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Rin 'Rimberjack' is a Near Community legend. She is heavily in some of the most prominent projects in the Near ecosystem such as the Degens, Cheddar, Ref Finance, and Open Forest Alliance, just to name a few. In this episode we deconstruct who is Rin, an exploration of her origins story that takes us down a riveting exploration of Product and Philosophy.
People, Product and Crypto.
Wild User Interviews is about open-sourcing open-ended conversations with the creative forces shaping up the decentralised world. In the wild, our guests range from Product Designers to Blockchain Architects, and include topics such as Philosophy and Proof-of-Stake. The common thread being our focus on the human side as he try to deconstruct the frameworks and processes to enable listeners to become the better version of themselves while venturing into the Metaverse.
AVB: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Silicon Craftsmen Podcast. Oh no, that's not the name. Welcome to the Wild User Interviews podcast produced by the Silicon Craftsmen Guild from NEAR with AVB. Today we have a very special guest Rim. You probably have seen her all over the telegram, Discord every project everywhere. Cool. I think that we may, even though we have already been talking for 20 minutes, we may have a quick recap because I am not sure of the technologies are on our side today.
RIM: Yeah. Yeah. But
AVB: Yeah. Welcome Rimber
RIM: Thank you AVB. I'm very honored to be here.
AVB: No, the honor is mine.
We were just talking before the technology died upon us, that the NEAR community is really diverse. And that I personally love that over the last few weeks, we've had the chance to work with people and connect with people from literally all over the world. [00:01:00] We've got some strong pockets of people in Russia, Ukraine, viet-nam Europe, you name it. So I've heard, in a very superficial way, that Remi grew up in Korea and that she is in China now. And I think she's traveled a bit. So I was just suggesting as a starting point to get a bit of an overview of, the origin story of Rim
AVB: Yeah. So a short recap would be that I was born in South Korea. And then when I was young, around 7 to 10, I lived in the states in Virginia, and that's why I have this very American accent and then I came back to Korea. I grew up there, graduated high school then I went to university in Belgium.
This is when I started. I study English, I study philosophy. So I was in academia for about a good six years. I went to graduate school and everything until one day, my good friend Ozymandias, who I [00:02:00] studied together with, in Belgium said that NEAR is the future and us philosophy majors have a place in it, come join us. And I was like, that sounds interesting. So I said, yes and I've been here ever since, and it looks like crypto fits me.
AVB: Nice. Nice. Thanks so much for that summary. I think it's a really nice overview and it just gives me so many prompts to go into what I guess the first one would be the silliest one. would you say send to sounds can you understand me. Is it hard sometimes?
RIM: No, I feel that English accents in general, I have a good time with them, except for Scottish accents. I have a very hard time understanding Scottish people, but in general, I think your accent is completely fine. British accent. Completely fine. Yeah,
AVB: Yeah, because I can totally relate with you because I grew up in Venezuela, but I went to a bilingual school, like an American [00:03:00] school. So when I came to Australia, as a young adult everyone was like, oh, your accent is so American. They would mock me. And I think that over time, the accent has become a little bit more Australian and it's not like super Australian or super strong, but sometimes people do say dude, talk a little bit slower.
Or can you like modulate it a little bit more? So I'm a little bit self-conscious with his
podcast of, you know, speaking slow to make sure that everyone can understand.
RIM: I, because I, when we first spoke when I first heard you speak, I really thought you had a very articulate, very problematic, not problematic, but very clear English accent. I had never had a problem with your standing you
AVB: Well, thank you. On problematic, if that is the threshold, I pass it
now. That's awesome. Welcome back to the first time that we met, I guess in person quote unquote, which is more over a call. I'm really interested with, I mean, [00:04:00] once again, I guess it, everything that I do and see and engage with, I see it through multiple lenses. So my first set of lenses is as a Venezuelan
I grew up in Venezuela. It is embedded within me. There is so much in growing up in a country, going through so much rapid change that just defines how you see the world. And then I see everything through my Australian lenses, same. I came here as a young adult. Undergraduate education here, my professional life here, and I guess my third set of lenses or for whatever would be, some as a lawyer, although not really because that is exhausting and makes me want to die. But the current one and the most important one is through like Product and User Experience and just trying to understand things to the core, especially reframing problems as an opportunity, trying to understand people's motivations. So I'm really intrigued when [00:05:00] I come across people from all the countries, especially if they have traveled around the world, what their motivations or reasons were to travel initially.
And yeah, I guess, experience I've had in different places where they see themselves in the future.
RIM: Yeah, I think you and I may have some common ground in terms of why we both have switched countries, so to speak. And this is completely an assumption, but I ran away from Korea basically because as a child and as a teenager, I hated it. I hated it. I hated living in Korea because. The education system is too competitive.
It's too monolithic. And it was just not, I just didn't vibe with it to be very, to put it very simply. And that's why I wanted to leave Korea as soon as possible. And I didn't, I couldn't find the venue ever since returning to the states to leave Korea until I decided to go to university. And that's why [00:06:00] I left Korea and I went to Belgium.
So I was in Belgium for three to four years. And then I would watch during my studies, I discover Chinese philosophy because in Belgium, it's basically just Western philosophy. And then I learned that the roots kind of this Asian route that I denied maybe, or had forgotten about it came back to me. I rediscovered Chinese philosophy stuff in Asian culture as something up for Sophos interest.
