Three paths to a trustless future

Transcript

GM GM welcome to web3 Academy your trusted source for useful and legitimate web3 information so you don't fall behind in the internet Revolution I'm Jaybird and I believe that web3 is going to change the world that's why I'm here to guide the world's top talent down the rabbit hole as you contribute and capitalize on the opportunity welcome to another episode today is the Deep dive and I'm really excited to be deep diving with you guys on the three pass that I believe are going to fix our worldwide Humanity trust problem we've got a big trust problem and this really stems from

many different areas but one of the key areas is the internet the internet has no trust layer in 1999 when I was 14 years old I begged my parents to get this cool new thing called the internet why because I wanted to download music from Napster and burn CDs mainly to impress girls not gonna lie as a skinny tall teenager with big front teeth I needed all the help I could get and then over the next two decades the internet created Tech Innovations far beyond what any of us could ever have imagined four of the 10 largest companies in the world were built during this period Google Amazon Tesla and meta an inner quest for

unlimited access to content and high profits we left one big thing behind we completely sacrificed trust today our lack of trust in each other is at an all-time high and this isn't a world that I want to raise my kids in a world where stealing from artists has become acceptable where intermediaries take unreasonable margins from creators where corporations are focused on extracting value from user and where fake news and fake reviews are far too easy to create and impossible for users to validate I believe that trust is the single most

important gift that humans can grant each other trust ignites a powerful flywheel that leads to deeper relationships stronger communities and in the end happier healthier humans thankfully blockchain offers us a chance to rebuild Trust on the internet it gives us a desperately needed trust layer from which we can build a new foundation for a healthy society and a functional digital economy So today we're going to be diving into the three paths that can lead us there and how blockchain is going to do that over the

next decade but it's not going to happen without all of us participating and without all of us believing in better foundations for not just the internet but for us as a Humanity but before we dive in let's take a minute to hear from our sponsor the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a new type of entrepreneur forming new types of businesses yet with web 2 platforms creators don't own their

content to their profiles and that's their product in business instead they are tied to the platforms they choose to create on well just like how crypto is freeing us from Banks web 3 is freeing us from these centralized platforms on lens protocol creators own their content own their profile and even their social graphing followers in the form of nfts this allows you to move freely from one social application to another with your content profile and followers moving along with you lens protocol enables self-sovereignty for your social graph and interoperability across the internet at Webster Academy we believe this is the future of Social and that's why we've partner with lens to ensure that the path of social media is heading in the right direction visit lens.xyz to learn more today

shared ownership is revolutionizing the way we think of digital ownership did you know that you can benefit from the utility of a board ape Yacht Club crypto Punk or azuki without actually spending tens of thousands of dollars to buy it how by buying an access key to the asset you see with segment you can now Buy and Hold parts and expensive nft and share in its ownership and utility like airdrops or exclusive access as an owner of a high profile of tea you can distribute ownership with access keys and create liquidity for yourself it's a win-win situation plus the ownership and transfer of these keys are managed on chain which ensures transparency and security and we want the Webster Academy Community to be on the Forefront this new wave of nft utility which is why we

partner with segment a non-custodial nft platform set to launching Q3 of this year segment aims to allow users to easily create access keys and share ownership of nfts with other friends and community members the team is going through their Beta release soon and has opened up their wait list for web3 Academy listeners if you want to stay in the form front of web 3 sign up for segments wait list today with the link in the show notes below shared ownership is a game changer and we want you to be there first all right why is trust so important for a healthy Society trust is crucial for healthy Society because it provides a foundation for social interaction and cooperation when people trust one another they are more likely to work

together towards common goals share resources and ideas and support one another during difficult times trust does many things but most importantly here's five things that trust does for a healthy Society it facilitates cooperation it enhances social interactions it promotes economic growth it encourages Civic engagement and finally it improves mental health without trust our society becomes driven by fear suspicion and conflict which can lead to a breakdown in Social cohesion and hinder progress and development and unfortunately that's where we are right

