Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;20
Pri
Hey, guys. I'm so excited to be back. Finally. It's been a few weeks since I've, missed the pod, and it feels good. Feels good to.
00;00;23;20 - 00;00;30;29
Derek
Me. It's good to have your energy back. We've just been three dudes and a couple of mikes for the last month, so it's nice. Nice to get you back in the saddle. Great.
00;00;31;01 - 00;00;34;20
Pri
No. It's great. I actually the love. The last episode was great. Loved it.
00;00;34;26 - 00;00;53;27
Chris
Well, I'm glad we managed to soldier through without you carrying us, but we really needed you. And I know you're, like, chomping at the bit to share some of your. Your takes and predictions as well. And so we're gonna we were holding space at the start of this episode for, for you to, cast your vision out in the 2025.
00;00;54;00 - 00;01;15;02
Pri
Yeah, I have a few, honestly. Some of them are, you know, really kind of quite similar to what you guys were talking about last week. Also, I love how Aaron like, pulled it together and then asked touch on the percentage probability. Like perfect love that I haven't quite done that deep with mine. And maybe I'll throw it through zero one after.
00;01;15;02 - 00;01;39;22
Pri
But I guess one thing I've been thinking about, and this is more just like venture capital in general and like as we have a change in administration, I was reading recently just about like how like PE funds, like the mega ones like Apollo, KKR, Blackrock, others are like chomping at the bit to get access to like IRA Capital and like that seems somewhat likely this administration.
00;01;39;22 - 00;02;07;26
Pri
And it's making me just like think that that could alter private market capital deployment like right now obviously. And like there you can speak to this, but you're like relying on endowments and family offices if you're able to get like the, you know, whatever, $12 trillion retirement accounts to start allocating to private equity and venture capital, I would think that that just like accelerates development and investment across tech and just, you know, activity, just activity in general.
00;02;07;26 - 00;02;31;00
Pri
And I know many predictions out there like, oh, yeah, IPO activity and M&A activity is going to increase over 2025. Like that's the obvious prediction. But I also wonder if we're like teed up to just get more capital deployed in general. Like if we're able to loosen the the rules a bit, like I think that that could be potentially pretty interesting just to see what ends up getting funded and what companies end up bought.
00;02;31;00 - 00;02;49;26
Pri
But I so my one prediction to that is like, if that happens, we're going to see so much more funding of cool experimental stuff. And like obviously we know America's pretty favorable when it comes to risk capital. So I think that that could be an interesting, interesting thing to like, look forward to. Like we're going to see things further out on the risk curve.
00;02;49;27 - 00;03;11;18
Derek
I'll add one appended at because I think it's a really astute point. Pretty like just the shift in administration policy around the asset class of crypto. And we can talk about it from a tech perspective as well, because I think a halo's out. It's important because there's so much capital in the world that is very defensive and how it allocates obviously they're they diversify, you know, and they create like, you know, very well balanced portfolios.
00;03;11;18 - 00;03;32;13
Derek
But I would say crypto as an asset class for such a long time, the last 15 years, from a regulatory perspective, from a legislative perspective, from, a technology perspective, it's been really difficult to underwrite this as a large institutional player, looking to get exposure because there's just been so much uncertainty baked in markets hate uncertainty, but so do large capital allocators.
00;03;32;17 - 00;03;54;06
Derek
And so when you see a shift in administration like this that, you know, we'll have like pro crypto appointments and a little bit more regulatory clarity and a shift in kind of the SEC approach to regulating the asset class with the potential reserve, Bitcoin reserve and, you know, rewrites for how tax works. And, you know, how, how stablecoins will work.
00;03;54;06 - 00;04;14;11
Derek
And and also, you know, the president, you know, having engaged in his own NFT collections and launched functional DeFi protocols. It's I think like it the Overton window, shifts a bit. And I think from, from a capital allocator perspective, like that's the downstream effect, to really key on. And I think that's what you're flagging here pre.
00;04;14;14 - 00;04;37;14
Pri
Yeah. And I'm looking forward to seeing that. I mean if you, if we have more activity and funding of these different startups and, you know larger companies, I think you know, we're going to see more experimentation obviously. And if there's just more LPs and private markets continue to grow, like who knows what the outcome of that is, especially to your point, like having a friendly administration to vet tech growth.
00;04;37;14 - 00;04;49;19
Pri
I think, you know, we're going to see some wild stuff get funded and that may normally not have and some of that may go to zero, but some of that may actually be like very interesting and weird, which I'm kind of looking forward to that as a prediction. Hey, just.
00;04;49;19 - 00;05;30;22
Chris
A note there. It's not just the exotic or, you know, the frontier stuff that's going to benefit from that. Private credit has become a really large opportunity, you know, as banks have pulled back on borrowing and I'm sorry, as banks have pulled back on, on lending, you know, private markets have really stepped into that role. And so once upon a time, like, being smart is putting, you know, your funds in a money market, to, you know, maybe beat a bank interest rate and nowadays, there's this whole level of, you know, private credit markets that serve very important functions that banks are no longer doing for, you know, variety of reasons.
00;05;30;22 - 00;05;38;14
Chris
And so, you know, there's more to this floating around than than just, you know, your, your tech gross, bent.
00;05;38;17 - 00;05;40;28
Derek
Yeah. Well, so Chris and and good prediction for you.
00;05;41;01 - 00;05;44;06
Pri
Saying I think that's a really good point, Chris. On the private credit side.
00;05;44;08 - 00;05;46;20
Chris
What else you got in the hopper? Yeah.
