opens a c for proposal and then anyone can submit a proposition and describe the way in

which they are planning or envisioning to create the next physical instantiation of a plantoid and then all the people that currently hold a digital seed so all the nft holder have a voting power and they can vote on The Proposition that they like the most and then just like uh any standard Dow system uh at some point there is a winner that is established and then the plantoid will automatically and autonomously transfer the funds to the selected artist that will then be hired or commissioned by the plantoid to create a new copy of itself and then the cycle starts again wow this this is interesting and it's uh it's kind of

cool how we are basically onboarding people into crypto through like uh very much like you know an art form when you were describing it I was envisioning uh those people who are like usually in this like tourist areas you know on Bridges and stuff like you come there you pay couple you know euros and then you get portrait of yourself kind of thing I feel like the plantoid is kind of replacing them a little bit like you know you come to the plantoid you feed it and they will create the the art for you but it's super nice that it's like continuing it's not just like Gathering the money but like you know uh growing the ecosystem so how big is actually the

ecosystem how how many plantoids are already there so currently There are 16 plantoids and uh that are the first one was created in 2014 and took a while before it reproduced but uh now that U so the plant would have evolved since the time and now that they are actually starting to do those NF based seeds uh now they are actually acquiring much more funds because before it was just a donation and now they create nfts in exchange and of course people are much more willing to pay the plantoids when they get an nft in return so uh hopefully there will be many more plantoid in the coming years and also it needs to grow like exponentially if I

understand it correctly because every single plantoid can reproduce themselves so if you have 16 now you have like 16 reproduction machines in a sense yeah yeah yeah exactly and like how you decide where the plantoid will be actually like uh put like in the physical space like is there like a museum like doing the proposal is there like Museum to be picked like where the panto should be standing to get the most attraction or how how that kind of works yeah this is kind of like not codified so it's kind of like very informal right now usually it's me deciding uh but this is this is really like right now there is planto a little bit everywhere there is not a governance system that is kind

of dealing with that so it's more like yeah it's trust based and uh basically whoever whoever wants to host a plantoid is welcome to do so provided that they feed them oh nice they feed them enough so can I get a plantoid to San Francisco for exhibition let's discuss okay cool uh would be nice are are they mostly in Europe or are they like all over the world they are a little bit over the world uh there is a few in the US there is a few in Australia Europe uh yeah they've been traveling quite a lot actually oh they are traveling maybe more than me like uh it's pretty cool they get to explore the world first uh yeah oh this is this is great and like um there is also this

Twitter bot or like it's kind of AI which is like tweeting and also you can feed it uh with money and then they can hire people to like improve their algorithm and stuff like that like you yeah I'm actually thinking to add a tweeting capacity to the overarching plantoid system oh nice but to be seen I haven't fully but yeah it's part of the big plan to have the planter being able to have its own because right now it's like um it's using like the same the same system as like TR terminal you know it's like jailbroken AI uh which gives much more interesting results than when it's not jail broken um but yeah I'm thinking about giving like at Twitter

andle to the plantoid as well yeah and that would be cool if like every plantoid has their Twitter or even Instagram land like posting those pictures right away you know um I'm not sure yeah they could tweet all the seeds that they generate I mean there's a lot of cool stuff and if they are like it's an evolving process if they in a physical space they can also provide some of the like nice scenery pictures you know where they actually are you know because you have so many of these travel influencers uh now like the plant can be travel influencer because it travels the world yeah conf yeah I mean like um yeah PL should um definitely communicate more about their whereabouts yeah yeah no

that will be cool and you know uh if I can help and host uh p in San Francisco it will be pretty cool we can do some uh event maybe with the launch of the book uh we have big launch event here in San Francisco on 22nd of January so maybe plan can be there to get feeded uh from our guests uh type of thing so it would be cool could be interesting uh so you know we I know that you are not just into art uh but you are also into code and law um so I just would like to like maybe touch up a little bit on the like regulatory side you know people are usually very bored uh or not very but like they are sometimes worried

to start like a crypto company or a dow uh or even contribut to Dow because like they're not clear on like the regulatory kind of aspect of it so first question should people be worried to like contribute to a dow or is it basically the same like doing any other contract type of work basically it's not the same as a contract because there is no contract fair enough um so when you contribute to a d you're basically Contracting with a smart contract which in some way is more secure but in other way it's less clear because we know how contract law deals with contracts uh it's un clear how the law deals with smart contracts so I wouldn't say people

have to be worried unless they are contributing to a doubt that is obviously uh doing illicit stuff but um but there is clearly like legal uncertainty mostly because as opposed to a company which has its own legal structure when you're interacting with a dow you're generally interacting with a general partnership for lack of a legal structure which means that everyone is somehow like jointly and severly liable if anything happens right uh there is an important precedent which was the UK da case which held that uh and that that was like in the case of a doubt that was uh considered to be uh violating