now now especially on the internet quite frankly because right now we are online and when we're online we require trust now in the next decade we are going to make a migration from online to on chain which is going to enable us to be trustless on the internet so online requires trust blockchain is trust list now let me explain what trustless means in the context of blockchain and cryptocurrency the term trustless refers to a system that does not require trust between parties in order to function a trustless system is one in which all

transactions are transparent secure and verifiable without the need for a central authority to verify or approve them in traditional Financial systems and the internet trust is placed on intermediaries such as Bank credit card companies platforms and other institutions to process transactions and ensure their validity these intermediaries act as trusted third parties and their involvement is necessary to prevent fraud and ensure the Integrity of the transaction however in a trustless system like blockchain intermediaries are not necessary transactions are validated and recorded by a network of computers using complex

algorithms and cryptographic techniques this means that the system is self-regulating and self-verifying and there is no need to rely on essential authority to ensure the validity of transactions the term trustless can be somewhat misleading since it doesn't mean that there is no trust involved in a blockchain system rather it means that trust is decentralized and distributed across a network of participants and transactions can be verified without the need for a central Authority so if we look back what really created the problem of where we're at now is the fact that when we moved online when we

created the internet we started to create more data than ever before in humanity by large exponential amounts well what happens with all this data it needs to be stored somewhere especially all of our personal data when you are now signing up for any app or any account online you are giving them a lot of your personal data well a company who acquires your personal data is required by law to safely store your personal data in order to safely store your personal data they need to pay a lot of

money for safe servers for safe storage for cyber security and that has put us in a position where our data is owned and controlled by all of these Central institutions and Central organizations now quite frankly I think a lot of people like to hate on all of the major platforms for putting us in this position because what this led to was it led a lot of companies to be in a position where they owned so much data that they said oh wow how do we monetize we monetize by selling this

data they started an advertising business model where they would sell our data to advertisers in order to make profits and for public companies profit is the number one objective to their shareholders so I think there's it's very easy to blame the platforms for this however let us step back the platforms really had no choice there was no other way prior to blockchain to store data in a safe and secure way there was no decentralized network through which you could safely and securely store data there also wasn't a way to verify data in a trustless way like blockchain gives us so we are where

we are really as a result of growth and innovation has taken us to this point also the other thing that has happened as a result of us having all these different accounts is that we don't control and own our data it is owned by each different app or each different website that you are constantly using and signing up for and I'm not just talking about social media I'm talking about maybe your doctor has an online app that they use to store your data through which you book appointments that also is your data online maybe your

local community center or your gym has an online portal or an app they also are storing your data Maybe any video streaming that you sign up for many of these online apps and accounts store and use our data but but right now that data is not in our possession it is in the possession of the company or we've signed up for that account with and so that has led us to today where we're at and I like to look at this on three different paths okay first is the user path so users right now are in a position where when we're online we have

this angry Outlook of stop stealing my data stop selling my data we want privacy we want control back and that's the current place we're in online now if you fast forward 10 years where I believe users will be when we migrate from online to on chain I believe users will be in a completely different mindset the mindset will be a deep sigh of relief ah I own my data now and I choose who has access to it a simple example of this is in 10 years what will happen with blockchain is rather than you setting up an account on

let's say Netflix whatever the blockchain version of Netflix is going to be and there will be one whether it's Netflix themselves that disrupts themselves whether it's someone else that disrupts Netflix rather than create an account on Netflix what you will do is you will connect your wallet to Netflix to blockchain Netflix and when you connect your wallet blockchain Netflix will say this is the data that we would like to take from your wallet that we would like to access from your wallet and you'll say yes I approve and then Netflix will be able to see whatever data it is asked for but the data will remain in your wallet Netflix will simply be able to see that

data now in the future what you'll be able to do is if you wanted to stop blockchain Netflix from having access to your data you'll be able to go into your wallet you'd be able to see all the different apps that you have given access to your data to you'd click on Netflix and you'd say remove no longer provide blockchain Netflix access to my data and what will that do for users oh my gosh we'll be in such a different place as users we will trust the internet much more we will trust platforms much more now if we look at the perspective of creators creators right now are sitting there saying give

