Kate: Hello, welcome to PodRocket, I'm Kate the producer of PodRocket with me hosting today is Paul. Hello Paul how's it going? Paul: Good. Thank you Kate. Kate: Thanks for joining us again. We've heard your voice a lot this month, very exciting to have you on. And our guest today is Angela Gilhotra. Hi Angela how's it going? Angela Gilhotra: Hey, I'm good. Kate: Thanks for joining us today, Angela is a Web3 developer and we're here to talk about Web3 stuff. Paul: And Kernel. Kate: And Kernel. Paul: Before we hop on the podcast, it's Kernel with an AL, we were asking if it's Kernel or Kernal. So its Kernel just like we all know. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. It's Kernel with an El to be specific. Paul: It's with an El, my mistake. I thought it was with an AL. Angela Gilhotra: Oh, no problem. Paul: I would like to get right into Kernell and talk about what it is, and Angela I went to the website to check it out. So it's a learning platform and you can sign up and the, whole mission statement is to really get your hands on and to really understand the core concepts, right? Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. So- Paul: Can you go into that a little bit. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. It's a mix of, I mean if you ever want to get into the philosophical side of Web3, I would say that Kernel is the best place to be for that, it's also... the initiative was started because we saw a lot of people starting to get into the Web3 space and with so many options out there it gets very difficult to forge your own path and see what suits you. There are so many industries inside of Web3, it's not just one Web3. So there is creator, economies, SD5, there's NF3s and all of it. So Kernel was our small attempt to make sense of everything going on inside of Web3 and to help everyone find the most meaningful connections. Angela Gilhotra: For us at Kernel one success metric is the number of friends that you make after you enter into Kernel and Kernel essentially practically speaking it's a fellowship, it's an eight week long fellowship. You enter as either a developer or an investor, a mentor or a guide, you can be anyone. And we sort of help people get in touch with other people so that there is win-win relationship that comes out of it. I mean what I'm telling you about Kernel is 1% of what it really is. It comes out of the experience most of it, so once you get into Kernel you'll understand exactly what's going on. I would say the most meaningful part of it for me as well as for others that we try to bring in, in the fellowship is the kind of relationships that come out of it. Paul: Right. So kind of helping people build their networks on top of just learning stuff. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. And also projects and adventures. We also have the two concepts that always stood out for me. I was also actually a Kernel fellow, after going through block one, I joined as a steward. So we have a concept of yonthos or convo. So this is the smaller conversations that keep happening, that is the heartbeat of Kernel. And then we also have a concept of adventurer, so it's not like you start a project it's basically your own adventure for the eight weeks that you take on. And it could be anything, we just sort of help you get through that adventure. Paul: So it's really what you care about. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. Paul: And what you're interested in. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. Exactly. Paul: Gotcha. That's the easiest way to learn. If you're really interested in something I feel like you can really focus on the top good hand. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. Exactly, your adventure can be anything, I mean it could be your PhD thesis. It could be literally anything. And we just sort of help you get through that. Kate: Do you have to prove? You mentioned joining as an investor or steward, do you have to prove, is there a layer of verification before you take on that role? Angela Gilhotra: No, none yet really. There's no verification as of yet. There's sort of application phase that happens before a block start. So a block is an eight week long period during which the Kernel fellowship happens. Before the block, there is an application phase so all of the potential fellows give us their applications and in the application we just sort of ask questions like, what is it that you want to get out of Kernel, what is it that you've currently been building, is there anything that... where does your focus lie or what interests you. So all of these things and then we sort of just go through the applications. We make sure that we get a good amount of people with a good amount of diversity and we block and that's how we go about it. Paul: So a block is really a unit sort of or a conglomeration of these parties coming together? Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. It is a bunch of people, basically a bunch of fellows, a bunch of guides, a bunch of mentors and their adventures and projects together make up a block. So throughout those eight weeks we try to concentrate all of the energy in and after those eight weeks we also have... basically Kernel is not like it starts and ends, Kernel is sort of a lifelong thing. It's a whole network, but then the energy is concentrated in these eight week blocks throughout the year. Paul: Now, if you were going to talk to Kernel about somebody to get them really hyped up through listen you have to go check out Kernel. What's a story, whether be your own or somebody else's that was just really cool from going through this fellowship? Angela Gilhotra: Okay. I'll have to think about it but there is way too many things happening inside. I would suggest to go through Kernel if you're even... I mean if you're trying to find a path inside Web3 and if you are interested not just on the application layer of it, but if you're also interested in the ethics of Web3 and what does decentralization really mean, where did the idea of decentralization come from and what does freedom in terms of programming mean. So all of this might sound abstract, but then connecting this abstract concepts to your practical granular level of programming and sort of bringing it back to what does it really mean to build these meaningful applications is when I would suggest someone to go through Kernel. Paul: So on the topic of this all being very abstract, it's freedom of programming, what does that really mean? So you are a Web3 developer, blockchain developer, and we have developers listening to us right now. And so everybody kind of is in this head space of what it means to develop an application. So when you were starting out maybe in that head space then you moved into more learning about how things are structured in Web3, what does it mean to be a Web3 developer in your eyes and how does that freedom of development tie into this? Because for me I deploy someone on AWS. So how is this different? How's the freedom element coming in? Angela Gilhotra: Okay. So you can think of it like, I mean if I were to talk in extremely practical sense, something that still surprises me is that in Web3 I could make a whole full-fresh application without the need of databases at all. So I could just use Ethereum as the storage layer, I could use IPFS as the light storage layer on top of it, something that I want to query. So let's say smaller things that I want to query and store, I could use IPFS4. I could use Fleek to deploy my entire application for free and all of it is now decentralized. So basically there is no country or government or anything, no organization in the world that could stop this application from running. So this sort of experience and possibility that this is possible now is something that surprises me about Web3. Angela Gilhotra: And I'm really bad at philosophy and I'm really bad at connecting all of these abstracts, this is why I personally need Kernel, but I'm just talking in extremely practical sense that this is something I'm still in awe of. And I think that this is something really powerful. With everything going on in the world right now, I think if we have a structure like this that can allow people to not be controlled or not be restricted by the geographical location that they're on. They can still access information and access experiences that doesn't restrict them in any shape or form. It's something that I feel is really powerful. Paul: When you said that it could be deployed and no country or organization could take it down, my first thought when I hear that is, have you seen anything get put up that is harmful that should be taken down, and are you ever concerned about that? Do you come across people that you're just like, they're going to do something that's not good or something? Angela Gilhotra: No, I don't think I'm that. I know, I'm just a curious being honestly and I just like getting into new stuff. This is how I discovered blockchain and this is how... its not like I discovered, this is how I got into blockchain and this is what excites me and intrigues me. That is who I am, I think it's not like I don't care about these bigger things it's more like there is a certain niche that I'm most interested in and this is where I try to dig my myself in as far as I can go. Paul: So you really focus in a niche. When you're done with Kernel do you expect to go work for a company or with a group or do you work for Dows on the side. How does that turn out afterwards? Angela Gilhotra: Oh, actually. Kernel is not exactly my full-time thing, I'm working with Bonfire as well. So Bonfire is a startup in creator economies, so we are building tools for creators to help convert their audiences into economies. So what that really means is let's say you're a musician and you might want to... I mean let's say you might want to create your own page, so you are planning to launch your own album and now you need sort of a homepage where you can point your entire audience or your fan club too. So that let's say they can buy your NFDs and once they buy your NFD what is it that they can do with that NFD. Now let's say you want to create a merchandise store that is now token dated with that NFD, only the people who have bought your NFD will be able to access those much. So things like this, now all of this sounds extremely complicated because it's at that stage we are on. Angela Gilhotra: I mean, to set everything like this up, you might need an entire development team and effort to build that thing. But what we are building at Bonfire is sort of a no code alternative to all of this, you'll be able to drag and drop and create your own page, and you can think of a combination of web flow and mirror. If you're aware of mirror it's a decentralized protocol for putting up your own blog or your own pages, so you can think of a combination of that, you can drag and drop your entire album in it, you can drag and drop your NFD gallery on it and then now you have your own branded homepage where you can guide your fan club too. So this is also something that I'm helping build right now, that's about it. So I'm a steward at Kernel and the one, two that I'm building at Kernel is called convo and then apart from that I work with Bonfire. Paul: You said it was called convo like conversation. Angela Gilhotra: Yes. Paul: Gotcha. Angela Gilhotra: Yes. Paul: All right. What is that specific component kind of