Securities Law because it was like acting as a broker without being a registered broker and uh the decision was that all the people that actively uh were engaged into the governance of this Dow into its activities were considered to be part of the general partnership which is an interesting decision because of course that also means like just the fact of possessing tokens even if the token holding could give you the power of influence but many people just hold tokens and don't even know that the token is associated with a dhead so just the fact of possessing the tokens does

not that the court say that that was not enough to be regarded as being part of the general partnership but the fact of actually having engaged in the governance of this Dow actually meant that you are part of the you you are a member of the general partnership and therefore potentially uh jointly and severly liable so but of course this is in the case of a doubt that is potentially doing breaking existing laws for the majority of DS it's more about what that is the legal interpretation so if you get funds from a DA you need to explain where those funds come from and uh it's difficult to explain that it

comes from something that is not a legal entity so there's obviously some kind of like legal subtities here and this is why many Dows that actually have substantial operation incorporate right so that you can uh build the actual company that is representing the Dow that is in the Dow so increasingly there is this type of legal solution that are emerging but again many Dows are completely unwrapped and don't have a legal personality and they they just qualify as general Partnerships yeah that that makes sense and like you know I contribute to the house and contract with the smart contracts and for now I just like you know report it as a income

and pay my taxes and so far everyone was okay with it uh so I hope it will continue like that as you said some of the Dows are Incorporated some are not is there like some trigger point where you feel like you know Dows like at this size they should definitely incorporate or Dow doing this type of activities should be considering Incorporated like faster than some some other Nows like you know it's like if I have like just local community with the kind of um multi uh and we are you know going play soccer every Sunday and we just like pull a resources together and then pay for the soccer field like that probably doesn't need incorporation from my perspective but you know where is the

threshold where we should be actually considering incorporating our Dows yeah I would say like the threshold I don't think it's a it's a precise and fixed threshold is more about to which extent does the Dow has a need or a desire to interface with the legal system which means owning assets good luck owning non non blockchain assets uh unless you have an incorporation if the DS wants to pay rent needs to have a legal entity if you want to enter into actual contract legal contract as opposed to just smart contract you might need to incor so it's more about uh many ds could be very okay never interfacing with with the legal

world and are can stay just into the blockchain space and it's okay uh but when there is an interface that needs to be done either you need like a human that is acting as the Avatar uh you know like receiving the funds and then paying for the soccer field uh so either you delegate to a human uh but then you need to find a human that is willing to take this delegation you need some degree of incorporation if you want to inter interface with the legal world yeah know that that that makes total sense I I cannot imagine uh because like now we are extending our end uh here in San Francisco and so much documentation I need to provide on myself I don't think they would agree agree to rent something to a dow which is like no documentation

uh and like no do nothing you know they cannot do background check on Dow or stuff like that so makes total sense like uh when you are actually connecting with the real world you probably need some entity to be interfacing so on that note like there are now different legal structures popping up uh around the world like uh you know Duna was like uh here in us uh created uh I think a year ago uh basically kind of upgrade of the previous regulation for Dows but now also Rd in uh Dubai uh also created some new regulation specifically for Dows like what's your perspective on like

this like specific wrappers is that like needed because I hear also from some of my friends who are like lawyers like they still use kind of C Corp uh type of structure for Dows which best specific bylaws but is there like advantages of like using this very Tyler made you know legal structures for D you can incorporate in many ways but those are like specifically I guess fine-tuned to facilitate Administration via ad right so in some ways like it just makes the it makes the administration easier um I think in general it is nice to have more choice and uh you you know I think the

Dow structure the Dow corporate structure of course can be replicated into a traditional C but the fact that legislation are actually recognizing that the back end is a dow and that you can actually fully administered via ad it's actually a very good thing it's not necessary per se because everything can be replicated through traditional Corporation and contractual means but I think it's very convenient yeah definitely uh you know if and I feel like you also feel more safe if the state is asking you for the uh smart contract themselves uh so you know like they are counting that uh there will be some blockchain part uh to it so yeah that's

definitely an advantage uh when we get into like uh Dows and tokens well first from your perspective do you think every Dow needs to have a token uh maybe and like are they getting into way more tricky regulatory kind of game uh when they actually launch one I guess it depends on the definition of token I guess every Dow needs to have a system for governance you could have like I mean is is the the definition of a DA is unclear and the definition of a token is unclear but like if you have a multi is it a dow you know maybe it depends on the number of people on the multi but usually I will say that a DA has some