me some bloody credit for my work creators are sick and tired of not getting credit for their work fast forward 10 years when we migrate from online to on chain creators will be saying something much different they'll be saying oh my gosh I'm getting acknowledgment and compensation for my work wow well how is that going to happen because right now the way creators are creating things online it's very easy to steal these things because there is no verifiable

secure and transparent system there is no trustless system now we fast forward to a decade from now when we've migrated to on chain we have this trustless system what is this trustless system enable well it enables anybody to access and use or listen to or view a Creator's work but in order to do so they might have to acknowledge that Creator they might have to pay that Creator a fee and this can all be set up by the Creator and this is happening in so many different ways currently

and I'm going to give you a few examples in a second when I get there but right now I just want to talk about the third path to fixing our trust problem and that's platforms okay so there's three users on the internet three stakeholders we have users creators and we have platforms and we always use and play in this wonderful sandbox to the internet together so the final path is for platforms now right now platforms are saying we want control in this online World they want control because control of our data gives them more monetary opportunities gives them more

opportunity to make revenue and most platforms for better for worse are aiming at Revenue now what I believe the platforms that Embrace blockchain and I say this carefully because all of these three spectrums is I think going to take about a decade I hope it's faster but it's going to take about a decade and there's a migration from where we are now online to on chain you can go and listen to an upcoming podcast next week where Kyle is going to break down the migration from online Dawn chains watch out for that next week but platforms that embrace the migration from online on chain what

they're going to be is they're going to be going from this current desire of not willing to give up control of being scared to give up control and I get it it's scary you're a platform you want control you don't want your users to own their data you want to control the data and that's scary but if you Embrace this 10 years from now platforms are going to be saying whoa we have built a moat of around our business that is going to last centuries they are going to be more secure because by giving up control to users you build deeper Relationships by enabling trust by building trust with your users you build community you build

deeper relationships and that is a moat that is really the strongest moat that any business or any platform could have so we're going to see a lot of businesses Embrace blockchain in order to build this moat which I am personally super excited about now if we look at some examples of how this is happening right now in blockchain how are we on this path of moving from online to on chain on this migration so if we look at one organization that is making this migration it's git coin so git coin is a Public Funding platform both a protocol

and a tech stack that uses blockchain to raise money for public goods and in the past the current way the online way to raise money is to do a fundraiser and have a dilution page and anybody can donate here's the issue with that the issue is do you know what happens to your money no there is no way to verify what happens to your money is there engagement with the community with these donors be Beyond just their funds maybe maybe in some cases sure they could send you an email and they could try to

engage with you but not in the same way they're going to be able to do in the future and then third problem how does the fundraiser the charity decide to allocate the funds that they have raised well they don't do it with the community right now they don't do it with the donors they just do it with a board of directors typically with a committee that makes those decisions and I'm not docking those committees and those board of directors I'm sure many they're doing great jobs but let's look at what happens with Git coin how gitcoin manages this on chain because they've made this migration with Git coin a few things happens first of all you can see the funds so you can

see that you have donated the funds and then because those funds are now on chain in a wallet you can also see where those funds are going to next so you can follow the path and you can see that wow eighty percent of the dollars that I donated let's say you've supported a program to build local basketball courts eighty dollars of the 100 that I donated went towards that local basketball court that's amazing not this wondering how much money went to it right second thing that can happen with Git coin is the donors can get involved now get coin doesn't do this itself but I'm more

hypothesizing what could happen with blockchain so let's say I donate to this basketball court the organization that's running this basketball court could say you know what anybody who donated now has governance and voting rights over what the hours of the basketball court is or over how should we hire a person who knows what they might decide to allow governance in voting Civic engagement to the community of donors but they could do that because it's on chain and because it's on chain you are enabled to give your community voting to give them governance and do it in a secure and transparent way and then

finally the other thing that git coin enables is when I donate to a basketball court let's say that Walmart is trying to build 20 basketball courts around the world and I donate to this campaign because I believe in basketball now for me I live in Canada close to Vancouver so I say okay I would prefer that the basketball court is built in Vancouver that's the community that I'm part of right so let's say Walmart puts up a million dollars and then donors like myself also put up a million dollars or whatever it is a hundred thousand whatever that matching donation becomes as a result of individual donors well