And then that's what led me to study in China. And that's why I'm in Shanghai right now.
AVB: That's amazing. I mean, there is certainly an overlap, but I think it is just to clarify to the listeners, when we say that we have something in common, it's not specific about the circumstances. I think that we would have to take it one layer above and I would define it because I can relate with you.
But the way that I would define it is not feeling like you [00:07:00] belong in the context of the circumstances surrounding you, which can be loosely defined as a country. My experience growing up in Venezuela was really interesting because there was a lot of, like social, political and economic change. But in many ways I saw that, all the rapid series of changes and I saw that as a test on society and, the majority quote unquote signaling, whether it wanted the country to go and why and what they didn't value. And I realized very quickly, especially when I was a teenager and I could see the rapid decline of society and the economy. The things that were rewarded in that country were not honest work and there were no intellectual rigor. So I was like, look, I am a geek learning. I enjoy working with people without fucking them over for money. I decided to try my luck elsewhere. It's interesting because [00:08:00] when I came to Australia, I started studying law because I thought that was not only an honest endeavor first round assumption, but I thought that law is also like the most impactful, career or profession that I could have. When I visit later on, I realized that was also incorrect. Lawyers are just hired guns. You have a client that you want the scent of. But Yeah. the common scene, it would be, traveling around the world, trying to find where you belong and where you want to contribute. I love that you reconnected with some of those, like Asian roots through Chinese philosophy.
I love to learn a bit more about the difference between Chinese and Western philosophies. But just before we dive into that, I think that is one of the common themes. I mean, this is only the second episode, but I suspect that it's going to keep coming up more and more because I keep seeing the pattern everywhere and these, the value of having opt in systems, if you grow up in a society and everything [00:09:00] is monolithic and a standardized and nobody values what they have. There may be some issues there, but when you have the chance to step out and really gain a different perspective of things and learn about topics more widely, then you can opt back in and you really value what you learn. And I think even with religion, there's, an interesting like rediscovery process now, especially in tech people, it could be through like, like stoicism or Buddhism, like it doesn't have to be religion in a super traditional sense, but a thing that a lot of people take a step back and they were very agnostic for a bit.
And now they're rediscovering their own spirituality in different ways.
RIM: I completely resonate. And I think what you say makes a lot of sense for me, and it's very special because this is the same theme and same realization that I would come back to over and over again, [00:10:00] throughout my years, studying philosophy, you, the idea philosophy, critical reflection necessarily implies a certain distancing from your own position and from your own perspective.
And that's exactly the common theme that you mentioned is probably going to come up in the future episodes as well. That what unites us together.
AVM: Yeah.
And I think that you've ended at an interesting area, which is people's perception of philosophy from the outside, if they've never experienced it. And I think correct me if I'm wrong, but most people would think of philosophy as a stoner looking out a window, off the tree.
RIM: Well, as much cooler than we actually are. That's what you're saying.
AVM: It is a lifestyle. And the thing is, it leads us in a really nice, safe way, where we dropped off in the first half of the episode, would [00:11:00] you think we lost due to poor technology about, philosophy really has had a big role in technology. And I think that is going to grow. Reed Hoffman recently had a two part series actually in the gray lock podcast series where he was discussing his experience as an Oxford masters philosophy graduate. And I think Peter Teal also has philosophy called studies and it was actually fascinating. How, if you look at the arc of humanity, it's interesting to help philosophy using your brain, to put it bluntly is always the beginning of the process. It's the beginning of a journey.
And as we engage in those cycles repeatedly over time, we start to yield results. And I think that those results manifest themselves in a real physical way as
technology. And that's why I think, and this is not just me, read also [00:12:00] says this.
So some people may say that I'm plagiarizing him. That's, uh, where it becomes so dangerous to have technology for technology's sake or to lose direction of where we come from as a society, the human traits and where we're going. And just before I let you in, I think that very loosely, that is a lot of the efforts that were taking burst Silicon craftsman Guild, the product, the new user experience, because I am on a mission to bring more creative problem solvers into the space, already be in the product and the science space more formally, but they may not be. So maybe we should include philosophers, let's set ourselves a plan to get more philosophers.
RIM: I mean, I'm pretty biased. So I would say yes.
AVB: Well, thank you. Yeah, it's a wildly different topic, but in terms of diversity and [00:13:00] inclusion, I think that they need to be, all sorts of efforts and initiatives identifying where they may be needed. But I think that the city of ideas and live experiences, it's what 's most important. So yeah, philosophers were certainly underrepresented I feel.
AVB: Yeah, I mean, I would really encourage finding philosophers or encouraging philosophers to join, whatever it is that we are doing here at this space, because if you really put it down to its bare essence, philosophy is thinking and you really need thinkers in whatever you do, right?
Especially if you're designing a new frontier, designing a new space that has been unimagined before that hopefully millions of people will adopt and you need thinkers and really good thinkers with a lot of experience. And I think philosophers in that regard would have [00:14:00] a nice fit. And conversely, the reason that I find crypto so exciting and galvanizing is because it really quenches a thirst that I had that I could never fulfill in academia.
So I always thought, and the kind of waspy that I did was that philosophy had to be towards life and that's reflected in all the philosophers. I love Nisha spinosa Schwan's aloud. And I can never realize it in academia, just because of how academia is now an industry. I have to produce a certain amount of writing content, participate in conferences.
