VDAO Ep9 Trust, Resilience & Regenerative Systems: From Farm Roots to Blockchain Futures Donny Lewis

Transcript

Hey Donny, welcome to the podcast. Hey Chris, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So we in the series of conversations with builders in the space on the topic of resilience and anti-fragility, I I like to start by asking a question of like what is your why? What motivates you as a builder in this >> space. I mean, I find that to be one of the most fundamental questions that there is and something that you should ask about every single thing that you do, every action that you do. So I put a lot of thought into what is my why.

I try to put in a lot of thought for what is my why on every different aspect, but also overall. And then try to, you know, make it a singular philosophy that you can follow through with. So for me, my why in this space and why I'm building in this space what I'm doing is I really do believe that for the first time ever we have the chance to truly change the way society functions for the better both monetarily and through, you know, the networks that are built through blockchain technology that you are able to function and coordinate more seamlessly without a hierarchical overlord

uh taking over everything for us. So that's what really got me excited about the blockchain space when Ethereum came out really. That was one of the big unlocks to me and got me really excited and I've been building for that purpose since. Super interesting. Sounds like you're interested in like change systems change leveraging blockchain to achieve that. Absolutely. I mean, if you look around us, things need to change.

Like things are not great globally. They're not great independently. You look at financial systems and debt systems, you know, on verge of collapse. You look at ecological systems on the verge of collapse. You look at the way things have been run and you know that this is not the best way that things can run. It's just that we didn't have before, you know, Ethereum, before blockchain technology, we didn't really have a viable solution that we could start utilizing to make the changes that we could see we needed. You know, they're very obvious.

Even if you think about wars, you know, what how do wars arise? Where do they come from? What do they stem from? They generally stem from people needing scarce resources and trying to find them due to the fact that they can't find them on their own. They can't create them and they can't make the correct correct trades and have a different uh way to make these trading partnerships benefit everybody neutrally. You couldn't do that.

Now we can. So, yeah, it is a systems change thing. It is something that I'm very very passionate about. I've got a history in political science. That's what I studied. I went into politics for a little bit and was involved in those kinds of things. So, I've always wanted that. I've always seen that as a need and we just haven't had the possibility as humans until now. I love that that kind of framing it as a an unlock, framing crypto and Ethereum as an unlock for coordination that enables us to to do things differently in in ways that we might only like before been able to talk about or think about. Now we can actually put it into practice and

I think that's such a it's a strong motivator, right? To try and realize that, trying to bring that to life in the world. It sounds like that's like that's what's really got you going. Exactly. That's the job in the moment. That's the why. That's That's really what it is. It's like, now we just need to what we can understand and what we know about it. It's like, now we need to spread that word and let other people understand that there's hope. There's this possibility of the change that, you know, we all know that we need in order to have a more abundant world and a more fruitful society for everybody. I love it. So, let's come on to to think more about the the topic of uh resilience and and even just to

help us understand like, what does this term mean to you? Like, how how do you make sense of both uh resilience and also antifragility? What do these terms mean to you? Resilience, obviously, is, you know, something where it can't be taken away. You can survive anything. You can come through any kind of storm that comes at you. You're resilient and you can weather that storm. Whether that's a financial storm, whether that's an ecological storm, you know, whether it's you know, whatever it is. Whatever that storm is that's hitting you, that you can, you know, deal with it. And antifragility, I guess in the sense, when I'm looking at it, if I'm looking at it on a personal level, you know, is being able to realize that

there are things that are outside of your control and dealing with it. Accepting it. And not being swayed by it. If I'm looking at it on more of a builder side, how we're creating things that are resilient and antifragile by their very natures, you know, then I'm looking at it, you have to look at it as a whole and you have to look at it very small, also. So, individual communities make up societies, which make up governments, which make up nations, which make up the global community.

So, you have to start back at the very beginning of it, and you have to make the base layer very solid and independent of anything above it. Right? It's the base. So, if your base is really strong, you're not going to have a problem with building on top of it all of those other structures. Uh with that, you would need all of the things that are necessary for life. All of our major needs, our energy needs, our food systems. Like, a lot of people get it all caught up in the beauty of blockchain and what it can do for financial systems, and they forget that we all have to eat.

