Urbe Hub Opening - Mihai Alisie // Ethereum's Beginnings and the First Web Hub

Transcript

[Music] hey everyone it's great to be here and you know speaking of frequencies and increasing the frequency in this place uh what do you think about the short playful exercise uh when I say Forza you say Roma Forza R Forza Forza hey okay hey good to see you uh so uh again very happy to be here and excited that uh this is finally happening for some time we have been dreaming about having hubs and uh uh bringing together all of these people in uh you know sometimes

it's all about being in the right place at the right time with the right people and I think this is something that we can systematize the is that in DPT but uh if we look at the coffee shops during the Renaissance the previous Renaissance that was a an next is a place where people can meet exchange ideas and you know half of a bake idea with half of a bake idea bam something that changes paradigms so uh today I uh prepared for you a brief uh journey through some key moments that brought us here today and hopefully by the end we also maybe some ideas where we could go tomorrow and similar to how you know we started the presentation before I am here with just a few members of the aasha team but uh

we are many and uh you know if we also would include all the people in DHA Barcelona and you know this slide would go even bigger but uh this is just to say that this is a team effort and there are many things at play here technology is one of them we also uh have this physical hubs interaction and besides this we are doing also some interesting legal hacking so to say exploring how the legal part could be uh upgraded so we don't box the technology into absolete Concepts but we seek to uh Push It Forward in ways that don't get you to jail uh and uh I will agree and I like the note that lion ended on that

you know some people when they say ethereum they might be thinking smart contract solidity lines of code or you know money programmable money or nfts or uh meme coins uh but but it's also about people and communities right and I think many times if someone came for the technology they stayed for the the people and uh there is this welcoming Community welcoming spirit that uh really makes you want to stay and this is you know maybe I mean not maybe I am for sure subjective when I say this but for me ethereum is one of the the nicest communities of people in

the the blockch place I'm not saying it's the one number one there are many but it's definitely in the top there welcoming friendly and also not always cutting your idea the root you know that cannot work or our one is the truth and the other are all shitcoins or stuff like that so pluralism was something that was inspired also by vit since the the early days and this is a you know like a sketch that I did uh in a blog post around 2019 or 20 before the pandemic hit where I was saying that ethereum's most undervalued capital is not on any uh uh coin market cap charts or on any GitHub repositories and that it's it's Social

Capital now I don't like the idea of capital when you put social next to it because it's about human relations and you know like I don't like uh flattening the human multi-dimensionality into just something that's about value but it is uh a way to depict that these interactions have value right and they are valuable and I think a key part of or an integral part of what made the ethereum As successful as it is today was this self-organizing community of communities organizing meetups exchanging ideas bringing all kinds of prototypes heatons and things to life like orbe in a way right and uh this is also to say that uh we often get trapped into like you know putting like

horse glasses on and saying that it's one thing or another it's fintech it's defi it's memes or nfts or programmable during complete you know uh but probably it's going to be even more things in the future and uh that's what I'm saying like I think we are still scratching the surface of what this world computer can be oh you know maybe in 10 years from now we will say oh how little did we know 10 years ago and even now now we say oh we know so much more than 10 years ago so I think is going to be uh increasing and also as we have this scalability thing you know solved you know almost 10 years later uh still working on it uh I think also more and

more use cases will become viable that were previously not and uh to go back you know flash to the Past uh you might have seen this uh a few times this is uh the place where we banked in Switzerland uh in the beginning we went there couch surfed you know random strangers mattress in the living room hey what are you doing hey have you heard of Bitcoin blockchain all of this some of them actually thanked us later he's like thank you for telling me about Bitcoin I reach out on to her you know it's like he was super happy uh he probably bought some uh and also etherum and so on uh so let's say life changing for everyone uh and after that we upgraded we had BNB

for a while and in the meantime we you know interacted with lawyers here and there tried to educate them you know like hey have you heard of Bitcoin no have you heard of bit Toren no okay so you know go to the basics after we made them understand and so on okay we understand Bitcoin great now let me tell you about ethereum so here we go again uh so that was um but in the meantime we made great progress and we felt that Switzerland was a great place to establish the legal entity because in the meantime there was also this aspect of uh various developers uh beginning to wonder am I going to get in trouble for contributing to it ium man you know this is 2014 now it's a lot more legit Banks do things and big sport clubs are doing things and so on now it's accepted or