It's all about your credentials and what you can write on your resume rather than where you can really create impact. So if you bring philosophers into a space like crypto or blockchain, they really can do something in which what they do has value and can actually make contributions. And I think a lot of philosophers really would want it, even if they don't realize it [00:15:00] because I definitely was so quenched when I came into the crypto space and people were influenced and affected, by what I did.
AVM: That's amazing. Well, often we just have to get a really good dealer and yeah, free brownies. I think it's fascinating. I mean, there's so many avenues that we can go down, but I've got an idea from yesterday's podcast, I actually hashed out a couple of ideas with the guests, with Ali. And we actually come up with some amazing ideas, which you want to be sharing to get more input from the community.
But I think we have some actionable points, so no pressure, but the idea which I think could yield something really interesting from this podcast.
First, I would love to hear about your favorite philosopher and how it's [00:16:00] influenced
you or, what do you find most valuable
about?
RIM: Okay. Should I start now?
AVM: Yes, please.
RIM: It's really hard to pick your favorite, but I would say I have a very strong attachment to fruity Nisha, I think because he's the one that really initiated me into philosophy. And I think more than anything, it was just the resonance between our energies or perspective on life. I think I was at a very troubled age when I was a teenager.
And then someone gave me this Nietzsche book, Twilight of the idols and also an anti-Christ and I read it and just the spirit really spoke to me and I thought, oh, this is what I wanted to, I want to be someone who's able to critically read, evaluate the given values of society and also create values and that being my own power and on top of it, I just really love it.[00:17:00]
The spirit that nature represents, which is the affirmation of life. And that's really who I am in essence. I'm a lover of life with both it's light and shadow. So I would say niche is definitely my number one philosopher for those reasons.
AVB: That's really interesting. Let's make sure that you send me the name of the books so I can add them to both my personal reading list and the show notes for this episode. Well I think it is not a coincidence that Reed Hoffman also describes niche issue. I mean, you should just straight A's in university just by it being able to say his name. Yeah.
I can't, uh, but you know, he also describes him as one of the most influential both to him and he would commence his readings to a lot of entrepreneurs. I think it has to do with. Creating those mental models.
And we'll dive deeper into mental models in a bit, but Reid Hoffman goes as far as referring [00:18:00] to Nisha as that patron philosopher for entrepreneurs. And I'll do some research because I think there is an actual book called the patron philosopher for entrepreneurship or something, which has a series of, I guess like guiding principles, maybe some obstructions of the original thoughts in how that can be applied towards becoming a better entrepreneur. I think if we double click on the mental model speed, I love it. Because when you look at technology, I think that there is a similar sort of like cycle. You have people that are learning how to engage with computers and computers are amazing because they're like close to ecosystems. We remove all the insane variability and unpredictability of engaging with humans with the open world. And we keep writing out commands and code that executes as we tell it to. And it's easier to improve [00:19:00] in that sense. So once people have hacked these insane systems at scale, At some point, they start looking inwards. And the two trends that have noticed, which I tap into lightly are, biohacking, people start creating parallels between a computer as a machine and the human body. And the such realize that, the human body is also a closed ecosystem and there's a lot of processes, which we understand. And if you can control inputs you may be able to control outputs and improve performance. So that is an area that I'm super interested in. I've done a bunch of stuff in that area.
It's become a bit of a meme, it seems to work, the intermittent fasting
and low carb, high fat, those, I can tell you everything about it. If you're interested.
RIM: I'm a big fan of intermittent fasting, so we can go on for hours about.
AVB: Oh, what? We'll come back to that one. It's [00:20:00] definitely a lot to unpack there. And the second trend is around mental models. Especially I've seen a lot of people on the technical side engineering and computer science, et cetera, that they feel like, they're always a very smart people and they've been able to go really deep into all these sciences, but they feel like they have an unexplored mind and a lot of material and very popular content. Things like the knowledge project by Shane Parrish. It is literally a podcast about mental models and deconstruction decision-making and you how to engage with the wilderness of the mind. So I think that there's definitely a lot of value. Not only that philosophers could bring to the space that philosophy could bring to everyday operators. Would you agree?
RIM: Oh hundred percent. [00:21:00] Something that I always get stuck on from my earlier days on philosophy is Hannah RN is one of the more influential people in my life and sometimes, the way she describes thinking and its relation to action is that thinking is always a stop and think. And that there is a certain opposition between pure acting, being in the world and thinking, especially in terms of philosophy.
And I think in the end, you always want both. You never want just one and you always need both. So in this space, whether that's biohacking, whether that's crypto, whether that's entrepreneurship, you want really good thinking, really good reflection. Okay. And that kind of has to go when you stop, I'm doing and then just take a step back and look at it.
That's when you can think, and I think you always need that and you don't just need that in a [00:22:00] philosophers division of labor philosophers to do the thinking for the rest of us. I think everyone should be doing unhealthy amounts of thinking. That's just my general stance towards these things.
