Anna Rose (00:00:05):
Welcome to Zero Knowledge. I'm your host, Anna Rose. In this podcast, we will be exploring the latest in zero knowledge research and the decentralized web, as well as new paradigms that promise to change the way we interact and transact online.

Anna Rose (00:00:27):
In this week's episode, Tarun and I learn about the JPG project with founders, Maria Paula, Sam, and Trent. We chat about the art and NFT intersection. The role of the curator, algorithmic curation and the meaning of combining digital art. We also learn about where JPG fits into the ecosystem, the problems they are aiming to solve and where the team sees the space evolving. At the end, we get a chance to brainstorm about the potential for ZK NFTs, a project close to my heart. But before we kick off, I want to remind you to check out the ZK Hack online event it's happening now and consists of weekly workshops about ZK tools, as well as having an advanced weekly puzzle competition. If you want to jump into the space professionally, or even just for fun, this would be a great event to join. It runs for seven weeks, every Tuesday, going until December 7th, there is a fantastic community forming around this event. So do jump in. Also, if you're looking to get into the space professionally, you may want to check out the ZK Jobs Board there. You can find ads from top ZK teams looking to hire. I've added the link to the ZKHack and the ZK jobs board in the show notes. I also want to thank this week sponsor Anoma. Anoma is a multi-variate and multi-variable bartering protocol that enables bartering among end parties of arbitrary assets, including NFTs all with zero knowledge privacy, Anoma removes the requirement of a double coincidence of wants or direct matches between very different asset types. I've added the link to co-founder Awa's Twitter thread in the show notes. If you want to find out more about this project. Quick note, the ZK validator was an early investor in the project, and Anoma is also one of the partners on ZK Hack. Be sure to stay tuned for Anoma's first public Testnet in which you'll be able to play with Anoma's proof of stake, intent gossip, matchmaking layer, and custom validity predicates. You can check out Anoma's code base on GitHub and quick note Anoma is currently hiring. So if you're interested in finding out more, check the link in the show notes for their jobs, or look for them on the ZK Jobs Board. So thank you again. Anoma. Now here is our deep dive into the JPG project.

Anna Rose (00:02:35):
Today. Tarun and I are chatting with the team from JPG. I want to welcome Maria Paula, Sam, and Trent to the show. Welcome guys.

Trent (00:02:42):
Thanks so Much for having us.

Sam (00:02:43):
Thank you very much.

Maria Paula (00:02:44):
Hey, thanks for having us.

Anna Rose (00:02:45):
Us. All right. I think before we kick off, I want to learn about all of your backgrounds, but I also want to first define, like, what is JPG? What is this project? Maybe one of you want to take it?

Trent (00:02:59):
Yeah, JPG is a curation protocol. So we're really looking at building some more cultural infrastructure for the space that looks at these NFTs as cultural objects, as opposed to kind of foregrounding them as financial assets. And so how does that process help create a more sustainable long-term value system for the space.

Anna Rose (00:03:21):
And now let's find out a little bit about each of you, like, so we're, we're going to be talking primarily about NFTs in this episode, but yeah, I'd like to hear a little bit about what led you to this, because I mean, I'm going to maybe start with Mary Paula. I've known you for years. We actually started in blockchain around the same time at almost the same organization you were at web3. I was at Parity back in 2017. Tell us your journey to JPG. Right?

Maria Paula (00:03:47):
Right! So when we met, I was actually working at a protocol at Polkadot and I've been working in communications for a very long time. I quickly switched to Golem and in Golem, actually I was giving out grants at the first edition of the Ethereum community fund when, by chance and in the Tokyo hotel where they shot Lost in Tokyo, I met a lost guy that was actually Mark Condon who is, you know, the so-called grandfather of NFTs. Since I am a culture addict and I love art, you know, after hearing some of the use cases for NFTs, I was like, this is something that I actually really like. And finally, you know, a use case that I can actually relate and maybe work in a less abstract way than, you know, my, my work with infrastructure. So, you know, I started doing little things in the space, continue to communicate things about NFTs with Matt.