more accepted or let's say uh grayish uh before it was all about the black market the you know what about the children so just different uh different landscape and uh this was also an opportunity and you know we were talking about this also with with Lorenzo in his place in Barcelona about this idea of Holland and you know Holland are kind of like this idea of some Middle Ground become between chaos and balance with self-organizing Loosely aligned groups that uh somehow make it work and they are maintaining their independence but somehow they are still coherently moving towards one shared goal and this was the perfect

setup when he was like man we are going to try this thing so we have a place we have this much space we can leave and work here so how can we set it up and this is inside the place you know humble beginnings I say but it was a nice place like the the the the Villa was great even if we chose to just sleep on mattresses on the floor because you know who had money for beds uh we were postponing this after the crowd sale thing which you know was but we did not get beds even after that uh we got used you know keeping it real uh and uh uh here I was with Lorenzo talking about by the way just talking about Loi and you know making the most with the least

these are Ikea kitchen tops and you know there under is like the things that you would cut the the kitchen top on and then but the the chairs were comfy and you know good chairs are good because you spend many hours on them and you know bed bags are not good for anything and um just to show here on the the Whiteboard one of the things that we disc there was this idea of you know you already see hubs Holland need attention and the the idea was that we were already seeing ethereum as an International Community or community of communities in different jurisdictions and we were thinking how we can uh connect the dots connect the people connect the ideas in uh and leveraging

these synergies across the network and here we have an example with you know like jurisdiction in Germany a UK Netherlands you know now you can say Italy and how you would have like different skills spread across all of these jurisdictions but the projects are not bound to one location so for example if you come up with a cool idea like I don't know who can say a cool idea well we we'll get to that so you come up with a cool idea and you say oh man okay so we need a designer we already have programmer but we know we need a designer and someone else to to help us with is there someone in the network that would be interested in a project like this that would like to join so then you would have again like this systematization of s& D and alignment of

the things that make you passionate and uh you want to to join and have fun right having fun is also part key element I think in all of this think and um in the meantime so this was 2014 in November uh 2013 vital shared with me the earliest well one of the earliest drafts of ethereum it was not named ethereum back then and for me you know it was like wow I had like this you know the meme with the the universe and the exploding that was when I I was reading and I knew I want to be part of this I want to to help him somehow making it a reality and in January I flew together with Roxana Lorenzo and a couple of others to Switzerland you know I told

you about the lawyers the random couch surfing and all that and by April things were getting serious you know so it's like we had a lot of on our hands and this was becoming like man we cannot do both like you know Bitcoin magazine by day ethereum by night you know the superhero cap and all that was not working and we could feel that both are hurting so this was like okay ethereum must be and uh here you know I I say about the Holland and how this uh evolves into a project of its own and the rabbit Hall keeps getting deeper it feels like this journey is shaping up without any estimation of a return date and all the Epic setup the new chapter begins so then you know fast forwarding a few years later cuz uh this was

constantly expectations meet reality touching physical reality is a lot harder finding the right people the right location getting things together you know I see I see you know what I'm talking about now bam Akasha powered the hubs it just took a few years you know more than anticipated but the word was waited right so here is actually are a few pictures from the aasha Barcelona Hub where you have all of these cool things happen happing and it's worth mentioning that uh each Hub will have kind of its own DNA of sort so you know for example in this case the uh Barcelona Hub has a a multidisciplinary focus where you have

also this co- gardening thing and you have like 3D printing food Arts and Science and you know the intersection of also blockchain and all of these other uh cool cool topics uh and uh I think this was also like one of those stories you know like I don't have the cool one when I have the hands up you have that cool one but this is also nice and uh this is about that Serendipity that I mentioned you know it's like our Destinies might have crossed somewhere sometime at a conference at an event maybe for sure even uh but uh having the Barcelona Hub uh reaching out organizing the event meeting there being at the right time with the right people and so