AVB: I mean as a very broad proposition, the more people we have thinking the better for sure. I love that you bring this up because I feel like there is constant tension in this space. So you may have heard that, in tech circles, people talk about maximizing optionality. They always want to be able to move from project to project or to change their mind. No one wants to be locked in. And I think that if we take one step back, we want to maximize optionality in the tech spaces, as opposed to my friends working as consultants or accountants or lawyers that are happy to have the same career for many years. And I think that it comes down to having what we may describe loosely as a founder mindset, founder [00:23:00] mindset and philosopher mindset of critical thinking are the same. You assess the world, you are a non-conformist, you reframe problems as opportunities, and you want to have the freedom to act upon those opportunities. So I think that if you look at that founder mindset, it is amazing but you can see how in the journey of an entrepreneur, that mindset only really applies either to a very small subsection of people, namely actual founders or the journey.
So I'll give you an example with the NEAR ecosystem now, at what point do we have the founder mindset and we are out there innovating and creating amazing products and what stuff? And at what point do we transition into becoming operators where Workday goes to the daily workload, which is ever increasing of just keeping the machine going,
but you're keeping the machine going in the same direction. [00:24:00] And if everyone is busy in their daily lives just keeping the machine going. Well, who is taking the time to stop and reassess whether the machine is going in the right direction. Sorry, I got a little dramatic, but.
RIM: That's such a super, that's a really interesting way to put things and the first part. So I want to explain why I find it so interesting because the way that you characterized the founder mindset really just sounded like the plot of Plato's Republic. So you have this idea of the philosopher king and a very small few being able to be that and the philosopher king being this founder of a society in order to be the most rational and most enlightened animals functioning.
But this aspect is really interesting now that we transitioned into kind of a crypto a decentralized model because in the Republic you never talk about, okay, you had the philosopher king. And, but now we want to decentralize that [00:25:00] was never an option that was never on the horizon. Now we have that, you have the founder quote, unquote, founder of NEAR, but we want to decentralize it. We want to transition into a more ecosystem community-based governance. I think this kind of paradigm shift in a way is super fascinating. That kind of really made it hit for me the way that you described it.
AVB: Are we referring about daddy Yulia?
RIM: Yeah.
AVB: Oh yes. Well, look, this is something that, I mean, there's so much there. The first thing I said we have to acknowledge that everything that is being done in crypto at the moment is very new.
So the notion of decentralization, we're exploring what it means. Decentralized because even if you look at NEAR something like treasury and handing out money sure decentralized. Why because if you [00:26:00] have a bottleneck or a centralized point of command you may run into issues of money not being dispersed fast enough or not being dispersed into certain kinds of industries or verticals that the core team doesn't know about or doesn't care like even just corruption, so there were some things that more people having access through, or at least having a say in help, but realistically let's be honest another thing, we shouldn't be decentralizing the core tech stack that very few people are at the level of execution and knowledge as Eylea maybe, or the people in the core team. So I think that we're navigating that, and we're both sitting in the rift owl, and we're starting to see the challenges of decentralized governance, because there is a big parallel with the real world here, everyone Wants to govern. Everyone wants power. Everyone wants status. Not many people want to execute. Not many people are able to execute. It is a [00:27:00] fine line to navigate and an interesting challenge to solve ahead
RIM: Yeah. I mean, I remember way, way back when, in my undergrad years when Michael and I were cramming for finals together and whatnot, Michael and I we're cramming for finals now. And then, and he already, this was back in 2017.
AVB: identity.
RIM: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. 2016. Okay. You know what? I'll let Ozzy in the next podcast, he can just reveal my birth date. I'll give him that since I revealed his name.
AVB: Well, the way that I would describe pseudonymity is we don't need to know your birth date. We just need to know what your star is and that’s fine.
RIM: I'm a Leo, if that matters.
Rin: Well, [00:28:00] God I'm taking notes. Okay. Well, if you already know I'm a Gemini clearly.
AVB: Get back to my original points. Ozzie and I were studying for finals and already back in 2017, 16, he was thinking about blockchain and how he can utilize blockchain technology into something bigger, something greater, a fundamental motivator of a driver of change in the real world. And he gave me some resources because he was thinking about starting a company.
And the ideas of decentralization really resonated with me at the time, or it was really intriguing at the time because I was reading a lot of to lose and to lose is like the post-modern father of postmodern philosophy. And he talks a lot about deterritorialized. And it has these similar notes and something that he talks about detailed T territorial ization is that there is never absolute detailed realization.
There are always pockets of territory realization. While [00:29:00] in general, we are detailed trouble realizing, and I that's the way that I understand these centralized the citation as well. It's not that there aren't any centralization. Of course there has to be centralization there can't be just pure decentralization that would make no sense from a, both from theoretical, but also practical standpoint.
So you have these rather than the idea is that you don't have a central authority, a singular source of power. That you have brother pockets or little locuses of power. And I think that's the kind of model that NIR is really trying out with this roughed out with the cheddar down, all of these different Dallas, that's the kind of experiment that we're engaging with.
AVB: You've put it beautifully. And I like it that we brilliant minds think alike because when I mentioned, that founder mindset. To go specific. This is not specific to NEAR but we can provide [00:30:00] specific samples through NEAR when I questioned. Okay. So who has the time on the day to stop and think about the direction of the machine if everyone is busy doing things, and that's where I think that you and I come in because we're members of the community where we chose to start our own initiatives. And we have, as far as I'm concerned, total discretion on where we're going. And you have a direct line of communication within the NEAR foundation.