You know, these things are important. You have to build that into everything. So, you need a local food system, a local trust network that is strong enough that when you start building on top of it, you have that foundation solid, that things can be built in a secure, trusted, and trustless way. If that makes sense. Like, trustless and trusted, right? We have to have a trust graph and a trust network to make all of the anti-fragility and all of the resilience work. We all have to believe in our communities.

And then we put it on a trustless blockchain system. But, we still have to have trust that that trustless system works, right? Like, that's where we are right now, I think, is making sure people understand that differentiation. Like, yeah, the system's trustless. It's decentralized and trustless. But, we still have to get people to trust in that system. That next level up, that they can then relax into it and build one more step higher. That makes sense?

Yeah absolutely. And I I like that distinction you made there about like the human uh aspects of the relational trust and how just because we have a system that's been disintermediated, doesn't mean that we need no trust within the human side. Like Yeah. Exactly. It can make us more I guess it can make us more able to trust in an environment Is Is this what you're saying? Like if you have a trustless system on the back end that is verified provided verification, it means you can verify things in the real world and then you can enter into

interactions transactions and relationships that are have some importance, something in that importance at stake. You can be more likely to trust that that's actually going to be it's going to go through, right? Or it's going to You're not going to get burnt if it's been verified on the back end in a trustless system. And you have trust in that system. You know, and that that's where we are right now is nobody really trust the system. Because I mean, think about it, we don't trust this current system. Right? Like this is the problem is we've broken down that trust. So, we don't trust our media, we don't trust the governments, we don't trust them to take care of this in the same way that even, you know, 20

years ago, well, yeah, 20 years ago, maybe a little bit before that, we did have more faith in those things. We did believe in it. We did trust in it a little bit more. You know, really 2008 was one of those last moments where trust you could see it deteriorate globally instantly. That things went awry in a way that it's been hard to come back from because once trust is broken, it's hard to build it back. You know, Warren Buffett often talked about that with reputation. It's like it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and and takes one word to destroy it.

We've kind of seen that happen and then how do we rebuild it? How do we show people that there is a system that they can trust? You know, and then you're trying to explain, "Okay, but it's a trustless system." And then they're like, "What does that mean?" You know, it becomes confusing, but it is just a new system. It's a new network. You know, it's a new effect that you can put into place, but people have to understand that they can trust that because it is verifiable. We don't have those same issues in this system as we had in the system that we no longer trust. We can verify everything.

We can prove it and anyone can prove it. Not just, you know, a few people that tell you it's true. You, any individual can go and prove those things. That's really important. And it's very misunderstood, I think, by the general population. But, you know, if you're in crypto circles really everybody like, "Well, of course. We've been talking about it for years." If you're talking to people on the street, A, they don't know what crypto is. So, you first have to try to explain that.

The second part is you're like, "Okay, but it's really a big network and it's a system that is built in order to create trust for all of us so that we can create a more secure environment for us to build our resiliency locally and step by step higher." So, you've touched upon this this kind of local coordination piece or local local resilience piece. Um I'm curious on your what's your take on on the like how that might grow and there's various terms used to describe that like whether it's

not necessarily uh the growth of resilient communities but just the growth of communities in general in this network era like sometimes called network states network societies network nations network cities hubs we have lots of different flavors on on this and I'm curious like what's your take like how do you conceptualize this space and what are the I guess the most important aspects even just like I'm unless interested in the terms themselves I'm just more interested in like how do you understand the space as it is and how it might play

out as it if and when it scales up. You're right. I mean I'm I'm like you I don't really care so much about terms and nobody really fully understands them. If you have to explain the term it's not really a term is it what do you mean by that well then that doesn't help. You're not explaining anything. So it's not what the terms are it's about the actualities of things. And we've we've been seeing it everywhere like I've been involved pretty deeply with a lot of different projects all over the continent of Africa all over South America all over Asia obviously in the states I have my own so this something will I'll touch on if you want me to later

but the way I see these things operating is you you don't need to worry about all of the complexities yet humans in the network themselves to build that very first connection of trust is already complicated enough and that's the first step to build a local community amongst people that you can trust and you believe in and you know that you can count on and depend on to create that resilience and that anti-fragility in a local area for you.