00;05;46;21 - 00;06;19;06
Pri
Okay. Okay. Cool. Okay. The other thing that, by the way, I've thought about this, like, literally like an hour ago. So there was this blog post that was circulating, and it just has me thinking it was like the Simon Will Wilson dot net like I am. Predictions for the next 1 to 3 and six years. I'll put it in the show notes, but one of the predictions is someone wins a Pulitzer Prize for AI assisted investigative reporting, like Boston Globe style kind of these groups of people that spend years investigative reporting.
00;06;19;06 - 00;06;39;17
Pri
But you can kind of create some like agent orchestration to help on that. And investigation said something about that. Plus like an AI news organization, I can start seeing like this idea of like AI generated media, which is obvious. Like we all we're already seeing AI generated media, but it be orchestrated in a way that's actually like productive.
00;06;39;17 - 00;06;55;22
Pri
Maybe it isn't the investigative reporting side, but like actual cohesive news. Like, I think maybe at some point this year we'll see a breakout like that again. Not sure if it's investigative reporting. I kind of cribbed this one, but I really liked it. And so that's that's the other one we see like something really interesting.
00;06;55;28 - 00;07;29;15
Derek
I love this one. I think what's it's kind of funny, I'm playing around with all of like these early alpha and beta experiments around like a gigantic infrastructure. And, you know, you're like a 99% of the stuff is vapor. It's like people launching ideas with tokens attached to it that you can speculate on. But what's fun is like some of the ideas and these are I wouldn't underwrite these as a investment, but like I think what's what's cool is like some of these ideas are circling around what you're describing pre it's like can we train, can we find training data for some niche category to create investigative reports or new research or new opinions on
00;07;29;15 - 00;07;51;01
Derek
something that has largely been kind of underexplored or underfunded. And now that we have this environment for capital to form and for, you know, to obtain large data sets that may be difficult to get with a normal web scrape because it's like some whatever. It's often mostly off chain or it's not really reported very well, or the incentives weren't aligned for that information that come to light.
00;07;51;05 - 00;08;14;07
Derek
Can we create like a total package here that allows, you know, new and new info or new research or new opinions, to kind of surface. So I, I like it, I like where you're going with this. And I think there's something around crypto and, and kind of like the, the data side of like the of the training these models and these agents that I think marries quite, quite nicely with that prediction.
00;08;14;09 - 00;08;16;03
Pri
Yeah. I totally agree. Yeah.
00;08;16;03 - 00;08;41;12
Chris
It's crazy for you because you know, you mentioned the Boston Globe. I went to high school, I went to Catholic high school across the street from the globe during that whole spotlight series on, you know, the sexual abuse cover up. And so that was like a little weird, to say the least. But now, like, you're as you're saying it, I'm like, God, Teresa's going like the spotlight series need don't fuck with cats.
00;08;41;17 - 00;09;17;15
Chris
It was that that Netflix series. Yes. Yeah. But like bigger picture. Yeah. You know Derek when like you were really geeking out on Tao and Bit tensor and you know, you got me to take a look into it. One of my takeaways was like intelligence market information markets. How you know, Big Tensor really is like set up to once it gets cooking, start treating, you know, information as like a wholesale market and as something that like works the same way a lot of like our communications, especially like the global telecom system work.
00;09;17;15 - 00;09;41;08
Chris
And so interesting just to like think about it both at like these very specific, you know, application levels and then how that, you know, echoes out and scales up. I don't know, it's just wild to, you know, sort of reframe information, intelligence knowledge and chinchilla applications as having through, you know, networks, marketplaces and, systems like this.
00;09;41;15 - 00;10;01;14
Pri
Yeah, I totally agree. And I also think it's one of those things that, you know, there's a lot of public skepticism to AI and ad generated content. If you can actually provide value or uncover a, you know, fundamental truth using these tools, I think like that's a real soft way, like a soft power way to get people excited about the potential of this technology.
00;10;01;14 - 00;10;22;14
Pri
Like, to your point, Derrick, on the crypto stuff, I think definitely the data sets there, like there's going to be some interesting stuff that comes out of that and even like what the peer review journals and like DSI and just, you know, science, biotech in general. Like there's a lot of ideas on like putting, you know, all these peer reviewed journals for new research and scientific discovery, which is awesome.
00;10;22;14 - 00;10;49;21
Pri
But like and some of that may break through and appeal to the masses. But I do think like some crazy spotlight like story, if you could actually show how oh, I'm able to like assistant unearthing, you know, a truth there. I think that would just get so much public response and, and feedback to the point where people will actually start fully accepting and realizing, like, this isn't just going to take your jobs or anything like that.
00;10;49;21 - 00;10;58;16
Pri
This is like, could it be paradigm shifting for like, how do we understand the world not to be totally dramatic? But I do think like something like that could happen this year.
00;10;58;23 - 00;11;04;28
Chris
Yeah. Pre you know what actually a great example of this would have been is the Panama Papers.
00;11;05;01 - 00;11;06;13
Pri
Yeah that's a really good.
00;11;06;15 - 00;11;21;25
Chris
Like there was just so much depth to that. It went so many levels deep. It was designed to just kind of the sheer scale of the obfuscation is something machine intelligence would have been amazing at, really making sense out of.
00;11;21;27 - 00;11;36;25
Pri
And come to think about it, you know, tying it to the administration, I feel like the Doge stuff is going to they're just going to like release a lot of stuff, like who knows what, what those people will pull together with that. Like information that gets shared, like maybe someone will actually be able to sift through it and find something interesting.
00;11;36;25 - 00;11;52;14
Pri
Who knows? But you know, that could get weird also. And a little scary. Yeah. Moving on to other predictions. I, you know, I do. We have a lot to discuss. I think the last one, I have a couple more, but maybe I'll save them is I think the internet's just going to be a little bit more curated because of AI tools.