I'd like to think we have some sort of an influence, at least you have a budget. And I think that is very powerful. I think it's an example of the ecosystem growing in a way where I think as you have brilliantly captured in a way that sounded really smart, you've got pockets of deep territorialization and I think we should defend that and we should protect that.
And I really hope that audiences, anything in these podcasts that gets me canceled, because I think that we via ability to explore topics and [00:31:00] see anything as criticism or some people may say on telegram or discord server shitting on someone. I see it as trying to bring out a better version of things and better versions of people. Yeah, these lasers really nicely into the core topic of the evening so I'm going to start with tying in something you mentioned about your experience in academia and the way that it has become an industry that only serves itself. Those were not your words. I think I'm summarizing a part of the sound criticisms from a lot of academics. And I think that if there were to translate that into the more taking world, or I guess put that in the context of the tech world and more specifically crypto what I love is. Ni, we live in a unique time in history where we're able to take [00:32:00] all the fieries the most, app and God and complex, and you name theories, but we're going to actually put them to practice in real world ecosystems in crypto.
And this is not just in the area of philosophy and governance. This is behavioral Science. This is economics, this is technological frameworks. Like I just found it fascinating that even if you were to release an NFT game, you can build in so much theory into the way that the game works and you release it to the world and real people engaging with it. How was it? Okay. I guess, I left that halfway through now, I guess I was trying to find the best way to frame the question, but I was wondering what your experience has been in that transition from academia to seeing, putting things into action or packaging them in a way that are more actionable, whether they [00:33:00] succeed or fail, you get an outcome,
AVB: Yeah, I mean, we just discussed this kind of Inevitable opposition between theory and action. And it's what I love. And my experience is reflective of that. That the necessarily you have to cut your thinking short at some point, because you have to act and you have to act now where there's a set deadline.
And I think on a more personal level, moving from academia to this kind of crypto action oriented field puts me in a position where I just have to let go of a lot of ego actually, that I want to be able to think through everything. I want to be able to clarify and organize everything before we make the best possible choice.
Actually, the most reasonable thing is you learn as you go, and then you hope that you don't fuck up, right? You just hope that you don't do the worst possible scenario. [00:34:00] And I think that's the kind of wisdom that you earn when you're in such a fast moving action packed industry,
AVB: I wonder how many people have the avoid fuck ups in their mindset at any one point nobody's been very high, but it's okay. We're still learning.
RIM: you picking up on, you mentioned these NFTs, you can come out with an NFT game and then you can also
Rin: Okay.
AVB: reprogram it to program it with a bunch of other things that you want to apply that you've only thought about in theory. And that's really interesting. I mean, I don't have much to say on the state of things because I still feel that I'm fairly new, but I would say it's really interesting to see on the one hand, you talk about mental models, you talk about biohacking.
A lot of the things that you could talk about on a different language in philosophy, but they're the same concepts that you can talk about in a different [00:35:00] technical or biological language. So I love discovering those similarities or lines of thought and then thinking, oh, what can I do with this?
You know what I learned back then I can apply to this scenario, and also at the same time, it's super exciting because everything that I learned about merely in theory and only had hypothetical scenarios for I can actually implement it and actually see how it plays out in reality. I mean, that comes with its own heavy possible fences too because you are dealing with people's money, people's assets and time and autonomy.But it is also very exciting as much as it is a challenge.
AVB: I guess I'll start from the end. It's interesting that you mentioned money because I think that even that aspect, which is a barrier in the real world to test things out, to engage with people in crypto, we created magic money. We issue our own tokens. [00:36:00] We make up our own returns like it. Once again, it's just unique in its ability to play with all these concepts that you can apply in the real world. But you can, I guess, validate or start to play around in this ecosystem. Now, I just want to really briefly because I made a note here, but I forgot to say it. I think we were discussing decentralization. I think that a framework that I really like is thinking of the centralization as removing any one party's ability to behave in a way that is a true mental tool.
And when you think about it in crypto, and I think this is where a lot of people get confuse especially maybe some of the newer interests, I've been in crypto since 2013, active since 20 16, 20 17, the ultimate level of decentralization is what I called parallel innovation. If you see a project and you don't like what they're doing, or you [00:37:00] don't like the way that the project is going, obviously there's levels of complexity, but to a very high degree you can just fork the code and deploy your own version, or, you know, build something very similar, borrowing on, components like compostability and for capability. It's a huge component.
So I think that. Crypto being open source immediately. Well, most of it being open sourced immediately said to the part from both standards technology and from the real world, I mean, I come from the law and it is fascinating how all the laws are technically free. They're available online, going by the little printed books with all the laws and all the judicial cases are available for free because, it's the law it's meant to be available for everyone, but the legal industry has built barriers around it and they charge you $700-$800 to get advice on it. So I do think [00:38:00] that once again crypto release is moving us forward in oversharing, code that is open source means it is public. I can't believe that we're in a this within the NEAR foundation team. Like I've had DMS, like it's amazing. So that was on the decentralization front. I don't know if you want to add anything to that conceptual notion of decentralization as problems in the nation.
RIM: Yeah. I don't have much to say about parallel innovation. I think that's why it's so new, right? This idea of decentralization, it's new for us, but it's new just in general. And that's why people, when something gets forked, they feel intuitively, oh, this is illegal, but you can't do that.