Once you've got the people together, then you start creating that One of them has some land. One of them has, you know, expertise or maybe nobody has anything. It doesn't matter. You have to start it from that layer that first layer of trust. It's the base layer of all value of any kind in my view. So, you build that. All of those eventually, you start connecting the dots and you start connecting learning. Which I think with VDAO, that's something that I've always been really impressed with is the learning aspect of it and the educational aspect of it and the openness to collaborate for learning different things because there's a lot of

resilient projects, say in Africa, that sit very well with a resilient project in Texas. Because the climate's similar in those areas, the operations and the systems that you have available are very similar. There's a lot of learnings that can be shared in different ways of doing things that, you know, maybe you didn't think of because, like for me as a Texan farmer boy, um It's just the truth, fam. It's like uh you don't you don't have that uh that old-school expertise of how what plants to plant and what would grow, you know, well that helps enrich the

nutrients in the soil for the next crop that you want to grow. Just because we've forgotten a lot of those things or didn't ever know about them. And it's something that they've been doing in a traditional way and a farming, you know, practice for many, many years. That That's very helpful. But now what you've done is you've created a network by default. All right? Like that's what a network is. You're sharing information and you've got these group of trusted people, these group of trusted people that you both decide we trust this other person and we're willing to share information.

And that shared information is that network. That's what we're trying to do. So, that's the way I view this idea of network states and resilient states, hub states, whatever you want to think of them or you know, communities, organization, any way you want to look at it, whatever term you want to coin or come up with. It's the shared information. That's the important bit. I love that he's he's picked this this point up cuz I've not really I've not really thought about network states through the trust layer before in in this way. Uh I I think it's a really helpful frame.

Uh It It really does bring it back down to the basics, right? Uh like what is the what are the basic assumptions we make in a network across uh large geographical area so that we can trust one another and still work together and build together. I think you've really hit on the on the fundamentals uh there. Uh And it's interesting like we're we're talking about how we don't really care about the terms. I think there are like maybe in academic circles or maybe in like certain If you look at it from a certain frame, there might be a case to be

made that these terms are the most are are what matters. Like all language is really important, but like I'm with you. I I think we just need to build, right? Like, if we're if we get the basics right, then you know, we're in good shape. Whatever we call this thing, if we're if we're building communities that are based on trust, that are based on on respect, and then and we're trying to to foster that, like, resilience, openness, learning, you mentioned.

These qualities in and of themselves, if we're we're starting from that point, I don't think we can go wrong, right? You know, I 100% agree with that take. And I do see a lot of that, especially in the academic circles and all of these places where they want to it's very important to define things and use the correct term for every single thing all the time. Um what doesn't translate very well, especially in a globally distributed network since scenario of builders is defined terms in a single language.

Every everyone just wants to make their own their own have their own take on it, which is actually, if we're thinking about as from a pluralist perspective, maybe that's what we want, right? Like, maybe we want people to conceptualize this in their own language, in their own way, in their own uh on their own terms. And in their own terms, use whatever term that, you know, feels right for them, as long as the base layer again is the correct base layer, and the information shared can be networked together on that layer of trust this way. Does it matter?

Mhm. You know, >> Yeah. like we'll figure out what it's called one of these days. Like, it'll be obvious, you know? I love that. And like, I don't want to I I don't want to dunk on academics so much, cuz I think like we have there's a place for that level of very deep thinking. Sure. >> But as long as it it's not kind of top-down enforcement of like this is the term that must be used and any other term is not like pure, then um that's not a place that I really want to I don't want to drink that Kool-Aid, right? I don't want to >> No, me neither.

No, not at all. No. But it this is fascinating, man. Like I I I'm really curious though to go go back to this term of or this idea of you you as the as a Texan farmer boy. If we can like if we can move on like to from the conceptual like we talked about what resilience means and your motivation and the like network state piece like to to move on now to think about like in concrete terms like what's your journey been like into this space? Like you started as a Texan farmer boy and as you described yourself. I'm not using those terms. You are you are

proudly. Yeah, absolutely proudly. Proudly. Um and and I'm just really curious to hear and learn more about your journey from that point back on the farm in Texas when you were growing up. And my journey um is a winding road, sir. Are you really ready Are you really ready for the journey? >> Yeah, I'm here for it, man. I'm here for it. All right, so I kind of grew up in when I say a farm boy, I mean really a farm boy. We raised all kinds of animals.