now what git coin allows you to do with the power of quadratic funding is that where the funds are allocated to which Community is based upon the number of community members that donated from that Community not who had the deepest checkbook so it's not oh one person wanted a basketball court in Seattle and they donated the most amount of money it's no there was 100 people that donated from Chicago okay clearly there's the most amount of people that would value a basketball court in Chicago that's where

the fun should go that's where the majority of the funds should go so that's what quadratic funding does and git coin is really using blockchain to repair our trust problem and in this case it's repairing the trust problem with users because users have this ability to say wow I can now transparently follow things I can see where my money is going it is helping with creators because the creators can now say oh wow I can participate in this program and get acknowledged for it and it's helping Platforms in this case the platform would be Walmart the platform would be the business that's putting up

the money it's helping them allocate their dollars in a better way huge huge things another example of this path that we are taking is audience audience is a web 3 blockchain based Spotify it's a music listening platform that enables creators to have a much better experience and let me tell you how when a Creator puts music on audience they are then paid in the form of audience token and here's what's different about that compared to Spotify currently on Spotify artists are paid in dollars there's actually I think there's

about five currencies that Spotify pays out two artists depending upon where you live in the world but let's just say it's US dollars two problems one it takes about six weeks for an artist to be paid out through Spotify six weeks it's too long because there's too many intermediaries in the way with audience because we're moving on chain we don't need all this intermediaries it's trustless so artists can be paid out much much faster which is great for the artists second thing that audience enables because it's on chain is it enables the artist to be paid out based upon the impact that they have on the platform in an immediate way now

currently most music is owned by three major labels and so artists get squeezed because their labels are getting most of the money because Spotify has to pay the label in order to have that artist on Spotify well if a artist is able to go directly to a user using a platform like audios where they don't need a label they can post their music on audios and any user can listen to it well then the artist has a way to get paid for listens because the listens are recorded on chain and on chain is trustless which

means that artist can verifiably know that they are being compensated for the number of listens in the past that wasn't possible people we needed labels we needed Banks we needed all these intermediaries to verify this but now with things like audience and music going on chain we have so much potential there are so many other examples there's examples of dows moving on chain maker Dao creating a financial tool on chain which they can coordinate with thousands of people all around the world and create a business coordination with thousands of people around the world wasn't possible previously the only way

to do it was to do it through a corporation where you have a board of directors who vote and who make decisions for the entire organization one of the key things here is the treasury management the old way to manage finances was either you're a public company in which case you have to publish your books or you're a private company and you never need to show your books I want to say something I think is really important this isn't just for the case of blockchain in general we need to encourage more transparency with our finances having non-transparent finances naturally leads humans to make dishonest decisions unfortunately because we are a money driven society and a money-driven

culture particularly in North America but also around the world we will make decisions if we can to favor ourselves financially however if we move our finances on chain and I'm not saying you need to move all your finances on chain I'm not say every business needs to do that but if you take that step if you aim to be more transparent and the easiest way to do it is to be on chain you will have users that trust you more and you'll have creators that want to be part of your community and want to amplify what you're building they'll want to create more around you and that's what we're seeing with large nft projects who have been so successful

they've made these incredible communities and these communities trust the brand because of the fact that they're are on chain and another really great example of this migration from online on chain is look no further than lens and the social media movement of web 3. actually before I mentioned that before I forget speaking although finances and being transparent with finances my digital marketing agency which I co-founded with my co-host Kyle over three years ago since the beginning we have every month published our revenue for our entire team to see put it in our slack and our entire team can see this was a very not controversial

but definitely a different approach to running a business not a lot of the businesses do that not a lot of Founders start a business and say hey every month we're going to share Revenue with the entire company but this simple decision and it's not hard to do this but by doing this we have created a culture and a community within our team that is built on trust they trust us and they trust each other because they know that we are transparent in everything that we do and it starts with that simple simple thing so I really encourage businesses out there small big move more towards transparency and using blockchain is a

really easy way to do that with your finances so going back to lens lens and web3 social is another great example of the movement from online to on chain it shows that what will happen when we move our social graph online is three things will happen one we will own our data no longer does Facebook or Tick Tock or Instagram own our data we own in our data now because with lens any post any interaction any engagement that you take on lens is an nft it becomes a one of one out of T and then nft is in your

wallet so you own it and you control it so users will feel a sense of privacy a sense of ownership and a sense of security like never before creators will be able to monetize their Community not just monetize our community but also engage their community in new ways right now the Creator made a Facebook group you don't own that Facebook group in fact Facebook could rug you at any time and decide that your Facebook group is no more they could remove you from Facebook and then you would no longer have access to your Facebook group unless you have many backup admin accounts or they could remove your group from Facebook and your entire business your entire Community is gone the same is true on Reddit although we are seeing