You can't just fork my code and start something the same with a different front end. But you can't because it's open source. And I think this kind of parent, it was just so much of crypto and blockchain [00:39:00] requires a paradigm shift. And I would say on the other hand, because it's open source because it's decentralized, you have this bonus, like you just mentioned that we were wearing the disc for channel with NEAR foundation. There is a certain direct channel. There's a direct mode of communication between the user who actually adopts the space and the creator, whether that's a builder or an artist, or, a foundation person. And I think that kind of directness straight-forwardness is really a great merit.
And I think a lot of what you mentioned that we both identify as problems in the traditional space, whether that's the legal industry or the financial industry, these are all coming down, in, within the crypto space. And that's amazing. It's amazing that we can just have this sphere where we're trying these new things out, like a sandbox in reality
AVB: A hundred percent. I mean, this is a very specific [00:40:00] example where I can give you my three perceptions or takeaways from the different lenses that I view the world. So, I can give you as an advanced felon as a product person and as a legal person.
And hopefully for people listening at home, that we have no idea which, they may fall into. There are some insights and actionable takeaways in either one. So as a Venezuelan, these would basically apply to anyone anywhere in the world. The first area of opportunity that I see in this decentralized Powell innovation world is that we are so early that there is massive opportunity in seeing what is being done in crypto broadly, and then creating more regional versions of it. And this is simple as creating a separate frontend that caters for your people in your language for whatever the case may be. And you plug into an [00:41:00] existing smart contract. So we're not even talking about forking something although you could see there is opportunity. Obviously you can also collaborate with the core team and there's basically endless opportunities in a hyper regional way, especially in countries with very acute problems with corruption or access to whatever maybe you can really build upon what already exists, not from the second perspective, from a product perspective. It's fascinating how in the traditional tech world, you think about a molt, a moment as something that protects your company or your idea, what makes us unique? What makes us special. And a lot of that is your technology or that you build a barrier around it.
You own the data or, the way that the systems talk to each other, you have an advantage over all the people. Most of the things go away encrypted, the data is all [00:42:00] out there or owned by the user. The systems are all compostable. They talk to each other, you can't really stop that. So from a product perspective this is why the Guild exists and why I am so intense about bringing the product user Experience focus to the space because you need to be obsessed with the centric. You need to think about their experience and make it so that the experience is so good. They don't really think about going anywhere else, even better.
Your experience is so good that no one else is thinking about building something better than you. We're entering into a hyper competitive stage right now. It is not happening because there's not enough talent in the space. There's not enough developers. And most importantly, there's not enough product people, but as more product people like myself and others that I'm joining ranks with start joining the space.
The first thing they say is, this is fucking shit. It looks [00:43:00] horrible. No one can use this. You bring two or three minds to any project you can make it 10 times better and that's without even touching the backend. That's just making the front end look better. I think that from a product perspective, we're going to see insane improvement over the next 18 months. And then the final one, which I want to be super brief because once again I used to charge a lot of money for these and it still made me very unhappy. The legal aspect of decentralization it’s crazy. It's getting crazy. What happens if you write the code, but You don't deploy it and somebody else deployed it and somebody else is running it. Somebody else who we don't know is running it with a different frontend, like it's going to get really interesting. I don't want to go down that one. This is not the legal Guild. There is a legal guild for those interested, please go join them. Nope. I have two proposals because we're running into the 47 minute mark. I don't [00:44:00] know how your timing is. So I absolutely love this conversation. I knew we were going to have a good conversation because from what I've learned about you so far, I know that you were amazing and we've got so many things in common, but this has got in ways it was completely not expecting and you've exceeded my expectations, tenfold. I guess a lead up to my proposal, I think that there are a lot of commonalities between philosophy and product. I would very briefly describe philosophy as being the more pure, the more intellectual and product being a bit more applied to a specific endeavor and more actionable frameworks because you know, we need to get things done within a certain timeframe. So really briefly I'd be interested to know before the Guild was created. And before I started harassing people online, what’s your experience with Product has been whether you're interested, some of the perceptions, [00:45:00] misconceptions, things that you would like to learn. Yeah. I'd like to get your insights on that because obviously I take that as feedback.
RIM: You mean NEAR Product or just Product general
AVB: We can start with Product in general. And then if you have any specific insights, and I know that you're working on a specific Guild, maybe we can segue into that. What your experience has been setting something up in collaborating with people across all the projects. You can go any direction that you want, but yeah, let's start with Product in general.
RIM: So I would say, okay, for me, Product in general and thoughts on NEAR Products, they would go hand in hand because we talked about distancing just shortly before. You always have to be out of your original position to really be able to understand what it was. You never realized what it is when you're in it.
And I think that a lot of web2 users will experience the same thing that I did, which is that when you move into the web3 blockchain crypto sphere, [00:46:00] Everything you take for granted in web two, in terms of UX and UI, you can't take for granted here, right? You were just getting that conversation started about actually hearing about UX and UI.
And part of what really got me hooked into NEAR was that people like you, the mission statement of NEAR is what you represent with your guild is that it has to be usable. It has to actually have the usability that web2 offers. If blockchain is actually going to be the new frontier that we say it's going to be.
And my idea, my kind of experience thus far has come to the conclusion that yeah. This is something that we can take for granted, but we do because we are so used to it in the traditional web2 sphere, that things are easy to use, that you can sign in with anything with your one Google account that you have apps within a certain with it that you can access with your [00:47:00] single account.