Uh we grew anything that we thought we could make a dime on from cotton, corn, watermelons pumpkins onions. It doesn't matter if that was the thing that was working right then, sunflowers. We tried anything and everything. Raising all of the different animals. I had border collie sheepdogs. We raised a lot of sheep. So, I am just a farm boy. I ra- grew up eating all organic everything because I was in charge of the garden and we didn't spray stuff. So, I've got several brothers and sisters, but I loved the gardening part and we ate everything, you know, fresh from home and then we preserved it and

kept it. And it was the best food that you could ever eat. When it was time to have some beef, then we brought one in and we raised him and that was the way, you know, it was just that was life to me. I didn't know that there was another way of life even. Everybody lived like that around me. Like, what do you know? But, those are very fundamental and foundational years of your life, how you grow up, how you experience life from the beginning becomes your norm and everything else is, you know, judged almost based off of that.

From there and this farm boy idea, you started noticing things even back then that are going wrong. Um from the water usage and the irrigation and the lower levels of water, from the water contamination, from the chemicals that started being more and more prevalent during my my life growing up. My father actually was He wrote a paper on recycling and everything in 1960 1964, I believe, is when he published that article for in that paper

at Texas Tech University. So, I don't even I'll even dox myself a little further. You know the area that I'm from. Um And this this is pretty remote as well, right? It's not like you're really close to big a big city or that you're you're talking like you were working this land, you and your family, and you were living off the the food and and selling it and it was like it was a far farm life, right? You were you were growing up you grew up on a farm. I grew up on a farm. That's it. The you know, those those ideas of regeneration and doing things a bit differently.

Um My father is also, you know, at a great part of Native American heritage from what we know. He was an orphan, but that much we know about. So, he got into that a little bit and like studying, you know, how they were doing things before we got there. Cuz we basically learned the what we could farm in the United States from them and what what are the best crops and how we could do it. So, how it would work how it would operate. And we always tried to do those kinds of things, but it became more and more difficult as time went on.

Even the govern from the government level for getting insurance, for getting loans, for doing all of the things that are necessary to keep a farm running and getting the money in to keep it running, you had to promise to put, you know, nitrogen fertilizer in the soil, promise to spray pesticides, promise to spray, you know, herbicides in order to get insurance for your crop and you couldn't get a loan to be able to operate without insurance. So, it became kind of a racket and it was really disturbing. I mean, it bothered my dad deeply, it bothered me.

Um I think the whole industry and now in the industry in the states it's become very corporate because it put so many people out of business because things soil is degraded, there's less water, you can't irrigate in the same way. You're not growing the right things. It's led up it's just been a downward spiral in that way. So, it's when I talk about like having the passion for resilience and rebuilding these things, it really does come from a a very grounded place in me of watching this happen, experiencing it, and feeling helpless as

to how to do something against it. Very interesting. This is like a deep experiential kind of uh drive for you, right? Like you you've experienced what how it can be. You're eating organic food, you're like on a farm like I mean, I'm I don't want to be too romantic about it. Like I'm sure it was hard, too, right? Like you have to get up early in the morning and stuff. Like you have to it's work, right? It's not like you're sitting back like Huckleberry Finn or something like kicking back like chilling all day.

You're like you're working, right? Like It's definitely work. Like there's no doubt about that. And it's not the easiest work in the world, but it is some of the most rewarding work in the world, you know? Like you appreciate things in a different way. It's always nice to get to the end of the day and look back and see what you've done and be like, that was good. It was a good bit right there. And so, this lifestyle this this way of life really became it started to be eroded by this kind of what I would describe as as like the centralization almost of the food and uh agriculture industry, like you could say.

Uh the after the the war onwards, like the Second World War, '30s, uh the Green Revolution, like all that whole period after it was all about like getting people that are small time farmers using the agro uh chemicals. >> Chemicals. Agro chemicals, yeah. So It was like like you touched on it like that was exactly it. It's this that top-down coming at you that really broke the way we were able to do things before that.