Maria Paula (00:04:45):
Also with Billy Rennekamp at Clover's network, then through the first NFT conference in San Francisco, which was fabulous. And after that I founded, ETH Berlin and the Department of Decentralization in Berlin, which is a grassroots organization that does a bunch of stuff, including a hackathon. And we have a strong art department and through the art department, we started exploring a little bit more NFTs and blockchain art, wrote a paper, I organized a bunch of shows, you know, both digital and NFTs. Actually, I had Tarun in one of my shows in Osaka and yeah, we kept on exploring you know, our second paper was published in February 2021. I had a lot of trouble making it timeless because the NFT boom was sort of blossoming by then. And after that, I felt that this was an opportunity for me to leverage everything that I had learned in the past years of free labor. So around NFTs and I just met Trent via DMs. You know, we bonded about blockchain art since he's an art historian and he invited me to this discord where, you know, they were setting up gallery with a very awkward name that we have deprecated. So I'm not going to even mention I'm going to mention it. Yeah. Then I met Sam honestly on the first call, we absolutely vided, we conceived one of the funnest parts of the protocol, which is the gift shop and yeah, the rest is history.

Anna Rose (00:06:22):
Very cool. You mentioned, you just mentioned ETH Berlin for anyone, this is like this is very much a legendary event. I was there. It was great. So many teams met there. I know it's just like in the lore of the bear market, ETHBerlin and ETHBerlin 2 where like the legend. So yeah, just to give some context to some of our listeners. All right. Now, I think it makes sense for us to learn a little bit about you, Trent. Trent, how did you kind of get into the space and then cross paths with Maria Paula?

Trent (00:06:53):
Yeah, so my educational background is in art history, as MP mentioned. And then for a few years after that, I worked in advertising. I've always really loved being like at this intersection of kind of the economic layer of society and the cultural layer of society. And in kind of early 2019, my brother Brock and I kind of teamed up and started working on various DeFi related stuff. So we build some yield optimization protocol ended up moving into some MEV related things in August of 2020. We along with Will Price, Dan Elitzer, Clinton Bembry launched a, an algorithmic stable coin called YAM, which is a kind of legendary saga in its own rights. I stayed on with that community for about six, seven months. Just kind of like building up those contributors, getting the community back on its feet, after all of the kind of shenanigans that, that occurred there. And as I was scaling back my time at the beginning of this year, 2021 in kind of January and February, I just fell in love with some of the NFT space. I think it was really packs the title drop that showed me how NFTs can be this like really interesting conceptual investigation into value and like questions about what NFTs even are. And so that was kind of my entry point at which I fell down the rabbit hole and just started having so much fun with NFTs. It was like, that was the first time in a long time, the internet had just provided this kind of unbridled, weird source of entertainment. And so anytime that's that's happening, it feels like there's something, something really special. So I started kind of casually thinking about what I could potentially do. I was having conversations with MP on Twitter DMs. I was just having conversations with Sam on Twitter DMs, and we were all kind of focused around this idea of noticing some things in the, in the blockchain space or the NFT space. I guess that's just felt a little off to us in terms of, again, like how financialized these things were and like the foregrounding of that, some of the presentation and display of these NFTs. And so we just started jamming on various things and JPG is what came out of that.

Anna Rose (00:09:07):
Cool. That connection between this DeFi background and NFTs. I mean, this has been a theme that's come up a few times with previous guests that Tarun you and I have interviewed, why do you think there is that connection?

Trent (00:09:19):
I can't speak for everyone, but I think for me, at least it was like I got into DeFi because I love some of the ideology around crypto and it's this extremely exciting kind of like formerly fringe industry to work on that. That was just where all the like cool, weird smart people were, were hanging out, but I'm like not actually a finance guy at heart. But that was the only way you could work in crypto was like to do the finance stuff. And so as NFTs have come about, it's all of a sudden, oh my gosh, we can actually like play at the cultural layer of society. And that's just for me personally, where I want to be spending my time.

Anna Rose (00:10:01):
Interesting. Tarun, I want to throw this to you. Do you have any theories as to why there does seem to be that connection?