kind kind of token based governance system doesn't necessarily need to be a transferable token uh so again is a is a governance is a non transferable governance to token maybe yes um so I would say like I have a hard time defining a multi as a DA personally but again definition might vary so for me yes I will say that you do you will need some degree of tokenization for for voting and that token doesn't need to be transferable so it doesn't need to be like a utility token uh or whatever you want to call it but I will say yeah there needs to be something that enable people to acquire voting rights and then as part the

launch of the token uh well I first of all I don't think every down needs to launch a token uh they can just like have a very uh Progressive or like vouching system for for exchanging or increasing uh voting power to people so uh they like the Ico model which is one model uh but there is many other token designs that do not necessarily fall into the iOS and into the Securities problem especially if they are non transferable there is hardly any risk in this context so yeah I will say to answer your question yes I think they need a token in order to qualify as a DA

as opposed to multisig and depending on the token design you might have more more or less legal risk mostly related to the question of Securities Law yeah ex when you are getting that makes sense when you are getting into like more transferability and like it's more I would say financialization of the token then we are getting into the security laws uh and there is additional regulatory aspect to be aware of do you think like security law itself is getting clearer more clear for for Dows like I know you now the administration in United States is changing you know the commissioner is uh leaving but maybe also Beyond us like MAA and other regulation do they make it

like clear more clear where you should be with your token and how to actually do it I mean I think there has been a period of attempted clarification I think what happened now is just that people are much more careful because I wouldn't necessarily associate it with clarification of the legal system but it's more like there was a period in which people just assumed that because it's a token it doesn't fall within Securities laws and so obviously tons of Securities Law violation and then it became clear that specific tokens that are actually used as an investment contract will fall within Securities laws uh but the thing is that what

qualifies as an investment contract is itself you know unclear so you have the O test in the US it's not a very like it's a case by casee things and like you need to look at the at the fact of the case to to be able to assess so the clarity is not there but that that's also the benefit of the law is like you need to appreciate it based on the case but yeah I think that in Europe clearly there has been like a few guidelines that precise you know when something Falls between the utility token when something is obviously an investment token but the real problem I would say is always that even if you have a utility token because it does have actual utility but if it is used in practice as a speculative asset

then somehow you n nonetheless fall within the Securities right so in some way you you cannot just craft a dow or craft a token in a ways to be sure that you can escape from uh Securities laws like it in the end it depends on what how the market is handling it so I think like the if it is Clarity is just that the Precedence have shown that if it quacks like a duck and if it looks like a duck it's most likely a duck as the SEC will say so yeah basically there is there is a lot of care that needs to be put into ensuring that even if it's very clear what the token is designed

for when it is being issued it is not being purchased with speculative investment purposes do you think that more Dow tokens will actually become registered Securities in in the future do think like that's the path it might be opening like easier to actually register as security uh in the future and maybe kind of make the icos more similar to IPOs in a sense I mean I think today if you want to make an Ico as an actual iOS in the traditional sense of the term I would say it's like unless you stay within like the exception of like CR funding exceptions and stuff like that the safe face way if

you really want to be 100% sure better register I would say like not all Dows are doing icos I think there's a lot of DS that are issuing tokens in different ways which is you know contribution based or like there's a lot of like novel and maybe like modern ways of ising token that move beyond the Ico model so I'm not sure I I cannot imagine that many Dows will actually register uh because it's extremely expensive and uh bureaucratically uh formally annoying to to register but I think it's more like exploring alternative Pathways to create tokens and potentially create value without necessarily doing the

traditional Ico model yeah basically without becoming a security in a sense yeah or we need to wait till time time then it won't be bureaucratic and super expensive to actually register security and maybe then we can do more iOS again in the safe uh and Regulatory compliant uh way but at the end of the day tokens are mostly for governance and uh I think that's also your last two research uh where analyze kind of the governance of ethereum and Lio and uh if uh you know the if there is causing some issues with kind of centralization can you maybe

like describe a little bit more like uh what you've tried to prove uh when analyzing the whole ethereum governance and like Lio which is a state staking protocol uh kind of within it yeah basically my research is mostly about like uh looking at the interplay between onchain and offchain governance where onchain governance basically everything that can be cified onchain uh but then there is a lot of very important decisions that happen offchain and one kind of cannot be assessed without the author in some way right so the the ofin governance is often times like the most fundamental one because it's the one