And start this spiral. And we were actually pretty happy about it at the beginning. And you didn't because you're you didn't have the information. We didn't have the knowledge. That's so interesting, man. That's so interesting. Like that whole thing about like how you can start on this journey and it could be good cuz there's benefits, right? Like if you're if you're suddenly getting yield of several X what you had before. Exactly. >> Great. It's not like they're coming and selling it to you and being like, "Oh, by the way, like in 10 year in under 10 years you'll be completely dependent on us and Yeah, you will not be able to grow You won't be able to grow anything on that land without using 10 times as much as what you're using now to put any type

of nutrient into the soil. Cuz we've completely killed it. Yeah. So I can Yeah, left that out of the brochure at the beginning, didn't they? So I guess we could probably draw like a straight line between that experience and like here like in crypto being like super heavy on the self-sovereignty piece and disintermediation piece and all that. But like talk us through like how you went from there to where where you are now. Yeah, well, you know, that I touched on it a little bit earlier, I think, which was because of those things and seeing those things happen and having it affect us so you know, directly. Not just me, my entire family and my whole community,

you know, everybody around me was so devastatingly affected by these, you know, changes there. And knowing how that system was broken made me really want to go into politics. You're like, well, I would this can't continue this way. And because I'm from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, um you actually think that this is an avenue that that's the way you do it. You believe in the system, right? This is the system we've created. You're supposed to be able to come from anywhere and build yourself up and go into these things and make these changes that you know, need to be made or at least propose them and expose them. And that's just the natural process of thing.

So, I really worked very diligently towards that end and worked in a lot of political circles, did the you know, junior Republicans Congress thing in DC, got involved in think tanks, went to uh work on all different types of um campaigns for some of the senators, some of the governors, those kinds of things. And after meeting all of these people, I realized that they don't care. That these top-down people that are doing all of these things that are affecting my life, that are affecting my community's life, they're affecting my family's life.

They do not care. They do not understand. And it matters not one iota to them other than getting a vote and staying in office. And that was disheartening. Because I was naive and hopeful that this can be helped. And and learning that, you know, from first-hand experience that way. That is yeah, but I I'm laughing but I it's it it's not easy to go through that experience. Especially if you're young and your ideas are idealistic. You believe that the world could be better if those with levers of power or with the levers of power, I just made

different choices. And then you learn they actually don't give a You're like what? Like what? For real? Exactly. It's like, wait a minute, but that's not what you taught me. That's not what we learned. This You're the ones that do care. That's why you're in public service, right? Yeah. >> Like, no. No, we we don't. Don't you want to know why you should care? No. Yeah. No, we don't. There must be some like uh redemption arc to this. Like, cuz you're clearly not someone that's super cynical and and bitter and and jaded, right?

Like, you talked about hope at the beginning of this. So, how did you go from that experience of learning of the limitations of the traditional political system to now like as a builder in the space trying to um build towards self-sovereignty and local resilience. Now now we're getting into the the weeds of the moving parts in that strange journey. Um With all of that, I I wound up getting into the fashion industry. And then through the fashion industry, I wound up traveling.

And I stopped worrying about all the politics. And I'd always been writing. I wrote stories way out in the middle of the farm. I'd been writing stories and stuff. I love literature. I've always enjoyed it. And I was like, you know what? I need to go out and experience some things, learn some things, figure this out, and I use this vehicle that I had available to me to be able to do that and really experience different cultures, different ways of living, different ways to build societies, different types of governance, different uh ideas. So, you get to go and experience all of these things and have somebody else pay for it, which is fantastic. Because I don't know if you travel I mean, I do know you travel quite a lot. It gets expensive.

If somebody else is paying for it, it's way better. So, I was able to get somebody else to pay for all of my travels all around the world and get the experiences that I needed in order to understand one very fundamental thing to me, and that is people are people no matter where they are, no matter what the culture is, no matter what the religion is. We We come down to those really basic principles of what we want, and that is to try to find the best way to be happy. And what do you need to be happy? We all need the same basic things. We need some security.