Tarun (00:10:07):
Yeah, actually one of our previous guests, wrote a Twitter thread this morning about that, which is Luiz from Fingerprints, but I think sort of similar where I think a lot of people first not shitty crypto products that were decentralized were usable. Cause I think like prior, like everything from 2017 and before was mainly a centralized service that had like good UX, right? Otherwise it was you using a wallet that would half the time brick itself, or you will lose your funds or dot dot, there's tons of negative user experiences. But I think like Uniswap and the lending protocols were the first time that you actually had like usable, you know, not, not like for the masses, but you know, if you cared enough, a UX that was not crappy. And I think that like opened people's eyes to things. But then I guess once you kind of got into that, you realized, Hey, there's like something more palatable about this world when there is attachment to objects versus like strictly purely speculative meme coins. Although, you know, look, people still love that. People still love the speculative meme coins. It's not like that's going away.

Anna Rose (00:11:22):
Interesting. All right, Sam, let's hear a little bit about you. Tell us how you got involved in this space and how, what led you to JPG. I'm very curious to hear if you have a DeFi background too.

Sam (00:11:35):
I do not have a DeFi background at all. I don't understand the first thing about DeFi at all, and have been meaning to learn more because can never find the time now because I'm too busy with NFT stuff. It's funny like Trent, I, my educational background is in art history actually come from a kind of quite academic background, but we, we both come at this from completely different directions starting at that point. And then Trent comes from DeFi and then I come very much from the traditional art world. My background is as a curator and an art historian and a writer working in London in the traditional art world in the sort of modern, contemporary art space, largely working for the last few years, freelance doing bits and pieces for a number of different organizations. Some of them are nonprofits, some of them private, but largely working in the, in the sort of like museum sector and non-commercial gallery sector. I remember sitting down for dinner in 2019 with a friend of mine. Who's been very deep in crypto for a very long time. And him handing over his phone to me and saying, you know, I just bought this piece of crypto art. And I was like, what's that? And it was this image of like a lion or leopard or something. And I was like, oh cool. And he was like, yeah, it cost me 20 bucks. And he explained to me what an NFT was and he bought it on SuperRare and he kind of suggested that we look into it together. And so I spent the weekend looking at SuperRare scrolling through it, and I was like, this is clearly really interesting, but I just don't have the time. I was like finishing my masters at the time. And I was like applying for jobs afterwards. And it just, you know, wasn't, wasn't the time for me to get deep in it fast forward two years. And the beginning of this year, like the first week of January, I remember having a conversation with somebody about something completely unrelated and it triggered this memory of the gap conversation I'd had and of NFTs. And I was like, oh, I want to check out how that's going. So I did, I went on to SuperRare and started looking around...

Anna Rose (00:13:33):
It was like what's going on now there, I wonder if it's grown at all.

Sam (00:13:36):
Yeah. I wonder what's there, I started to think about it, you know, clearly it had, the prices were considerably higher than they had been when I looked before and I just became really interested in it. And my background is really like academically working on conceptual artwork. And there was something about NFTs and the kind of division or distinction within an NFT between sort of the tradable or kind of exchangeable like a token and the associated media and the way in which, you know, there was something kind of very immaterial about it that just resonated with me and made intuitively a lot of sense. So I kind of appreciated it on that level and wanted to get more involved. So I started working with an artist who I knew whose work I thought was sort of conceptually aligned in some way with the technology while being completely, you know, it was digital photography, but it was sort of conceptual digital photography started helping him produce work and, and sell his work market, his work. And, and while I was doing that, I started meeting people in the space. Trent was one of the first people I met, Luiz from FingerprintsDAO was one of the first people. I met a number of other people who, you know, are now doing really exciting things in this space were really welcoming with me. And my first impression after a couple of months was okay, you know, this is clearly a very exciting market to be in it at that time. I wasn't buying or selling NFTs, but like there was no kind of like culture other than that, other than the market. And especially with seeing a lot of people who were big collectors calling themselves curators. And it was very clear that the idea of curation was completely conflated with the idea of private collection. And actually historically that is a relationship that is interesting in many important private collections running back through to the 17th century have actually become some of the most important museum collections today. But you know, obviously curation is more than that. It's more than just buying things yourself. And so Trent and I, and then, and then MP on that first call, we sort of trying to think about how we could kind of facilitate that, you know, people should be able to express their interests or their expertise and things without necessarily having the means to own those things themselves.