on WE clicked you know so it was one of those things sometimes you know when you meet and you have like I don't like that guy here was the opposite he like I like those guys it was I don't know good vibe so to say from the from the start and here we talked about many things including you know daos decentralized governance and I like that these guys were walking the talk not just saying you know decentralization and you know let's do a token uh although they could have pulled it off and you know get away with it uh so I appreciated that and this is also because with Akasha so to say we you know sometimes it's about not making certain decisions that says even more about someone and with

aasha providing this software where you can build your own social platforms and so on WE purposely said we don't want to do a token because like communities might want to come up with their own models and even if we would say let's have units of account because that's what everyone says I have more than you and you have less than me some might want to say I don't know we want to do time banking or we want to do some kind of other monetary system that we cannot even contemplate now so better to leave that as a module that each Community can do in its own uh there not to say Ur coin coming soon but just leaving uh just leaving the space that at some point if there is some kind of innovative groundbreaking Paradigm shifting uh idea there could be a place for it here and um so we left that

Barcelona event you know shaking hands high-fiving hugging and so on uh and then we met a few months later at the Eid Bucharest we also have it Bucharest here in the house uh where we talked about uh social movements uh blockchain and how you know all of this can help web three and so on something along those lines and uh before we got on stage and after we got on stage Marco was also like hey you know the Hub and what we discussed like let's do it I was like okay let's do it let's go let's go like okay let's see do you have a space yeah we're looking we'll make it was like okay it's going to take some but you know here we are not too long ago with wab the first web in Italy it's

happening you know it's happening insert the meme here with Bernie uh and uh here also what I want to say is like why Rome because all roads lead to Rome everyone knows that you don't need another explanation and I also want to say that uh you can feel the rebel Spirit here is still alive you know you need a bit of rebellion and like if the sign tells you to do something you do the other thing because you do what you want not what the sign says and I got the feeling of this is like okay I'm in the the right place like when I was entering I came by car by the way uh and uh when I got into Rome you know romeow you see oh yes we're entering Rome first time whoa and then you know you see the no clock s you

know the no honing sign less than a minute three horns Kong so it's like okay like people don't care about uh what the science say and also uh when I took the the drive here you know you have lines and you know I said like good thing we we arrived in time but the taxi driver was like not really caring about you know signaling left right and so on I was like I I told the my wife Ro here is like wow this guy man oh this is how you drive in Rome what do you mean so what Lane are we on he's like all of them he was he was driving in the middle you know you don't maybe you want to go left right you know good to have options so anyway that's about the reibel spirit

and like if you have rules they're more like guidelines that you choose to respect but uh uh that's that's part of the fun I guess uh so with UB and this is you know uh let's say not a least that is final and of course just a starting point what can we expect here prototyping hackaton events and meetups things that already lemon covered and then we have hacker houses and boot camps and all of these cool things and popup cities or Villages I'm not sure now what we call them but anyway they're cool uh it's a village or city I don't know it's cool in any case and many many many more things and I saw also lmon has

let's say a passion for music I saw a cool picture there I was like damn I didn't get to put it in the slide but who knows maybe as part of this we even have rap battles you know I I Italy has this uh it could be it could be you could even get an NFD for the the winner um and uh uh what I want to say here is that uh coming back a bit to the software we talked more about the the physical location and what this you know facilitates this is also the part where the the software comes into place uh into play uh workplace uh and uh we call let's say these uh platforms that you can build with Akasha core world so you can think of wordss like this

customizable social platforms for your own needs so you have like you could also call them Community platforms if you want but they leverage web three Technologies ipfs ceramic you know ethereum uh pluggable by by default and uh it's all about uh uh let's say reenvisioning what the community platform means because many times we find ourselves using tools that we're engineered for the web to you know economy uh where it was not about optimizing for the best collaboration and how you can facilitate the best flow of uh uh ideas in the community or how you can get uh the right people uh uh to work on a certain idea so uh this is how we can maybe think better tools for us