do, what's its role? Angela Gilhotra: That is really cool. That is a nice little story it has to it. So when Colonel started, there was a concept of yonthos or jonthos, I'm still not able to pronounce it correctly but it's something like that. So it's sort of what we expect all of these fellows to do and what we help initiate as well is these smaller conversations inside the block. So eight or so people come together to talk about something. Now on a practical level it's something super basic, it's an event happening somewhere. But then when we started thinking about it more deeply and initially we just had the entire process manually, people would fill up a form and just tell that this is the topic that they want to talk about. So we would set up a meeting for them and they would come up and talk about it to each other and everything, but then eventually it start getting traction. Angela Gilhotra: A lot of people wanted to talk about a lot of stuff, which is something that... I mean it's obvious, they might want to do it in a community. But then the challenge that we faced was that there were way too many products for individual event management something like currently and cal.com. All of these were individual specific. We were finding it difficult to find something that was community specific, for a community to have a shared calendar as simple as that, but we weren't able to find that and there was event and there is meetup but it's way too public. We want something that feels very homely and it's sort of a place where you can just go and schedule an event. People with shared Google workspace accounts are familiar with the interface because that is how, you can see everyone's calendar at one place and then you can create a new event. Angela Gilhotra: So this is what the idea was for convo. We basically just wanted a shared calendar and now what we also want to do is make it more criptonative. So when we talk about shared Cal... so currently convo is an app where you go and you propose a conversation, that is it. And then people can look at the conversation and they can RSVP. So this is what the current version looks like and you can either edit it or you can post it anywhere. What we really want to do with that next is basically remove the requirement of email altogether. Right now we require an email to create an event and we require an email to RSVP. What we really want to do is just make it a Web3 login completely. So with MetaMask and with logins like the Web3 model log in and all of these have made it really easy for me as a developer to not get inside the mess of jot tokens or the authentication services. Angela Gilhotra: All I have to do is add a support for MetaMask let's say, so that is what we are trying to focus on next. It's going to be really difficult because with email it's really straightforward, you just give me your email, I'll create a new event in your Google calendar. But with MetaMask it's not and I shouldn't say MetaMask actually, with an Ethereum address or with a public key it's very difficult because I don't know where to send the calendar invite to. So this is what we are trying solve next, it's a very, very abstract problem and it's a really long term goal but to have something like this, a decentralized event management system and a decentralized RSVP system is something I have been thinking about a lot but it's mostly in the design phase but the end goal is really just to help communities and internet native communities to be able to have a shared calendar and sort of a place where they can come together and talk about stuff. So that is a small little project at Kernel that I'm working on. Paul: Well, I'm sure you'll do very big things if it's able to work it straight that sort of organization between people. Because the Google calendar that simple feature of seeing other people's time slots that is huge, I mean it's very helpful. Have you and your team looked at using, what's it called? EPNS like the Ethereum push notification service for sending messages or how would somebody with an Ethereum address know that there's some calendar related business happening that they need to pay attention to. Angela Gilhotra: Exactly. Actually it's nice that you mention EPNS, they were a part Kernel block zero and it was the same block that I was also a part of. Paul: Interesting. Oh, cool. Angela Gilhotra: We are classmates, exactly. So there are way too many interesting ways that we can make this happen. There is a protocol that is currently being built called EPNS for notifications. Then we just need to build a protocol that is for events, so if we have a layer, it could be on IPFS not exactly Etherium so let's say it's on IPFS. We have sort of a standard way of storing events and retrieving events from the IPFS storage. That is all we need, we just need to create a structure. So if we have that and if we have a service that is just checking about these events, the storage and retrieval of these events and it's checking which event is coming up next. Angela Gilhotra: So now we have the data, we have a service that is taking care of what is coming up, what is in the past, what is in the future and we have a notification service. We got to tie these all together with one service. So this is where I keep getting stuck at, now how do we decentralize that service. But I don't think it's entirely important to let's say decentralize that service but anyway this is what it is. I mean there's a service for notifications, there's a service for event management, there's a service for taking care of when to send that notification and then all we got to do is create an interface for users to do all of the stuff. The interface might... Paul: Right. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. There are interesting things happening and let's see where the space grows into. Paul: So IPFS, that is separate from Etherium just to be clear. It's sort of its own networks of supporting the storage and retrieval of files as the kind of age in and out. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. Exactly. It's- Paul: And why would you use IPFS specifically versus stuffing all that information in a transaction or something? Angela Gilhotra: I mean I could do that if I had a lot of money lying around. It's just expensive, that's the thing. Paul: So it's cheaper. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. It's not exactly because it's cheaper. I mean IPFS is built for data management and not just data management, I would say it's built for the specific use case of storing data and retrieving data. And then Ethereum has a specific use case of transactions so I don't want to use transactions for storing my data. I mean that wouldn't make sense. It has a specific use and IPFS has its own specific use similarly RV is built for its own use, but all of them come from this main underlying notion of decentralization. So that is how. Paul: So this really feels like what it's like to be a Web3 developers taking these different networks of decentralized protocols and compute structures that kind of exist and figuring out the best way to bring them together to make something cool happen. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. At least in a startup scenario, I mean ever since I graduated, I've only worked with startups and only in Web3. So this is actually what it feels like to be in a startup and in a Web3 startup. So there is a problem to solve, but then in Web3 scenario there's no playbook that you can follow to solve a particular problem anymore because in Web3 everything is new. So that is a part of what it feels like to be a Web3 developer and apart from that, since there is no playbook, you also have to learn a lot of new things every day because now you can't just follow anyone else. I mean the information out there is not the best right now. The documentation isn't- Paul: [inaudible 00:22:16]? Angela Gilhotra: No I don't think so. It's not maintained. If I were to learn react today or if I were to recommend someone to learn react today I would just give them react's documentation because I know the develop community is great, the documentation is great, people are going to help each other. It's going to be fine, if there's a bug it's going to be resolved pretty quickly. But then in Web3 I can't really do that. I have a musician friends come up to me and ask about this creator economy because I'm working with Bonfire and everything, but all I can link them to is [inaudible 00:22:49] Twitter account. Angela Gilhotra: There is no good sources of information available as of yet either... so for any kind of user either for the developers or for the end users this is what I feed but it's getting better, it's getting a lot better. Since I came into this space I think when I started all I had to read from wordy white papers, but then now there are a lot of blogs. But the thing about crypto is that there will be a lot of scammy places that you'll fall into, so that is what you've got to be aware of. But apart from that I think it's slowly getting better. It's going to get better soon. Paul: It feels frustrating because there's obviously amazing, cool stuff that you and your team and others are working on. That's riddled and polluted with so much BS out there that you can get trapped in. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. That is true, I mean- Paul: This is getting better. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. For a super simple thing. We had to develop this authentication service using Web3 login at Bonfire and there were three libraries I implemented and threw away just because it had a lot of issues, there was some bugs somewhere that the developer just sort of, they were just dumping it down and there were these so many problems that we fell into to implement such a simple thing. And while we were implementing a new standard was being proposed for signing messages which was to contribute to authentication via Web3. So that is how crazy fast the development is and that is how getting your information looks like as a developer. You just have to be always aware what standards are coming out and what new libraries to experiment with, because there will be so many new ones coming up every day. Paul: It sounds like a lot of responsibility as a developer because another thing is once something's on the blockchain, it's much more difficult to put up a new version. Ethereum has... I know you can swap out a contract and say that one's no longer and putting on this new one, grafting on a new contract or something. But even that costs money, you have to pay gas to do that and it's not so simple to redeploy the prod so to speak. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. That's a part of the problem that you just mentioned. Those are the proxy contract, I mean your entire application is built to support one contract that ends up being a proxy and then one day the developer just deploys a new one over there. And what now, what are you querying now. So that is one problem. The other problem is with just a simple storage sort of thing, let's say you want to store all of the tokens in your data base. So what are the fields that you will come up with, because ERC 2721s and 1155s are so different with each other and 1155 being completely different from all of these other kinds of tokens, it basically defies all rules. So what is the kind of- Paul: Sorry, I just want to interject and say, so those numbers, those things you just mentioned. Those are basically tokens for people. Those are specifications, an ERC20 token's the most common type. I just wanted to throw that in there in case. Angela Gilhotra: Oh, I'm sorry. Those are all types of tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. And when I say ERC and a number after it, this is actually the standard that introduced that particular token. So ERC20. Paul: [inaudible 00:26:34]. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah, exactly. So Ethereum standard. So the ERC20 standard had a bunch of functions that should be there in the fungible kind of token. So that is what we ended up calling ERC20s. ERC721s have a new name now, which is NFDs. And then ERC1155s are really new ones which are sort of a combination of both, which basically has decided to defy all rules. So now it becomes very difficult for an application that doesn't want to run its own Ethereum node, but also wants to store all of this data, but setting up a graph node is sort of an overkill for their application. Angela Gilhotra: So it becomes very difficult. I mean, that's how early we are in this stage because problems like these are what we are solving on the application level, but also thinking about how culturally it'll make a difference, how big of an impact crypto can make and how it ties to freedom and how it ties to all of these other things. So those are the kinds of problems that, not problems I would say, these are the areas that at least my head space is in inside of Web3. Paul: There's a lot going on in there, inside your head. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. Insane. Paul: Also, I just wanted to ask, when you say a graph node, do you mean running an index for the graph and putting your own sub-graph on there? Angela Gilhotra: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Paul: Gotcha. Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. So either you can have your own Ethereum node and you can just query anything out of it, or you can have a graph node, which basically gives you a lot of sanity and helps you in query blockchain in a way that makes sense for you and your application, directly from your blockchain just is a lot of data out there. Paul: Right. And the graph also kind of gives your application the opportunity to start out but then other people can start to index it to, and it's truly decentralized now. Your team has to run the archive node forever. Angela Gilhotra: Exactly. It's actually incredible what they have done, but then they can query, but then to set up your own sub-graph on their, I just think that for smaller applications, the really small ones, it can get a little overkill to do all of that. I mean, it's easier to just query and store in your own database. But then yeah, it's actually a design question I would say to what exactly to choose from. Yeah, there's an option. Paul: One of those Web3 architecture design problems. Wow. That's a thing. Web3 architecture, that's so cool. We are moving in the future slowly. That kind of covers the questions I wanted to ask. I was very interested in learning about how you think about Web3 and what Kernel kind of did for you as a developer and stuff. So it was really cool to hear about your decisions and the sort of way you think about the stack specifically for the convo applications. So if somebody wanted to check that out, just to kind of wrap that up, if I Google convo, would I find it? Convo Web3. Angela Gilhotra: You can think of it like a home cooked meal. This is what we made for Kernel. And I actually read a block post, which the title was that programming is more like a home cooked meal. So eventually, that is how I started making sense of what Kernel really is. It is sort of something that we made internally to help solve the issues that just we were facing. It is sort of a situational software that came out of our situation. Angela Gilhotra: But now what I am personally thinking about Con way is what I shared. So how to make it more decentralized because we have seen, I mean, internally we have talked a lot about this and internally all of us believe that login via Web3 would make more sense, but then how exactly do we come full circle with it. Eventually we would need your email to send you a calendar invite, but if we want to remove that as well, we really need a service that can create those calendar events in a more decentralized fashion. So this is something I'm still thinking about a lot, but other than that, if you want to check out our home cooked meal, this is where you go to. Kate: Awesome. Yeah, looks like convo.kernel.community. Angela Gilhotra: Oh yeah. Paul: Kernel with an EL. Angela Gilhotra: Yes. Paul: It just to make sure to put that point there. Kate: Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to plug or have our listeners go check out Angela? Angela Gilhotra: Yeah. That's about it. I think check out Kernel, if you are wondering about Web3 and you are thinking of where to find good sort of set of resources, or if you're thinking of a project and you really need a community to build with, I would suggest checking out Kernel. It's Kernel with an el.community. And if you are interested in created economies or if you're a creator yourself, I would suggest checking out Bonfire. That is trybonfire.xyz. So that's about it. Kate: Awesome. Yeah. We'll include those in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Angela. It's been great. We'll see you around. Angela Gilhotra: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to PodRocket. You can find us at PodRocket Pod on Twitter, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review on Apple podcast. Thanks.