Anna Rose (00:15:47):
And I guess this brings us to JPG itself, which you defined just before it's, it's more of a curation platform. Maybe we can dig a little deeper into what that actually means. So I think people are familiar with marketplaces, NFT marketplaces where you buy and sell and NFTS. You can mint NFTs there. Often you can add, you know, percentages, you can like choose sort of the attributes of the NFT minted there, sell it there in a marketplace, but how has JPG and curation different from that?

Trent (00:16:17):
I think one of the early kernels of of an idea or an insight that we had around around JPG was looking at the way in which the NFT market was functioning, you know, and still functions largely today. But particularly kind of in the, in the first half of this this year was seeing this mimicking of the traditional legacy art markets value systems kind of being crossed over into this, this NFT ecosystem in which the tastemaking apparatus is essentially comprised of massive collectors who have, you know, both the capital and the reach to determine value and the large auction houses that have the reputation built up that, you know, everything that they put out is considered to be of quality. So you see that, you know, particularly probably with like our blocks curated and super rare, right. Reminded us just of, you know, of Gosey and pace and David Swarner and, uh, you know, Sotheby's, and Christie's Saatchi. And you know, this, this system in which it's only this kind of small gated community that is able to actually determine what's cool and what's valuable and interesting in the, in the space. And we just thought that that didn't align with the kind of crypto native approach to culture. And that rather than these very few kind of high signal data points, that we had the opportunity to create infrastructure that allowed anyone to participate in this process of meaning-making and of tastemaking. So with JPEG, we want to kind of make that process permissionless and decentralized such that everybody has the ability to express their opinion and to make these connections between NFTs that this piece and this piece, when they are put next to each other, create this, this new form of meaning and this new context for, for understanding them. And so I think in the, in the longterm, that's really where we see some of, some of this going, that it's really the community as a whole, that starts to form these connections and form these kind of new systems of cultural value.

Anna Rose (00:18:29):
Would you say, I mean, is the problem that you're highlighting here. The idea that like, during the sale of any of these NFTs, there would be like publicity about them and people would see these images, but once sold and once just like in a collection, they kind of just sit there. Is this sort of like, well, what, what happens to them then? Is it, is that in any way something you're trying to tackle?

Maria Paula (00:18:48):
Well, you have to think of JPG in the context of, you know, what we want for the future of NFTs. And as Tarun mentioned as well, I think we're beginning to see that NFTs are, you know, one of the use cases that really are, you know, able to scale and to make an impact. So at JPG, of course, we're focusing on, you know, what gives value to those NFTs in the longterm. You know, everything right now is very short-lived. This, you know, we're living in the moment, you know, you, you take a flight and you miss like how many drops? It's insane. So we're trying to, you know, add a little bit of pause and contemplation, but at the same time we're creating, you know, on chain records, which will hopefully derive in more value to the NFTs. This is a very sort of like, I, I don't want to say vissionary because I don't consider us visionaries, but you know, this is an idea that comes from the assumption that we really believe that NFTs are the future of culture. And we want to create the different, you know, records, archiving and other, the other infrastructure to work towards supporting the value.

Trent (00:19:58):
Yeah. And I, I do really like this idea that kind of both of your talking about that when something is bought and it's just sitting in a wallet, like the kind of interaction potential with that NFT really goes down, unless you're just like looking at someone's entire like wallet collection on OpenSea, or if they've made that wallet available through something like gallery or something like that, but providing more opportunities for interaction with these, these NFTs and allowing anyone to kind of have that interaction regardless of whether they actually own it or, or not.