We need to feel safe in order to be happy. You need to have some relationships and some trust that around you that is okay. You need to be able to provide for your family and have that, you know, around you. And then you're more or less resilient and antifragile in your space, and you can be happy, and it It's universal. People are people. Looking at all of those things, I mean, I've been to I think 93 different countries or 94 different countries at this point. And really studied them. And I was writing stories about it, you know, throughout the entire time. And I thought maybe through literature and writing is how I'm going to make a change because I still felt that need to make a change, but I also felt helpless

and powerless to be able to do anything. And through that industry as well, it allowed me into a lot of doors that I don't think that I would ever have been able to get into otherwise. Um It just allowed you to be in a lot of rooms that people don't generally have access to. And then meet people, have those conversations, and actually be able to see like lights turning on, and them like thinking about things. And then you become friends with those people, and now you have a network of trust because they learned about you, spoke with you, talked to you, and you

can build a network of trust that way that actually can move the needle in some way if they desire to. Now, I didn't know what the needle needed to move to at this point, but you did know that these are important people and they're very, very smart people as a general rule, and it was a you know, a lot of learning that you could grasp. Just sponge it up, drink it in. And I don't care if it's the CEO of BP or the CEO of Bridgewater. It doesn't make any difference. Just just take everything in and then see how you can put it back out there in the world that might be able to unify things and change a mindset for people to

understand what's going on, so that they'll try things a little differently in a different way. Mhm. But there was no real way to change it. And then through the fashion industry, finally, I guess about the time that you had all of the fash- fashion stuff come up. Uh say 20 2010, 2011, somewhere around there, when it became really big. And you're like, wait a minute. Like, not only do I not like it because it's ugly and cheap and garbage. I don't really appreciate that falls apart.

But you're like this this may have something worse behind it. And then when you realize the amount of waste that is being generated through all of this, it becomes shocking, and it was shocking to me. Because I was like, here now I am this farm boy from Texas that wants to see things go back to, you know, a more regenerative way and less pollution and less stuff out there in the world that's destroying our planet and destroying our own health to now being so deeply involved in this industry that is responsible for this amount of waste and destruction, you know, it's

like with the 4% of all of the pollution in the world is from the fashion 4% from one single industry and it's not that big of industry, it's just clothes that you got on. That's enormous. Like so what could we do about it? How can we fix that? And I started working with AI to build a platform that allowed for uh supply chain chain um tracking so they could reduce the amount of shipping, reduce the amount of, you know, processes that went in place and make it more efficient. That was really important to me that we like really work on that and build that out and that worked okay and then they fashion

industry decided to use it as a as a way in to make their pollution more efficient basically. Instead of instead of cutting waste on it, they were like, "Hey, you know what we can do? We can use this exact same tool to amplify the amount that we sell and send everywhere faster. Thanks. This is great. We're going to go to salesforce with that idea and we're going to amp this up to 11." And you're like, "Holy crap, that's awful.

I what can we do about that?" He's like, "Ah, you know what we need? We need transparency in this. We need to actually show people. Cuz if people really understood what was happening with all of these things, they would not accept it." And it wasn't too long after that that Ethereum was born and we had the ability to create smart contracts and product IDs on chain that are transparent that everybody can audit and see.

And I mean, we have there's it's a much bigger topic than that, obviously, like product passports and product IDs are very difficult. There are certain things that need privacy still. You know, and this is just in fashion, but it's for every different type of thing you can think of, whether it is a car manufacturing or part or if it is clothing or cotton or wool or you know, beef, it doesn't really make any difference. Tomatoes, where it comes from, what kind of carbon footprint it has, you know, what kind of pesticides have been used on it. All of those kinds of things can be tied to a product ID. This is really important because that transparency

leads to trust. Mhm. Mhm. All right. So, is a There's a a really good statement. It's like, you know, you need privacy for the people and transparently for the powerful. Mhm. All right. That's what we're looking for. I'm curious to like you you mentioned there when you were uh talking talking us through your journey that you know, you you imagine this like going back to this healthier way of life and that um and I imagine from that you're meaning like the organic food that you talked about, like the uh and just like this connection with

with nature, being on a farm and and so on that I think uh is becoming rarer in a way as industrial agriculture kind of scales even further and further and further in the what they would say in the pursuit of like feeding the world. But um yeah, health and nutritional output of food is definitely gone down in that period. Like the nutritional density. Compared to the lifestyle that you enjoyed when when you were a kid. But I'm curious like when you think back to those times or when you think now about like your community.