00;11;52;14 - 00;12;13;05
Pri
Like right now, obviously it is. We are using AI to curator internet, like literally, you know, we have algorithms that feed us information across, like every social media platform. But I think like we start having like this middleware, that's AI that's going to like filter up what we actually see. Like I saw a startup and that's that's what had me thinking.
00;12;13;07 - 00;12;36;29
Pri
That was basically like an AI agent for yourself that can filter the ads that they think that you would like. I think that you could see that across different, you know, platforms where you just everyone has a different algorithm which kind of exists today, but it's going to be even more curated. And so I think we maybe start seeing a little bit more of like a personalized browser internet, even more so than what we have today.
00;12;37;01 - 00;12;39;20
Pri
Again, that's kind of a vague prediction, but I think we see a little.
00;12;39;20 - 00;12;56;08
Derek
Bit about I like it, you know, this this technology stack is so it's it really I talk about this a little bit in the piece so we can go into it a little bit later, but the UX patterns for how people use products and services are about to kind of like radically shift. And if you believe that that's true, I tend to believe it's true.
00;12;56;08 - 00;13;15;25
Derek
I think, you both do as well. Then rebuild some of like the products and services that we use to, to navigate, you know, on, on the internet, we'll have to kind of like, reorient and kind of like, rework themselves to match that new reality. So I love this prediction. I think it probably starts to happen in 2025.
00;13;15;25 - 00;13;27;06
Derek
And I do think a core part of my thesis around that is, is around just moving away slightly from navigational UI to things like text to speech and speech itself.
00;13;27;08 - 00;13;44;12
Pri
Cool. Well, on that note, because I do want to get to that cigaret app of yours too. Derek, I'm going to finally introduce the podcast for the first time this year. Welcome to Net Society. Right. You know, the today we have, me, Derek, Chris on it. Aaron is judging a hackathon and said he can't be here.
00;13;44;12 - 00;14;01;23
Pri
But we'll have more on next week. As you guys know, this podcast is all about exploring the world of digital art, crypto, AI, and tech, and we're here to bring you deep insights, fresh perspectives, and hitting on some of the themes that we talk about, just I guess on crypto, Twitter, DAOs and elsewhere. You know, the idea here is just to have wild and fun conversations on a weekly basis.
00;14;01;23 - 00;14;27;16
Pri
So thanks for listening. And as you guys know, these opinions here shared are our own and not of that of our employer. So thanks for being here. I guess just transitioning immediately. Since we were talking a little bit about like this AI middleware AI layer here, that could emerge in 2025. Derek, you had a really good paper that you published that I feel like is worth riffing on, called AI, crypto and America.
00;14;27;16 - 00;14;48;27
Pri
I mean, I love the way that you kind of started it to just with your mom and her. And I have like a similar story with my parents too, but just coming to America and relating that into like where we're going and how in some ways, like a lot of what we're saying seeing with AI is like this, like fundamentally American type of determination.
00;14;49;02 - 00;14;56;04
Pri
And so, you know, do you want to kind of give us like a quick Tldr on the piece and then we can kind of jump, right?
00;14;56;04 - 00;15;14;21
Derek
Yeah, I can and, I think for me, this piece was like very, I guess, therapeutic to kind of like get down on paper because I think there's, and I'll talk about why, but like, there's two technologies that I think over the last few years have become clear are going to become important backbones for how value moves around the world.
00;15;14;21 - 00;15;46;04
Derek
And that's AI and crypto. If you kind of play out, how these technologies will kind of, operate within our economy and in our culture, it starts to kind of like radically shift how things work honestly, across the world. You know, blockchains as a a public 24 over seven database that anybody can read and write to. And, I, as I say, kind of like helps collapse cost structures down to zero over time, whether that's machines and robots to do physical labor or the cost of intelligence.
00;15;46;06 - 00;16;04;05
Derek
We'll probably now that we can kind of like, create a cost structure around it, we can start to optimize it down to zero over time to the cost of inference instead of, like, you know, the cost to send somebody to college and get a professional degree and then train them up for another ten years in the workforce, and it radically shifts the cost structure for how value gets created.
00;16;04;08 - 00;16;33;14
Derek
And, so if you believe that we can now bring labor costs and operation operational costs to zero, you know, as time goes on, but the productivity that can get created will start to inflect as a result of having thousands of machine brains work on single problems instead of just a single person in a room with a pen and a paper that to me, married with this 24 seven global ledger is about to kind of like change how shit works here in the world.
00;16;33;17 - 00;16;52;07
Derek
And and the reason why, you know, I started that story with my mom. She left the Philippines when she was in her early 20s. She had, you know, very little. She came with, just like $50 in her pocket and, you know, came to came to Los Angeles and, had to build her network in her professional career from scratch.
00;16;52;07 - 00;17;10;14
Derek
But the reason she came to the US was really like the promise of a better future. Like the openness of our economic system and the fact that merit based contribution would allow her to kind of, like, level up and the fact that she could preserve wealth and store value, in property that couldn't be taken away from the state.
00;17;10;17 - 00;17;32;03
Derek
I mean, it's the those three things that, you know, really the, the, the sets, the stage for the American dream. And so the question has been circling around my brain just to kind of bring all of this together. If we've got these transformative technology stacks, what does the promise of the American dream look like in a world where, like, the way things work completely changes?