to connect and do things together as a community and again I would like to say let's not get too trapped on what is an app or how how it works or the specific functionality because we will likely discover many use cases that we cannot yet uh list but the idea is to keep an open mind and whenever we find ourselves using a tool and you know taking too many steps that's usually a sign that we would probably do something better uh or you know instead of like constantly finding work arounds we can simplify this and make it uh natural usually usually the best ideas are those that after you kind of they take life in your head is like of course how come things are not this way already and uh this is just to say that the world built with akasa core would be this modular

platform enabling Community to self-organize build and access distributed uh apps and this evolution in aasha in our journey came after a visit at the CERN laboratory where in Geneva when they were interested on how they could use this type of technology for the scientific community that did not yet materialize but it did offer us an inside at me maybe we need to take a more General approach like being a sort of Wordpress for social networks using blockchain technology so here we are today years later thank you sir you know maybe a a seed from that birth of the www with Tim Berner Le carried forward and and uh speaking of how those use cases and uh the functionalities could live and be useful for you know just on

your phone or so uh we have these extensions so the extensions are things that could basically in a modular way extend the functionality in ways that you need so if you need a ticketing system or you need some kind of voting system or governance system and all that you could build it and then it would be accessible with the mention that in this scenario this would be something that constantly compounds so if you build something for Ur you can rest assured that this would be also useful for other communities and as part of this one of the uh already inaugurated collaborations that we started together with / Builders Garden you know as a overlapping there uh was also with zalu and ECF building

something for the zalu community because it's a strong overlap right in in the ecosystem nice people cool ideas and Cool Tech and uh um that's I'm not sure if it was yet merged or it's oh nice okay no no spoilers more uh and that's just to say that this is the type of thing that can compound you know so if that gets uh traction there this could also be useful here and so on and so forth so in one Community this could be also interoperable with other communities and U you know like with the iPhone if we you know the classic you here you go uh you know with the iPhone as a platform the App Store and all of that stuff that was now it's like old uh old and not new uh they had to start

with something so you had you know like the calling up the messaging the browser and so on so we did have to build some of these extensions ourselves with aasha and antenna is kind of like this equivalent of having a feed where you can post things and you can find the thing that has been posted you know kind of basic think of like something like Twitter before it got asked um and uh with the Ki let's say twist that uh the editor and the way you are composing the the text is actually composed uh in a way that enables you to put functionality that is blockchain native so you know if you have something like a poll onchain voting or you know let's say you have some kind of prediction Market bet you could do all

of these things from within the post without having to go you know through 10 tabs and you know sign 10 different messages with your metamask uh so this is maybe a visualization that could make it simpler where when you would add the block you know you will have different types of blocks so in here you know also for but this could be something that could be explored in some cool ways let's say you have a post Let's do an event uh tonight big party who should DJ lion lion or lemon so it's like you would choose in this uh uh voting uh for example would be there and uh more recently we also transition to this shot CN based uh uh design system where it follows kind of the the Paradigm of

atomic design if you're familiar with it where you have these components that you can bundle together into bigger and bigger functionalities and uh you know this is kind of a way where you do not have to constantly reinvent the wheel and if someone already built something that's useful for you let's say you need something like a crypto ticker to see the eat price or whatever you already have some mom you take it you use it or if you need something else maybe you don't have a graph to display that or you don't have something in particular if you build that you can feel that worm fuzzy feeling in your chest knowing that you did something that will help not only you but the community of other people building on top of that moving forward and um this is just to encourage you the next time when you visit this

this is the white team you also have the dark team where you saw in the the mobile uh uh designs that you do not have to look at this as something that's done so this is the staging version you can visit you know beware B bugs be dragons things might not load especially now ceramic is going through some kind of a breaking change uh you know how it is uh refresh if things are not loading the first time uh but uh this is just a uh a starting point and every single area here that you see for example the uh widgets on the right this could be something that for example would show the next event or a thing to RSVP to the next event or a poll ongoing poll or a

crowdfunding thing with a target for whatever you need you know uh on the left side as well you can have many extensions and something else which I'd like to point your attention to you know you have the buttons there or the where you can have on your post card so here you have on the let's say no what ifs you know let's say the the first uh uh post there and you see that you have just the icon for comments some people were asking Hey where's the heart where's the like where's the star and uh part of that is that we left this type of interaction also something that can be designed because the button was introduced by Facebook way way back as not the to make the world a better place and all that but to collect even more