All of these things are taken for granted and you actually have to care and you actually have to put in the effort within web suite to make that happen. Because if you don't build it, no one else is going to, I mean, they will, once you do, but if you don't take the initiative. It's just, it's not a given.
So that's really what I love about NEAR. That they care about user experience. They care about usability, about being friendly and being easy to access. And I also really appreciate that your Guild is dedicated to that because I think also when we look, we have conversations with developers.
We have conversations with people who run these projects and unfortunately user experience does often come last in consideration because you have to build the thing first, right? That's your priority. So you have to have people like yourself that consistently insist that this has to be taken care of or [00:48:00] else we will not survive at the speed.
AVB: Well, there's a few things there. The first one is, there's basically two very different markets. There is the existing crypto market. And then there is a potential decentralized market made up of mostly people who are not currently in the market. So with the existing crypto market, it's a tough battle because most of these people are very interested in protocols.
And once again, I think that the level of insight from the NEAR team is so high, that they understand how deeply invested people are, the protocols, and this is not just financially, they're deeply invested because they built. it doesn't matter about the experiences for the user. It has taken every mock quite a lot of work and effort to build the technical layer that we have now. And they're never just going to dump all that. [00:49:00] So a thing is that the efforts that we have with Aurora really collaborating with the Furion community and enabling their theorem community to expand and to continue with a very done that is brilliant.
For the other communities I’m not very hopeful that we're going to get many converts because I think that other communities are also lacking the product focus. And if they are willing to accept a crypto experience with this, which is clunky, you've got weird addresses and you have to prove things 17 times and security is questionable then NEAR is not going to be appealing to them.
We have seen people that fall in love with NEAR immediately. Those are the people who care about one Product. I love the way that you defined it, it's actually fascinating to me because it is very intuitive. You define [00:50:00] product as what the user experiences and I guess the two definitions for product, your intuitive assessment of it, which is objective. It's what you can see on the stream and what you can actually do. But I guess there is like the inner core of the definition. Which is what I'm trying to bring forward. So the Guild, which heart, old mental models and processes and frameworks and practices enable the creation of that good product experience. So you can see how at the moment we're basically wedged right in the middle. NEAR has built a tech stack that enables you to build really good Products but I feel like a lot of the operators in the space because they're very small teams, they're mostly founder led. Most of the founders are technical. They may not have the best know-how to implement that product, or they may be lacking some of the talents. Maybe they need a designer. If you [00:51:00] look at the main base, I mean basis, the Tech for example, that technical stack is remarkable and they've created insane assets for the ecosystem that are going to create clinic's growth. They've got NEAR.JS and a bunch of other things. Their website looks a little bit shit and their latest hire. Was it? Yeah.
RIM: wow.
AVB: I love them. And they know they're getting a designer, If you're not embarrassed with your first, even not embarrassed of your first product, you shipped too late. They did the heavy lifting first and now they're bringing in a designer. I think that sort of arc is Coleman and crypto. And I guess that if there is anything that we can do to accelerate the product and design space, we'd love to do it. Now, what the proposal is heading is I've learned a ton of speaking with a proper philosopher. I love it. That I've learned a lot from this conversation, [00:52:00] but it's a kind of learning where you get a new concept in a new area, like philosophy and you're immediately able to make a bunch of connections with other industries, or I guess other areas, product life, these that in you end up with a very interconnected reach web of concepts. So I've got a two part proposal for you. I know that we're both mad busy, so a new project is fully the last thing in our minds.
So this is going to be. It is aimed to be a very light proposal. Okay. I don't want to scare you off. How would you organize?
RIM: No, I was just saying that this buildup was scaring,
AVB: So the first idea is how would you like for us to be a little bit unconventional and [00:53:00] really push the boundaries and organize one, maybe two workshops to the Guild on philosophy. And, we can do it as a panel. You can present some things and then I couldn't bring you like a product perspective and maybe we can have an operator. We can think of any combination that we think may be more interesting to a wider audience. What I would definitely like to find a way to introduce some of these ways of thinking. And even if it's just to get people to connect at a conversation that it's not all purely technical, I think they could be even humans valuing that as well.
RIM: I would love that I would absolutely love to do something like that. Yes.
AVB: Yay. I love it. So we've got one from proposal approved. Hopefully we may even be able to rope Ozzie.
RIM: Yes, he would love to.
AVB: I can actually see him as the [00:54:00] philosopher king. I wonder if that's where his obsession with Kings come from. And now the second one is more of an open invitation to be actively involved. So one of the challenges that we have with the Guild as in, the problem that we have set to solve, our definition of done, if we're successful is to help people build better products, but that's there's so much you can do.
But that's very vague. So what we see as required to help us achieve that mission is bring more people into the ecosystem. So we're thinking of how we can create pathways where people to go from? I am very smart. I have a lot of experience. I'm very ambitious. I'm motivated. I know that I can add value. I just don't know where the fuck to start? How can we go from that to, fully functional place within a team or starting your own podcast [00:55:00] And then on the other hand, I think that there's also the learning path that may be more like industry specific. And this is both in product and in technology.