00;17;32;03 - 00;18;00;16
Derek
And that's really what this essay was meant to unpack today. It's a lot of the literature around that question has been very doom and gloom. And what I was posing, as if you kind of go through the essay is that we could actually use these tools to the advantage of keeping the keeping in the spirit of, of what it means to kind of build within America and, and to allow people to kind of mobilize and to allow new value to get created that could be felt at the individual and communal level.
00;18;00;21 - 00;18;25;25
Derek
If we just avail ourselves to some of these technology stacks in ways that don't currently exist today. And that's around allowing kind of like the permissionless contribution from everyday Americans to these crypto native systems at the infrastructure layer. It means, you know, allowing them to avail themselves to blockchains more broadly, at the application layer, once we start getting some of these UX challenges solved with a gigantic infrastructure.
00;18;26;00 - 00;19;00;09
Derek
Yeah. The long story short is like, I feel like you can't really talk about AI and crypto without also including some of what it actually means to be human over the next 10 to 15 years. And a human in America, which is the country that kind of gave my parents everything and, you know, has given me everything that was really like the, the, the motivation behind putting this essay together was like, I wanted to make these puzzle pieces fit in a way that I think could make sense, and hopefully inform how people think about policy around this stuff over the next ten, 20 or 30 years as these, as these things become a
00;19;00;09 - 00;19;01;26
Derek
little bit more obvious to folks.
00;19;01;29 - 00;19;23;23
Chris
Yeah. Derek, one thing I really appreciated about this essay and was how you were coming at this and, you know, starting with this personal framing of your mom's journey. But then, you know, kind of opening up more broadly to what does it mean to exist in a world that's changing this quickly, at a human level and at the distributed human level?
00;19;23;23 - 00;19;45;29
Chris
Not not in the story of heroes, but, you know, in a framing of like, the everyday person. And that's something we are sorely lacking. And it's something we need to develop new thinking around. We need to look at, you know, what the impact of these systems are going to be on everyone going forward so that we're not playing catch up.
00;19;45;29 - 00;20;18;17
Chris
And one of the huge gaps in that, right is the critique of capitalism historically been rooted in, in Marxism. And Marxism basically rests on this, fundamental pillar of people drive productivity. Labor is a human thing. But we're about to get into this moment where capital is going to become labor. A lot of this past thinking, or a lot of like the counterbalance that has been historically used, you know, for our common good or collective.
00;20;18;20 - 00;20;46;19
Chris
And, you know, you see it across all sorts of gradients. But let's just take, you know, Western European socialism as sort of like that, that right balance between free market and giving people a good role in life that's going to go away and we're going to have to come up with something new. And so, you know, the fact that you're putting forward crypto, decentralized systems, you know, collective contributions, collective ownership as one potential framework here, like that in and of itself is super valuable.
00;20;46;19 - 00;21;06;03
Derek
I appreciate that, Chris. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with what you're describing. And yeah, I was telling you guys before, I just like thank you for even reading this piece. I was, I was we were joking. But like, you know, 5 or 6 years ago when I started publishing, I guess six years, seven years ago. And I'm thinking about when I started publishing stuff about crypto and blockchains.
00;21;06;06 - 00;21;24;04
Derek
There was like, infinite leverage to kind of, you know, create signal because, like, the people are starved for information. There weren't really very many like publications. There were certainly very few newsletters. And most of the discourse was like happening on Twitter, but like it was very short form and tweets ready and, more about kind of adoption and news.
00;21;24;04 - 00;21;45;22
Derek
And whereas today, you know, publishing a 15 minute, essay on some very, like, dense topics like this, you know, like I fully expect the engagement to be quite low relative to what it used to be. And I'm just happy that, like, people read it and, like, are engaging with it. And because I think I really do think that there's some like fundamentally important questions baked in here that I'm not seeing circulated.
00;21;45;22 - 00;21;49;11
Derek
And so, yeah, thanks for reading it. Guys, appreciate that.
00;21;49;18 - 00;22;01;19
Chris
By the way, thanking your readers profusely is going to be or as someone, as someone writing a novel right now and going, man, who?
00;22;01;19 - 00;22;17;10
Derek
That it's like, dude, it's so true. It's like this, I mean, there's so much content. I can't, I mean, I'm, I, I don't know why I do this, but I'm like, I think I might be subscribed to like 50 crypto newsletters and 50 eye newsletters alone. And I'm just like, my inbox every day, and everyone's saying the same thing.
00;22;17;10 - 00;22;40;17
Derek
And there's just so I mean, there's it's completely shifted where it's like everybody's a content creator and there's so much information. Everything is so, so densely packed together in terms of timing. Even ten people reading this essay and sitting down for 15 minutes where when like the opportunity cost is like infinite, it's just, I, I do think that thinking your readers is like the, the least that we'll be able to do.
00;22;40;17 - 00;22;47;16
Derek
So I'll probably be, we'll probably see that more and more as time goes on as our, the number of people engaging with our stuff tends to zero as well.
00;22;47;21 - 00;23;21;18
Chris
And let's take a quick, quick moment to thank our listeners for listening and whatever they're doing. But yeah, that that opportunity cost of time and urgency. Right. Like so many people in our circles right now came out of 2025. They just came out of the gates absolutely storming. And there's definitely a sense in the air that like now is the moment right, both to take full advantage of like this, unlock, but also to kind of grabbed what they can because there is this uncertainty about how we're going to progress forward.
00;23;21;18 - 00;23;39;13
Chris
And I do think there's a sense that time is slipping and you got to get in there right now. And so that kind of gets us back on, topic with this essay here of like, there's a couple of ways we can we can go forward here. Right. Like this. Every man for himself, every woman for himself, cash grab.