Maria Paula (00:20:36):
Another thing to add is about, you know, the way that the mind operates as well, which is, you know, as I mentioned, you know, very like short attention span, everything happens, you know, at the same time. And we want to make them understand that there is, you know, there's a certain narrative and asserts of value around, you know, all of these universe that's happening. And then we also, you know, come from a different place. As Trent said, you know, he comes from DeFi. I come from, you know, infrastructure, we have been building, with the values of decentralization, permissionless ness and other different elements in mind. And the NFT people don't really understand those values just yet, because they are just coming in flocks and you know, they don't understand the context they don't have to do as well. You know, collecting NFTs is a lot of fun, but trying to educate these people around, you know, like no world gardens, you know, like a drop might be a drop, but, you know, you can still access things so you can, you know, you can create galleries in a permissionless way.

Maria Paula (00:21:45):
I think that's also really important.

Tarun (00:21:48):
Yeah. I guess one thing that is different when you have sort of like group or crowd curation versus sort of institutional curation is the notion of provenance for like, you know, like when you go to an artist's website, right. Like they'll talk about their pieces and they'll talk about like, which collection the piece was in and like what theme that was kind of curated by, and try to show that their portfolio has sort of made this like tree structure of like, these are the things that are all related in one line. These are the things they're all really another line. This is the things that all really in another line in a kind of socially curated art world that seems like it'll be messier. So how do you view sort of like an artist being able to convey provenance or like thematic things they've worked on when it might be like a little more messy at least like, you know, I, I don't know enough to know if it will have sort of the same sort of like lineage where like you present at the same types of museums or the same sort of festivals versus you know, it's out there in multiple places I don't know. I don't know if that totally makes sense.

Anna Rose (00:22:58):
I wonder if Sam given your curation background, if you have any thoughts.

Sam (00:23:04):
Yeah, sure. I mean, one thing about JPG is, you know, if an artist wants to display the work that they have made in a context that they wish it to be seen in that that's possible for them, they can be the curators of their own work. But on the kind of provenance question, the concept of provenance is obviously spoken about a lot in the blockchain art space and the NFT space. And obviously, you know, blockchains provide this means of having a record of ownership and ownership history. But obviously as you say, provenance is much more than ownership in the traditional art world. Traditional cultural world provenance is also the history of the entire lives of those objects everywhere that they've been displayed, what they'd been displayed alongside all of these things. And at the moment, there is no means to track that. And that's one thing that we're really trying to facilitate.

Sam (00:23:58):
The fact that it's maybe more casually done in some instances online and on JPG compared to just purely institutional the fact that that provenance history may not necessarily be just, you know, that it was displayed first Gagosian and this show. And then 10 years later in this retrospective at MoMA is just, I think, a by-product of the sort of different nature of these kinds of things. But also the beauty is that I think there's potential for both things that happen. I mean, you know, looking at some of the sort of traditional institutions that are organizing NFT art exhibitions, they're beginning to explore that I think the Armatage museum in St Petersburg, for example, is putting on a digital art exhibition, which will include NFTs. Those tokens will have been displayed that, but then maybe, you know, two months later there'll be displayed in somebody's gallery on JPG, by, you know, by an anonymous collector or by an anonymous enthusiast. And so it's quite nice that you have this much more kind of farrier gated history of these things. And I think that's just, yeah, an inevitable by-product of things being online, right. And there's fundamentally being kind of internet culture. So, you know, there's inherently more democratic and more distributed in that way.

Tarun (00:25:09):
One thing I guess maybe is, and this, this is sort of a very hazy course analogy, so apologies in advance. But one thing is, I feel like the search engine problem for online art is much harder than it is in reality. Right? Like, I, I do feel like people in, in normally, right, they'll go to a festival or they'll go to like a certain set of exhibits and they'll kind of have like, be able to at least like find roughly what they want to look for. Whereas I feel like there isn't really a particularly good way of finding new art, right? Like, I mean, for instance, for on OpenSea the things featured on the front page get like, almost like a million times more views than everything else. Right. Which is just kind of like this weird thing, because they don't really do great curation. They just kind of like pick, I actually have no clue how they pick those, but like, it feels like the features are like not super thought out. And so like, I guess my question is like, how do you, how do you feel like you can get around that if people can't, there's not really like an easy way to search for, you know, search for certain themes or search for certain things you're looking for other than following individual artists. Because I think it's like, it makes sense if you're like following an individual artists, they have a gallery in say JPG, or like some type of curatorial provenance and JPG versus like, Hey, I want to find everyone who is doing these types of things right now. Right. There's not really like a, an easy way to do that. And I guess my question is, do you view your role as somehow in helping in that?