Maybe some of them are still there from when you were growing up. Like how do they view tech in general? And how do you kind of resolve that tension between like this high or maybe it's not a tension like the the relationship between this high-tech world, this crypto world, and then this super like low-fi just like out on the farm harvesting your your field or whatever when you were a kid or tending to your tending to your sheep.

Both. All of the above. Every single day. Like 7 days a week. The animals don't care if you're tired on Sunday. They need water and they need to eat, too. So, you're going to go to work. Um Have you replaced that with Twitter followers now? Twitter followers now? Yeah basically. This is 24/7 grind. Uh blockchain never sleeps.

Um yeah. Is I don't know like in it with if in my local community, let me see. I was back there this last year and I went We had the 100-year anniversary of my high school. So, I was back for that this last year for homecoming. So, we had a big football game and 100-year anniversary of the school in the town. It was a big deal, so people came from everywhere and I talked to a lot of people.

They Okay, it's a tiny little town. Right? You speak to more people when you talk at a conference of 300 people than you speak to that live in that entire town, right? But when you think about the generations all coming back and they've spread all over the place. Um I really spoke to a lot of people and you know, I they have no conception of what blockchain is. Zero.

So, there's no tension there because there is you know, all of the the scale is completely tipped. There's no balance to it at all. They they're not aware of it. You know, their tractors now all run on satellite GPS and they can fall asleep in them and they're you know, amazing things and it just does its thing. I think, well, sounds nice. I wouldn't like that when I was growing up. But, you know, maybe we should be tilling a little less anyway. Um but it it doesn't exist. It's not there. Like this idea of the technology, they they don't have it. Like it's

tractor technology is about as far as it goes. You know, automatic waters out there for the animals. Got you. Um building out a resilient system here that we can make trading partnerships with people in Africa is a much more difficult thing for them to comprehend. Cuz I why? I don't get it. >> Yeah. It's just like it has to be useful. It has to be technology that's useful for them for them to care about it cuz they're not like they're not just in it for the sake of the technology that maybe some lovers of tech would be here for the love of the tech. Yeah. Uh uh >> Well,

useful >> Those people do exist, I think. Uh Yeah. But yeah, sorry, I interrupted you. Go ahead. No, it really is like that's exactly it. Like it has to be really useful and tangible. Like they're they're salt of the earth people. If they can't touch it, it doesn't exist. So, how do you make things tangible and real for them that they can really you know, taste, touch, see, feel, and go, "Okay, now we're not stupid people. We can learn anything. Just give me my why."

That's the thing. Like there's this whole myth around like small town or like rural people like not being able or not being like uh interested in tech or like being like technophobes or something. But you look inside a modern tractor and it's insane, right? It's like a cockpit of a plane or something. Exactly. Uh or some of these massive machinery units or like they're Sometimes they're managing thousands and thousands of acres, right? So, um it's uh they get they get tech, but they're not going to be minting your latest PFP collection to put on their to sell on OpenSea, right? Like

uh they're So, uh it's a different mindset, but it's not an I I think this is so helpful. What I'm hearing from what you're saying is like they're not anti-tech. So, there's no tension there. They just need to know that it's going to help them. They need to have a why for them to engage with it. And they haven't had that for any kind of blockchain technology yet. You know, they have AI that's built into the tractors at this point and operating the systems for irrigation throughout, you know, the thousand-acre farms that helps organize what gets moved when and where and why.

Very useful tech adopted instantly. They had a why. It improved something instantly. They're willing to do that. Yeah. We haven't been able to show them something, you know, that's really valuable here yet. Yeah. Yet being the operative word. Yeah, because something that they're going to have to realize as well and everybody will realize this is going to come down to energy at the end of the day. You You're going to have to power all of those amazing AI useful tools that you're now accustomed to using.