00;23;39;19 - 00;24;06;15
Chris
Or can we get more into collective stewardship and like, shared, shared ownership, you know, through a commonweal structure in which, you know, Derek, you're pointing here as like crypto rails providing us with like that basis for, you know, a market based, still capitalist oriented, but, you know, form of collective ownership and ability to ensure a good life yourself.
00;24;06;22 - 00;24;32;01
Pri
That's a really good point, I think. I mean, that's where crypto really excels, right? It's like it actually adds the human element to the machine intelligence in many ways. Like, yes, it's kind of quantified through the capitalistic structure of holding a token or an NFT or whatever. But as part of that, it's almost just like a membership to be a part of these digital systems.
00;24;32;01 - 00;24;54;01
Pri
And, you know, sometimes that's in the context of a Dao or a meme coin or, you know, an artwork. But I think having that adds like humans at the edges of this, like machine force, that's, that's happening kind of, again, like I never really thought about it that way, but it does emphasize like the human nature of what's going to be happening with AI.
00;24;54;03 - 00;25;20;04
Pri
And everyone you know has noted to as far as like skills that are going to become more valuable. And this is also gotten a lot of blowback, I think, on Twitter and in the tech community. But like everyone in Silicon Valley now is obsessed with taste. Like the amount of people on my feed right now that are sharing, like the watches that they bought or, you know, the their grail, the profiles of, you know, what they've started.
00;25;20;07 - 00;25;38;01
Pri
It's it's like one of these things where people want to differentiate more than ever. And in a way, crypto kind of feeds into that human cultural norm that will have to exist if they if that makes sense, like to some extent that there are parallels with like the taste conversation here too.
00;25;38;03 - 00;26;11;11
Derek
Yeah, I like agree. I think something that could be fun for us to unpack over the next couple episodes is like, like taste. What are some of these other emergent, human driven, kind of like value props that will start to kind of like resurface if we're offloading a lot of if labor and intelligence and, and some of like these other ideas around what can be automated virtually and physically to kind of like design systems, what what are the things that like, we as humans start to reprioritize and tastes certainly could be one.
00;26;11;11 - 00;26;31;02
Derek
I think like maybe the way I would bucket out is like the things that I think humans will desire personally, and then the things that humans will desire socially and, and then maybe even professionally, like where how do we adapt and move forward and start to kind of like, like what do we reprioritize on those three dimensions over the coming years?
00;26;31;02 - 00;26;51;04
Derek
From a human led perspective? I think there's like a fun conversation in there. And what you're getting at with the taste stuff is that that seems to be like, you know, there's something very human about knowing what people are thinking about or flexing or buying or I think that will always persist. And so I think the taste thing feels like a tailwind on on some of this.
00;26;51;06 - 00;27;10;08
Pri
Yeah. And I tell one to taste if you think about it too, is digital art and NFTs. And like that token, that crypto token ownership part, I feel like there's always going to be a desire for people to to want to share what they, they themselves have tech. Maybe an AI will make recommendations, but, you know, we'll have maybe NFTs.
00;27;10;08 - 00;27;12;25
Pri
Are people actually curating that a bit?
00;27;12;26 - 00;27;29;26
Derek
Can I add to that? Yeah, I know a few people have already started sharing these ideas. I feel pretty strongly about it as well. I do totally agree with what you're saying here. Pre, which is like, and this is one of the reasons why I always fall back on that phrase. Networked digital objects view external dependencies. It's playing those.
00;27;29;26 - 00;27;51;20
Derek
Both of those problems are so important in concert with one another. When you think about a gigantic infrastructure and human desire to flex in a world where intelligence is going to zero, I mean, like my view is like the end of people participating on blockchains, whether that's humans directing agents or agents directing other agents to kind of like create value, maximize value on these 24, seven ledgers.
00;27;51;23 - 00;28;17;10
Derek
It's this idea of like crypto art that has no promises or product visions associated with it, where the work itself is fully realized and totally independent from any sort of external factors are going to be a huge part, as long as, like they reached that networking threshold are going to be a huge part of of how value, like where people store value and preserve value in the future.
00;28;17;15 - 00;28;39;06
Derek
Very few, I think, like collections at this point reach that that bar of being fully networked or networked in a way where like you can find an immense amount of information on web scrapes, or on chain through price history or through, like, you know, the desire not to unload these things or not sell them. Like, these are all data points that can be ingested very quickly by synthetic intelligence.
00;28;39;06 - 00;29;03;11
Derek
That networking piece, I think, you know, I'll say maybe 50,000 objects or less on Ethereum match some of that criteria. It's probably much less than that. And, and my view is like as the the total amount of participants start migrating to these ledgers for, for value preservation and value exchange. Crypto art feels just like such an Am and this tastes thing that you're bringing up.
00;29;03;17 - 00;29;20;20
Derek
Crypto art feels like such a an immense, beneficiary. Much like Bitcoin, which exhibits those same store value like properties to this whole movement. So I know this is I know some folks have really started to explore this. I should probably sit down and write another piece about this, but I am very optimistic on this idea that you're you're touching on pre I love it.
00;29;20;20 - 00;29;40;23
Pri
Love tying that. I guess one prediction I had that I didn't get to, and maybe because it's like I saw I was listening to a talk just about the contemporary art world and you know, where it's going. And a lot of the failures that were there over the past decade or so that maybe were underlying is art. True intention is really at the edges.
00;29;40;25 - 00;30;02;17
Pri
It's not necessarily like intended to be downstream of what everyone else is thinking and what's really happened, kind of as a result of the internet in some ways, is a lot of the movements and what people believe are getting translated into art form after the fact, as opposed to being the one that's really the spark for any cultural revolution.