So how can we create pathways for us to present these product frameworks and practices in a way that makes sense and it's easy to digest. And also how can we showcase the technology in your house? When we say that NEAR has a stack that allows you to build great user experience, what do we mean?
How does it look like in practice? So to bring it all together, we're thinking of creating these kinds of like a cohort based pathways where we can use open challenge. I'll give you a specific example. We're thinking of creating like a hacker Barry hacker. Barry's going to be, we get a group of people and the challenges, is very club has been very successful.
It's also been very controversial because the board is not big enough and [00:56:00] the economic incentive per force. There's a lot of feedback that you can gather through the very club channel in these courts. So the challenge will be okay, well, let's get a bunch of people. Run through the Design thinking workshops, ideation, prototyping, and then we document how you go from nothing to forking the coach, spinning up a new frontend, et cetera. How does that sound?
RIM: Well, that's all super interesting. I think, I mean, I don't know the project operator developer side of things, but it seems like they're probably overloaded with work rate. They don't have the bandwidth to do any of these things. So if a group of people came up and offered the time and resources to go through these kinds of models and scenarios, I think that'd be really great. Maybe I think a lot of them could potentially welcome that kind of initiative.
AVB: Well, the open invitation is for you to be [00:57:00] an active part of it, but it's because we really appreciate your input, but also because you're so active with so many groups around the ecosystem, we're both in the rift out council you're providing feedback to chat are off. It goes, which by the way, lives us to the last, but most important topic you have recently had a bit of an upgrade. That's another word you've recently been promoted. Oh my God, this is something worse. Have recently had the opportunity to double down in an area that I guess. It's very dear and close to you. And I think that they can have a very big impact. So if you can just give it a bit of a spiel on what the latest project is, what we can expect and what you guys are looking for, you have anyone listening here is able to lend a helping hand
RIM: [00:58:00] Yeah. I mean, I'm really thankful for this conversation because I think it laid out if anyone made it to these, the end of this episode, I think the kind of tone of the conversation we had is probably the tone if they are attracted to this tone, that's the kind of people that I would love to have conversations with.
On port for this project and the project name is open for X protocol. So this is another project that actually does basically his baby. And he asked me to join him full time as a community developer. And the idea of the project is we're built on near. So we're basically an Alto and this, we provide a blockchain platform in order to measure, record and verify for us data.
So this decade has been named the decade of Ecosystem for Restoration. And that means basically, whether through planting trees or conserving afforestation, we need to [00:59:00] restore the ecosystem in order to meet net zero target of 2050. We're just slow it down climate change altogether.
And that's the kind of technological solution that we want to offer to the forestation industry. First, a lot of the times the forestation industry is faced with lack of transparency, a lack of standardization when it comes to measurement recording of verification and because we know blockchain, these are elements that can be solved very naturally through the blockchain because it allows a public and immutable and transparent record of data.
So the first foundation, and just now we announced that we are officially going live. This pressure project is happening. The first foundation that we're doing is through blockchain. And through crypto incentives, we are streamlining a data system for forestation projects. And then I think what is [01:00:00] super exciting, and this is not anything in the near term.
It's very long term. What's super exciting is that all of this data that we record through the reforestation or afforestation projects, they very easily lend themselves to carbon credit data. So you have all of this great data on blockchain. And then later, perhaps through a DAO vote, we can decide let's start generating onchain carbon credits, and that would solve a lot of the problems in the carbon market currently today. Again, lack of transparency, lack of standardization, lack of global connectivity, lack of liquidity. So I think that OFP, if successful and we really believe the team really believes that it's going to be successful. It will provide a very necessary technological solution for today's problems in the forestation sector, and also being the foundation for the new global carbon [01:01:00] economy.
AVB: Okay. I love it. I love it because he takes a lot of boxes. I mean, first and foremost airlines with my worldview. We have problems that are old, old enough to the point that a lot of people would just give up or we'll learn to live with them. What are you telling people? You said, as we get new technology, we have new tools to tackle this problem.
So every time we get a new technology, we have to reassess how we're dealing with old problems. So just on that front, it gets me excited because it is a very clear use case of a new technology. And, it requires new thinking and new initiatives. It also gets me excited because from the NEAR ecosystem, I think that it's a real problem to solve.
You know, at the moment we are in the experimentation stage, we have some NFTs and some games, but I love that there are people thinking really big and starting to make headway into that technology[01:02:00] because it proves it, philosophers are a really valuable piece to the ecosystem.
RIM: Finally.
AVB: So much for that. We will no doubt have a Potter and we'll keep in touch. Any other remarks?
RIM: Yeah. I just want to say, if you were interested in philosophy, the kind of conversation that we had, and really, if you're someone that's excited for thinking out the kind of world that crypto can bring and you're concerned about climate change. Of course, please contact me. We now have a Guild for OFP, just like we have a Guild Silicon Craftsmen for NEAR and we just want to be the the early community of OFP who are thinkers, researchers, and crypto natives who care about climate change so that we can get together and just, let's just talk and design things and be founders.
AVB: Definitely getting touch. As we mentioned before, the crypto community is extremely open and supportive near is [01:03:00] a climate neutral blockchain. And I think it has a law there, there are some funds available to get these initiatives going. So heaps of opportunities for you to get involved. Thanks so much, Raymond we'll keep in touch and yeah, really appreciate it.
RIM: Thank you so much for having me.
AVB: Yeah