that makes decision about how the protocol will evolve and the anent governance is more the instanciation and the the implementation of those different decision so what I'm trying trying to analyze is actually what are the various ways in which people can influence decision and uh and of course like it's very easy to just look at the anent governance but often times we have like you know Avengers like influencers or people that are very vocal on social media there is also like you know those large cryptocurrency exchange the blockchain Explorer that have just like because they are like a hub you know when there is like when there is a

debate about like should we pick one fork or the other Fork Etc their decision becomes very fundamental because every user that is interfacing with those actors will obviously follow the choice of those actors so even if they don't have actual onchain voting power they have huge offchain voting power or I guess it's not voting in this case but they have like huge offchain influence right and so it's kind of like looking at this blockchain governance as this poly Centric system of governance in which you have different type of actors that have different degree of formal or informal influence and basically all trying to influence each other there's no not a

single actor that actually has the ultimate say there is no one that can overcome the system but everyone together is trying to bring to this like what's the shelling point in which we we agreed to operate so yeah my research is kind of like trying to figure out all those different actors and what kind of influence each one has on which aspect and trying to see whether we can better understand like from a descriptive manner but also by better understanding those Dynamics we can also better design the more systematic onchain and offchain governance structures so just to recap basically now the governance is

decentralized enough there are like no no single entity have a power to kind of uh capture the whole system but there are some Pockets or maybe some instances where there is like a systemic kind of governance risk I would almost call it like or you mention hard Fork so one of the instances probably was like uh the da itself the initial Dow and the hard for cafeteria like uh then it was decided like everyone came together and it was decided that eum would uh fork and uh probably I think in your research you're mentioning also other examples like the failure of FDX or teruna like they themselves cannot influence the

blockchain governance but when they failed and they're big enough like they trickle down basically the systematic uh kind of downturn um so yeah do you think like the systematic risks are increasing in our current um ecosystem or do you think like as we are expanding further this kind of like things are actually betting being better and maybe like the each parts are more Sovereign yeah it's a hard question because I think it it goes in multiple ways there is a lot of decentralization but there is also a lot of recentralization uh I think like FDX was a very good example FDX is like an

actual offchain uh centralizing change that by failing has actually caused a very intensive in the in the blockchain space so it's like I think there is a very strong centralized actors that are actually becoming more and more centralized which are usually like those actor that are actually acting around I think as usual is like the the mining the staking like the validating systems are very centralized still validating pools taking pools you know so in some way there is like constant Dynamics the worlds increasing decentralization but then reconcentration emerg so it's hard to tell whether we're moving in like more or less systemic risk um I think

it's kind of it's ambiguous uh whether the ultimate outcome is more or less risky but yeah I think there is clearly quite a few that are not point of failure right it's not failure in the sense that it's not that there is one thing that can fail the system uh or that can capture the system but I think there is in this poly Centric environment there are things that have a lot of power and there are things that have therefore also a lot of potential damage if they fail or if they get haed or if they misbehave yeah I think you mentioned Lio as one of the examples which is like s a lot of power because I think there is 30% of stake eat it's basically within Lio uh if they go Rogue

uh I don't know uh what can happen is there anything I might not ask ask you today which you would like to kind of mention here and just remember it can be code law or art I think we covered a good count yeah uh I think so too uh actually one thing uh which we touch upon at the beginning but um may not have finished like is there a way to know where the plantoids are so if I really want to see one or donate to one I I can go there or is there a digital way how to feed some of the plantoids yeah so you can if you go to plant to.org I'm in the process of updating this website but at least you can see

the the most recent plant to and then you can see their wallet you can click on them and you can go to their personal page where there's some information I didn't fully uh update everything so it's unclear where they are located right now but you can Feit them you can see the nft that they have generated uh you can read about their story and things like that but uh they they're not yet geolocated at least we can find them digitally but when they will have their own Instagram and Twitter we can find them also uh in the in the real world no it was uh great to have you Prima uh I learned a lot about uh you know Cod law and art uh and I'm looking forward to host some of the ploids here in San

Francisco so thank you very much again for coming to the how to Da podcast and hope you have a beautiful holiday season excellent thank you thank you for tuning into how to Dow if you are excited about the future of dows as we are don't forget to check our book how to Da available on Amazon and for those looking for something special visit howto dow. XYZ to grab a limited partner Edition version with an NFD that unlocks some very exclusive perks and if you want to dive even deeper we just launched our six we course on doubts back with actionable insight and expert guidance so get a

book follow us on social media join our community and we will guide you through the fascinating world of decentralized autonomous organizations until next time keep building keep d [Music]