You're going to have to be able to integrate maybe other methods that are less chemical-oriented into this in order to rebuild the soil. And the AI is already telling them that now. You know, like this is a problem. You do soil samples, it'll tell you like this is you know, not going to work. You're going to need to put this many inputs you know, into it. And so you're learning how and even the insurance companies, the you know, from the federal level, they're getting a lot of pushback from this, you know, from the people on the ground. From the corporates, not so much because they don't care as long as the dollars and cents at the end of the day on the

bottom line are still working out okay, it's fine. But the people, those small farmers, the ones that are still exist, the ones that still care, that are, you know, only a few thousand acres farmers, up to maybe 20,000, I would say. Like smaller than 20,000 acre farmers are people that are using this amazing tech, but are giving some pushback and still and have are large enough to have a little bit of power within that pushback system. If we can show them how that is going to be powered, how they're going to need that, they're going to be more willing and they can see it happening anyway.

Okay, maybe we need to have solar built into our farms. Mhm. You know? Yeah. We can power our own things. We can create a microgrid. And this leads me back to that idea of what I was talking about with those cooperations and networks to Africa. Where they're building microgrids. Because they don't have any other alternative. So they're doing it ahead of what we're doing. Right? In the states. So that's learning that we can take from them is how to build these microgrids and make them efficient and make them effective for your local use to power the things that are essential for you to continue operating.

You know, whereas we can maybe help them with something else. What? I don't know yet, you know, but I'm sure there are things. Yeah absolutely. I just I guess like before we pull things to a close, uh I want to to ask you uh all right, just about your vision for the future. Um and if you have any like vision for perhaps some perhaps a return to to the land in some way uh in the future in a in a more uh high-tech capacity. Like what What is your What's your vision

for the future in like in your most hopeful frame of mind and like when you're thinking about you being super resilient. Like what's your What's your vision for how like things play out over the the next 10 years? Mhm. Next 10 years, I don't know. I'll try five. If we can make it five, then I get a more hope. We got to get through these five though. Um Yeah, my my vision is really being able to show and make it tangible for the for my community back home.

I want to have an agrivoltaic farm system that I've been working on for quite some time that is all run on blockchain rails, so it's already open for that traceability to these networks that I've been talking with and they're building some things on blockchain, you know, where necessary right now or just building out the communities right now, but it's going to come on chain. You know, using processes like there's a coconut framework. So, that helps all of these people build out a monetizable on-chain record of governance and funding and a sustainable system for smaller farms

this way. It's scalable to anything. But, being able to use that single framework to allow people to build off of allows for more trust to build faster and to have that network. So, for me having the solar farms built with DePIN, you know, embedded as one of the value layers and uh is very important. You can show that immediately and that gives you the first taste of on-chain for a lot of these people is having that DePIN layer for solar and energy production.

And then my goal for the future, my hope for the future is that we can really bring all of the commodities and be able to trade them properly amongst ourselves without intermediaries, without anything else in a trusted manner on a trustless blockchain, fully decentralized from the ground up quite literally. That's my hopeful future. That's what I would like to see. As we see as well, you know, the the hard work of these things like my growing up on the farm, one of the things I loved was actually doing the work.

But a lot of people are not going to really enjoy that kind of work, and you don't have to anymore. And as we see the rise of robotics come into play, you need power for them, but a lot of that hard work gets abstracted away from it. And you get the benefits from it. Yeah, I bet you never had to go to the gym though, right? Like Yeah, have you thrown you're throwing enough 120-lb hay bales around for um, you know, 8 hours a day? Yeah, that's you're you're pretty good. You could wrestle some steers there 1,000 lbs. Yeah.

Yeah. People pay to go to the gym, but you can go and pick you can go and get paid to work on your farm and Absolutely, come on out. Go get get absolutely shredded. Yeah, get farm strong. Yeah. Yeah. Cody, this has been a fascinating conversation, man. I'm really it's been really interesting to hear about your journey. And just to wrap things up, is there anything else you want to add? Any final thoughts or comments you want to share? I think for all of the builders out there in this space, whether you are somebody that's into network states or anti-fragile states or resiliency, or you're just in it for the tech,

you're just in it for you know, whatever reason, please build every single thing from the true first principles of trust. The entirety of the value layer of human existence is built on that. If you are building from that understanding and from that knowledge, everything that you're doing that people are going to need to trust what it is that you're building. And look at it from that lens. We're going to have a lot faster adoption of the technology that gives us all hope.

That is a very uh powerful place to end. Thanks a lot for joining us, Tony. It is my pleasure, Chris. Really is an honor to be here.