00;30;02;17 - 00;30;31;04
Pri
It's again, downstream of that, and art has just become more identity focused as a result. Like, that's that's like the thesis. And it makes me think, like if art is downstream of the internet and that's already proven with what's happening in the, you know, traditional contemporary art world, maybe, like we actually start seeing institutional excitement and adoption around, like, digital artwork, like we've had a couple of years on the internet to really, like spend time with digital.
00;30;31;04 - 00;30;59;04
Pri
Our people are getting more introduced to it, the number of artists that have come out, I mean, again, net art and post-internet has existed now for decades, but it's really broken out a little bit more over the last five years over Covid. So maybe we start actually seeing institutional adoption since they are like the last to adopt. And so I think to that point, I think we'll see more institutional adoption of the, of digital art, particularly like the scarce objects on chain.
00;30;59;04 - 00;31;19;12
Pri
And yeah, I think again, this is like a total tangent from maybe the original point around case, but I do think it'll just be this the idea of having digital art as part of, like, your, digital identity, I think is going to be come way more mainstream. Sorry for that ramble, but maybe cut that. But I don't know if that made sense.
00;31;19;16 - 00;31;22;13
Derek
That makes sense to me. Chris, what do you think about some of the stuff?
00;31;22;16 - 00;31;47;17
Chris
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, the way you frame this as art no longer sitting at the vanguard and, you know, maybe setting the frontiers or expressing things that exist on the edges, but rather you know, the internet or, you know, network society. Taking that lead then means, you know, art's role nowadays is as a distillation of that process.
00;31;47;22 - 00;32;26;11
Chris
You know, it's almost like instead of being at the front of the pack, it's jobs now is to sit at the back of the pack and produce tasteful expressions of these conversations that are playing out in real time, which is like an interesting thing to consider. And then, you know, as we get into what leads and what lags, right, the recognition and then that taste has value and that the role of perhaps of these digital objects is really more as a, an ending note in a conversation, you know, it's a way to package it up and capture that moment, you know, as a memorial or as a marker that people can then carry forward
00;32;26;11 - 00;32;47;18
Chris
with them. It is a really interesting, you know, way of thinking about it or way of putting it, but then it will take time a to see if you know that trend line holds up and you know that that becomes more of a mainstream, recognized thing. But if it does and, you know, taste, you know, we absorb taste into the realm of things we can put dollar signs to and treat as assets.
00;32;47;18 - 00;33;09;16
Chris
Then yes, it will take time, but other people will come around to this, right? I mean, capital is is agnostic capital kind of doesn't care about where it puts itself. Capital only really cares about its job of creating or capital or producing yield or returns. And so yeah, maybe we can see an institutional greater institutional participation around this.
00;33;09;19 - 00;33;16;06
Pri
Yeah. Like actually the way that you synthesize that to those really well, but like if you just thought about that on the fly, well.
00;33;16;06 - 00;33;19;10
Chris
I pace and it helps.
00;33;19;13 - 00;33;37;22
Pri
I was like, it's like exactly what I want to say, but way more compelling, I guess. Actually, on that note, though, I mean, rodeo's had a hell of a couple weeks, particularly this past week. I feel like I saw some stat that's like almost 98% of all base NFT events were from rodeo. Have you guys been following.
00;33;37;27 - 00;33;57;11
Chris
You know, I'm happy to, like, keep missing busses because a lot of these busses end up not really arriving at destinations. And so I did see there's a big surge around rodeo. And then I did see it looks more or less like perhaps a lot of that volume was driven by the promise of an airdrop. And this is just a different delivery vehicle for meme coin.
00;33;57;14 - 00;34;14;29
Chris
And so I haven't really dropped in, checked it out. I haven't played around with rodeo yet. I'm kind of taking a wait and see position around some of the stuff, and so I'm I'm going to be super helpful here. I'll, I'll turn it over to Derek, who perhaps, maybe has used the damn thing and thought something up. So much air time.
00;34;15;02 - 00;34;44;25
Derek
And I think you're touching on Chris, like a lot of the debate that's happening right now, I think there's two camps I would say with, with, with rodeo, if, I mean, just like this is this is not a hot take. I think folks on Twitter are following on the two sides of the line. The first line is that like, you know, we've just gone through like a very brutal couple of years where like the ability to make work and sell work or the promise of crypto art for a number of crypto artists that never that hasn't manifested in or persisted in the same way that I think they would have liked, for their own
00;34;44;25 - 00;35;09;27
Derek
professional careers. The idea of kind of like minting more low cost crypto art on an L2, it seems like it's it's it's counter to the idea of like building your professional career on chain and being able to kind of like, let's say, you know, be quote unquote a serious crypto artist and potentially like, you know, the damaging ramifications of what it means to kind of engage with your art practice in that way.
00;35;10;04 - 00;35;48;16
Derek
I would say that there's, so, you know, just to set the stage, rodeo is, a very, very beautiful Instagram, feed like consumer crypto product that allows artists to create time based, low cost objects that are open, minted. It's got an abstracted payment architecture with fiat on ramping. It's got very cool and clever interaction loops, around referral fees by collectors who can partake in the upside of an object's on objects minting and very cool secondary market where, there's like these predefined denominations, to being able to buy something on the secondary without actually the UX friction of listing it in a marketplace.
00;35;48;18 - 00;36;09;06
Derek
All of this is done in a very clean and clever application. And and it's just a very fun and easy product to use. So anyway, that's, that's kind of the product. That's kind of where some of like the kind of the feedback has been on the negative side. On the positive side, I'm a big believer that like discovery is very, very tricky for 99.9% of artists.