data about you what do you like to what how to serve better ads how to make more money and so on and so forth so uh then you know you have reactions and all of this you can rest assure that most likely they did not had your best interest at heart although sometimes you might get things that are useful but that was not the the main intent so now thinking in a new paradigm with the new tools and the new ways in which we can also Exchange wealth and knowledge at light speed uh we could also maybe come up with a better way what that like button equivalent would mean in a web three world is it some kind of like you split a piece of the PIP from the staking Revenue that you direct to the authors that you like would there be some kind

of uh uh incentivization uh model built into the the platform itself rewarding the people that make contributions on the platform uh you come up with the US cases the idea is that this uh layer is also open to experimentation and this is the beauty of having this modular approach where you can experiment and really come up with something cool that uh sets new models in motion and uh coming back to this years later you know the Mr be waiting there on the grass we can take another look here as well so you have you know for example people part of the Hub configuration uh certain skills I'm a programmer I'm a designer I'm a lawyer Etc whatever comes into play and how we can make the most of the synergies

between all of the hubs because you know what's cooler than a hub a Hub Network you know so uh in here you know it's like uh one is cool two is nice but three is a party uh right was it or two is a party well you can make a party with two people as well I guess or you by yourself uh but it's usually more fun with more people and in this case it's going to be more fun with more hubs and in a similar fashion you know there are some things I will not talk too much because I would let this to be said by others but you can imagine a network of hubs where there is already something in Spain there's going to be something in Rome Italy maybe the first out of many

because you said the first hub web three right in Italy maybe there's going to be something in Milan and other cities who knows and similarly Romania is there on the map hopefully soon uh then there's also Switzerland Ireland there are many places so then you can think of this Vision where you would have a network of hubs similar to how you already have fa blobs and like hacker houses all around the world where you could also make this journey right so as you said you know you are going in I don't know Lisbon or you are going somewhere in Tokyo or so that would be a nice way in which people can meet and that coffee shop Renaissance uh meeting the right people at the right time in the right place can happen so we systematize that and bring

the power of ethereum back to also its roots the people the community and this is what makes ethereum even greater than the technology in my opinion so I would just like to end on this thing you know like okay a flesh from the past uh when I was talking about this crypto Renaissance and I think we are there you know like 10 years and a bit later it's happening and uh the idea was that uh the unfetter peer-to-peer worldwide digital Finance grid is building itself out this was also kind of you know Bitcoin Inception using crypto to build a crypto next crypto you know going kind of like meeting at the Barcelona Hub to discuss about making the new Hub kind of

following a similar uh story line and the bottom line is that you make this possible right so technology is cool smart contracts awesome AI agents whatever you want but I think still people are what makes this cool and uh the question is here what will you build right so I think in this case with with the the wub and the particular skill set that you guys have as a highly technical uh Community are going to be uh very exciting to see flourish and you know you cool people cool ideas cool Technologies at your finger tips I'm very enthusiastic about what will come out of this collaboration moving forward what uh will come up out of the Hub

Network that will then build on top of this and you can think you know like the an image here uh uh from the beginning with aasha Barcelona Hub uh we were you know it's not the first Hub I mean there are many communities that do this sort of stuff for example the fa Labs if you're familiar with it where they do 3D printing manufacturing and you know part of that idea was that let's start the a hub that has the materials that would allow another Hub to be started from it so as part of this you know kind of like with Barcelona was also like uh if we can Inspire other people to start their own Hub so I think you know Ur Hub would also be a cool kind of a seed that could take over you know in Italy and all the other

communities because just as you went to Barcelona and then you left there is like man would it be cool to have something like this there maybe someone will come here and then they will carry it forward in another place and with all the things and the tools and the extensions and things that we would also build together for making the digital counterpart to make it easier to organize events and organize the The Hub then I think you would have almost like a click and employ version of community where you can organize things and you know take it to the to the next level so uh thank you for your attention let's do this exciting times and uh thank you very much [Applause]

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