Reddit is disrupting themselves Reddit is moving towards social tokens for communities which would enable the owners the creators of that Community you have ownership of that community so that's a big step that lens will allow for the social media graph and for creators and then finally platforms I think it's natural to think that platforms aren't going to support blockchain but let me go back to what I said before and oh I see platforms I made existing platforms what I said before was that platforms right now don't want to give up control they're scared to go control I get it giving up control is scary it's not an easy thing to do we know that in any area of our life let alone business but

those who do give up control to users will develop a moat around their business and those platforms that do that in the future two things will happen one this moat will make you strong enough to last for centuries so you won't have to worry about constant growth from marketing because you will have a community that is so passionate about you that loves you so much that they will be your marketers they will amplify your bread they will bring in new customers through word of mouth and that is huge and the other thing is platforms won't have to store data anymore and it is fascinating on a previous interview we did recently with

Tim Boss who's the CEO of sharing who is a digital identity blockchain he said that in conversations he is having with a lot of existing Enterprises and corporations they do not want to own data anymore because the cost of securing it is so expensive so he is seeing so many companies coming up and saying Hey how do we move on change so we can decentralize our data and we don't have to pay so much money to secure it so you're going to see a lot of benefits for platforms as well now I want to be clear these three paths that users creators and platforms all need to take to migrate from online to on chain

over the next decade will not just happen as a result of blockchain and the trustless system that it enables it's not enough as humans we need to push the values of web3 we need to live by the values of web 3 not just in our on chain Endeavors but in everything we do we need to encourage transparency we need to focus on community building we need to enable self sovereignty we need to remove middlemen and encourage each one of us to take control to take ownership of our stuff in order to do that we need a lot of education

and that's why web 3 Academy is here obviously is to educate you and make sure that you understand what all of these things means and finally we need to embrace decentralization and let's be clear there is many aspects many pillars to decentralization there's decentralized storage there's decentralized identity there's decentralized teams all of these areas of decentralization will take time it's not as simple as moving to on chain we also need to create new systems new Frameworks new business models to enable a decentralization to take place in all of these pillars of the internet and I

also don't necessarily believe that decentralization is the only way in some areas centralization is a good thing I've been speaking to Founders recently I was speaking to clima Dao who is one of the leading climate change dial they are bringing the carbon Market on chain and they are talking a lot about the balance of a decentralized team versus a centralized team over the last year they'd actually centralize their team more now it was a big part of that was the fact that we went into a recession and their token price went down and so they actually had to cut their team but in cutting their team they realize they were able to make decisions faster and

making decisions faster is a good thing so there's a real battle it's between decentralized and centralization and I'm not going to dive into where on the Spectrum we should fall but I think we all need to embrace right now we are too far on the centralization side everybody knows that we've gone to find that direction we need to embrace the decentralized side and go more in that direction and when we do this when we Embrace this when we show up in a more honest way when we aim to build trust when we accept and support each other not just in our business Endeavors not just in our on chain Endeavors but also in life and when we encourage all humans to be open and transparent this is how

we change the world this is the way that over the next decade blockchain and Beyond can create a better world for our children this is how we leave our mark this is how we make this world a better place for our grandkids thanks so much for listening today everybody I hope you enjoyed this deep dive I hope you take a minute to think about how you can make trust a more integral part of your life both by moving online to on chain but also by embracing the values of web 3.

have a great week Jaybird out thank you for listening to web3 Academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 journey and if it does please share this episode And subscribe so you don't miss the next one nothing in this podcast was Financial advice crypto and web 3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one