00;36;09;09 - 00;36;26;18
Derek
We were just talking about this a few minutes ago, but like my ability to put out an an essay or an article and expect 50 people or 100 people to engage with that thoughtfully has diminished over the last seven years of me publishing these essays. Now I'm I've built somewhat of an audience, and people kind of know what to expect.
00;36;26;18 - 00;36;46;03
Derek
And like, you know, they can they just follow. I have followers and like, people subscribe to my essays. And so it's a little bit easier. But if you're somebody who's new and has something new to say and have something where you put a lot of thought into it, like more often than not, if you're starting from zero, it's very difficult for a new essay or a new piece of crypto work to get discovered.
00;36;46;03 - 00;37;10;20
Derek
And so like as the n of people engaging with crypto art basically just, flex up to tens of millions, hundreds of millions here in the future, it's going to become more and more difficult for people on the other side of that fence to kind of discover your work. Right? Like, you can imagine the content and media and art just trending up and like the ability for people to parse through and find stuff and categorize your work and, and engage with it just becomes much more difficult.
00;37;10;22 - 00;37;33;09
Derek
And I think what's interesting about the approach that rodeo is taken is they've created this very opinionated consumer product that is helping folks find their first collectors or engage with their work. At the highest clip that I've seen in a very long time. And artists are, you know, I would say it's I would say there's some serious artists who are playing with these constraints in very interesting way.
00;37;33;09 - 00;38;03;13
Derek
I'm a huge Jack butcher fan, and I mean, he's really like flipping this, these constraints upside down. And he's minting almost every day. He's changing the metadata, you know, that there's just this whole two way conversation that he's doing right now as a, as an artist with that protocol and platform that I think is just quite brilliant. But also for like the long tail of new artists, like new artists are coming in and they're able to find 500, 1015 hundred people to collect, you know, albeit like a 30 sun or 50 cent piece of work, their first collectors with how they make work.
00;38;03;15 - 00;38;27;04
Derek
And if you believe that, you can start using that as a foundation, no pun intended, to kind of convert up into your one of ones or into a smaller edition size, then as a top of funnel discovery products, rodeos, knocking it out of the park. And so, you know, there's tension, right? Because like, there's this idea that, you know, the more work you meant, the more dilutive it is to your art career.
00;38;27;07 - 00;38;43;26
Derek
The other part of it is, is, though, like I've been championing this for years, that like there is something around building these networks around yourself as an artist. I wrote that piece storing value in digital objects for a good part of it was, you know, the first half to to how value creates is like developing a network around that thing.
00;38;43;28 - 00;39;12;13
Derek
It's why real estate gets priced the way it does. It's why gold continues to persist as a $19 trillion, that it's why the Bitcoin network is probably its most established moat. Not not a technology, but the network. If you see and view rodeo as a product to allow new artists to create new networks then and like reframe that calculus a bit, then I'm like, I'm pretty optimistic that there's something here in this, like the DNA of this product.
00;39;12;15 - 00;39;38;21
Derek
Now, obviously there's going to be people who use these constraints in ways that are value destructive. But I'm optimistic that other artists will see these constraints and create something like pretty valuable or not new. And so I'm not an investor in rodeo. I'm, you know, I've chatted with Kayvon about the product, before it launched and, you know, I was quite optimistic and, and continue to kind of see some of the decisions here by artists.
00;39;38;21 - 00;39;58;12
Derek
And, you know, there's there's things I like, there's maybe things I dislike, but I would say there hasn't been a product like this in a long time in the consumer art space, the consumer crypto space. And so I don't think I'm willing to kind of just like throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I think there's lessons to be learned for a lot of folks who are who are looking at the rodeo ecosystem right now.
00;39;58;15 - 00;40;02;16
Derek
But let me let me pause there. How did has some of this resonate with you guys?
00;40;02;19 - 00;40;12;12
Pri
There's one question, because I've been on it a little bit for sure. And like I clicked through it a bit, but do you feel like it's it is like similar to the Zora product, or do you feel like it's just different?
00;40;12;12 - 00;40;33;24
Derek
Yeah, I think there's definitely similarities. I think the it's really, you know, consumer products are so difficult to build. And so the thing that I look for is like, what were the opinions on the design decisions that in the aggregate, even if on the surface, these things mapped out previous experiments, what are like those very, very specific tailored design decisions that were made that could achieve a different outcome?
00;40;33;24 - 00;41;04;07
Derek
Because at the end of the day, it doesn't take much for a behavior shift to happen. If like the the right packaging or the right Legos were put together around something different. And so, you know, without going into like what's better or what's worse, because I think there's so much similarities here. I will say, like from a product perspective and from a delivery perspective and from an incentive perspective, and some of the abstraction work that they've done around fiat on ramping in the secondary marketplace, which is really quite clever, and the referral fees that are baked into each object.
00;41;04;07 - 00;41;24;11
Derek
I think there's differentiation here that maybe is getting missed by folks without kind of like spending a ton of time on the product. Now, I also acknowledge that, like, there could be farming going on, like there could be some promise of a token. That's stuff I don't I'm not familiar with. I'm just speaking to, like, the merits of the product and how I view something like this.
00;41;24;11 - 00;41;41;20
Derek
And obviously, you know, there's going to be there's going to be folks that use this in a weird way, that or that maybe is not quite right, or folks that think that there may be some like dilutive stuff happening with their their art practice at the end of the day, like for me, crypto was all about choice. Rodeo might not be interesting for the vast majority of crypto artists.
00;41;41;20 - 00;41;50;23
Derek
That's totally fine. I just want to speak that like these. This is the debate that's happening. And this is kind of where I'm seeing artists fall on both sides of the camp. And I think there's truth in both sides.
00;41;50;26 - 00;42;11;22
Chris
There you go. Thanks. Thanks for that, Derek. I appreciate you like giving us the the open mind view of, you know, what's the potential of rodeo here. The good, the bad and the unknowns so much at this moment in time. It's just we're at a tip of like real serious uncertainty. And we do need to keep an open mind because we have no, no idea what direction is it's going to go in.
00;42;11;26 - 00;42;27;21
Chris
You know, I'm talking about the whole big picture, not not rodeo in particular. One other side of the coin here, right. You know, we talked about taste, you know, as we start getting into like this world beyond. And what are we going to do when we've got more free time. You know, we need to make sense of the world.
00;42;27;21 - 00;42;46;09
Chris
And I do think, like, meaning making is going to be another big thing. And we do see tendrils of this slipping into our, you know, networked lives. I think part of the appeal around DSI or part of why we were so excited earlier in this conversation to talk about, you know, maybe crypto is a vehicle for collective ownership, right?
00;42;46;09 - 00;43;10;06
Chris
Is like, we're going to have these meaning making opportunities jump out at us and, you know, trying to make sense of, well, what are we doing with our lives now that it, you know, potentially isn't a rat race to prove ourselves to exceptionalism. And, you know, that's like, look, we're way, way deep. And in late in this podcast, I don't want to open up a huge can of worms, but it's just another aspect of this to consider, right?
00;43;10;06 - 00;43;31;21
Chris
And for some of these artists to tie it back to rodeo, this will serve as a network formation vehicle. This will serve as a chance to be seen. And yeah, a distribution right. Who knows. Right. Like we can't we can't just look at, products or services and, and cast these huge judgments over them. But some of these things are going to work for some people.
00;43;31;21 - 00;43;44;01
Chris
Some of them won't work for other people. And, you know, and as everyone moves forward in this world, like, I don't know, it's going to be wild. And, you know, we're all going to just have to do the best we can. Yeah.
00;43;44;01 - 00;44;02;04
Pri
And like, you know, maybe it's going to have its own ecosystem like you kind of sense it on base too. Like it's like a it has its own community of people. Like you don't need that many participants to create a market. And maybe that's just like where it exists and it's an interesting product that maybe, you know, on other networks too, but similar to Zora or others.
00;44;02;11 - 00;44;25;28
Pri
I do think one thing that we do all agree on, and we talked about a lot separately, is just like the low costs and that being like a huge umbrella to create and, create community, create distribution networks, like if you're able to actually have access and you can be a participant in for further distribution. And I think from that perspective, you know, rodeo is is super compelling.
00;44;26;00 - 00;44;42;00
Pri
The one thing I like just and this is I don't wanna open a can of worms either. But like the other thing that I've been thinking about, like is this idea of like liking something equals like you minting it and having it in your wallet, like, I, I get the appeal of that. I, you know, to some extent I do like it.
00;44;42;00 - 00;45;05;02
Pri
And the other maybe it's, there's going to be like uses for that that are, that have yet to be fully like materialize. But I just it's not totally clear to me as to like whether or not that actually makes sense. And like this is coming from, you know, place of maybe it's a boomer mentality of like, I like the idea of having a few of things I really like, but yeah, I just I'm like a little skeptical on that.
00;45;05;02 - 00;45;07;10
Pri
As a concept right now, unless there's, I.
00;45;07;10 - 00;45;07;24
Chris
Hear, yeah.
00;45;07;25 - 00;45;09;11
Pri
A real use case for it.
00;45;09;15 - 00;45;23;25
Chris
I mean, everything's expanding, everything's going faster and understanding. When someone finally hits pause on the fast forward button, which of these things mattered and which of them didn't? Who knows, you know.
00;45;23;27 - 00;45;25;09
Pri
Yeah, it's so true.
00;45;25;10 - 00;45;47;18
Chris
We've lost there. Yeah, we've lost Derek. You had a half Aaron didn't make it this week. It's just you and me. I think we should probably wrap the show at this point, because I don't want to, like, open a huge can of worms. I don't want to get into meaning making or, you know, like I. In hindsight, I realized I had a big sort of confrontation with nihilism over the last couple of years.
00;45;47;18 - 00;46;05;06
Chris
And like, I think a lot of people are going to start heading into that, that sort of void. You know what? Like, I regret even mentioning it as we jump off, call, off the podcast here. But, you know, maybe that's, something for for the future. You did say we're going to keep it fun. And I wanted to end with a fun topic.
00;46;05;08 - 00;46;05;27
Pri
Nihilism.
00;46;05;27 - 00;46;06;09
Chris
There you.
00;46;06;09 - 00;46;18;16
Pri
Go. Actually, yeah. You're even early on the nihilism. I could definitely see that. You're right. I feel like now it's like the end point of acceleration ism is nihilism, which is ironic since, you know, the acceleration is, well, this. But it's funny.
00;46;18;16 - 00;46;23;06
Chris
It's not the end point three it's a chasm. That's true across the chasm.
00;46;23;08 - 00;46;23;26
Pri
That's true.
00;46;23;26 - 00;46;26;13
Chris
But it's a deep and scary one.
00;46;26;16 - 00;46;40;06
Pri
Yeah. It's there you go. On that note. Well, we'll we'll continue to talk about traits that will be valuable to us to go through the future of AI and crypto and where tech is going. But yeah, thank you guys for listening. And we'll be here next week.
00;46;40;12 - 00;46;53;15
Chris
Thank you. Yes, thank. We're going to start profusely thanking our listeners all the okay.
00;46;53;17 - 00;47;04;03
Chris
Who.