Trent (00:26:43):
Yeah, I mean, to some degree, the OpenSea thing is a phenomenal testament just to the power of curation and in some ways, which I think is kind of worth, worth highlighting right. There, there is this massive impact that when someone with super high reach and high credibility says, go look at this thing, then like a lot of people end up end up doing that, which is interesting. I think one of the things we're also we've also been toying with is the kind of way in which we encounter curation in our daily lives. Like almost constantly, right? Like whether it's the morning brew newsletter, curating news, or like Google page results, like curating information, right. There are these different ways in which you see curation showing up as human generated and is algorithmically generated. And I think in so much of our digital context today, like it is mostly algorithmically generated in which you know, it's taking all these data inputs and taking your personal data and then finding things that fit, that kind of match. And I think there's an interesting potential for decentralized social networks and decentralized information systems in which that curation starts to be much more human driven across the board with algorithms starting to kind of help at the edges as opposed to the reverse in which it's like mostly algorithmically driven with human data, helping out the edges. And so I think there's some really powerful elements to search and discoverability that start to emerge as curators come onto the JPG platform and start to create connections and exhibitions, according to specific themes, adding that context of, you know, this is what I'm seeing in this piece, and this is why I like it. And, you know, pulling out things like keywords from those descriptions that can potentially be used to start to create this kind of second layer of categorization, as well as again, this, this idea that, you know, Sam is a conceptual NFT art connoisseur. And so you can just basically subscribe to follow his conceptual art gallery that he curates on JPG and adds to consistently to essentially, you know, find those new pieces that, that Sam is discovering because he's putting in that kind of cultural labor to track that part of the market. And I am someone who's interested, but is unable to kind of put in that much work to it.

Anna Rose (00:29:27):
What you described there about that front page of OpenSea. I mean, it reminds me a lot of like when YouTube first started and YouTube had this front page and it would highlight these videos. I actually, at the time worked in music and music video I had worked on was highlighted and the impact was insane, right? Like it wasn't MTV, wasn't a big music channel. It was YouTube. But actually I think the impact culturally, might've been deeper. Like it really got into people's eyes. And that was actually done. I later met the person who had by chance. I met the person who had been the curator at YouTube, putting that there, like with going through all the stuff was finding cool stuff. It was like one or two people at the, you know, very early on. And then there was always conversations about creating sort of these like video dashboards. And I know that like there were people who created lists and stuff like that, but I feel like at least on the YouTube example, like it fully became dominated by the algorithm. Why do you think, and this, I mean, I don't know if you can answer it, but like, do you think that in this decentralized version, it doesn't also become replaced by an algorithm just possibly an open source algorithm that we all like agree to?

Maria Paula (00:30:38):
I don't think that's necessarily bad. You know, if algorithms can help us, you know, sort of determine value and, you know, we can collectively decide on what we define as valuable then, you know, if it's a human or an algorithm, you know, I work in tech. So I won't say no to the algorithm, obviously, you know, as JPG, we would really like to create some kind of labor stream that brings awareness towards, the people doing the work and the curation. And I think this is really important because oftentimes in NFTs you actually hear a lot from the collectors and the creators, but you don't hear about, you know, the, like the people that are also in the art world, like, you know, the curators, the galleries, the events organizers, you, you don't hear from them, you know, in, in our NFT world. So our intention is also about raising awareness about different kinds of labor around the cultural industry as a whole and around NFTs, as new cultural industry that we're seeing. So both things can coexist, but I won't say no to the algorithm.

Anna Rose (00:31:53):
Okay. Got it. So this idea of the human creation, this is sort of like step one, it doesn't mean that it's going to like only ever be that.

Maria Paula (00:32:01):
Yeah. You know, when, when we were actually deciding what were we going to do about JPG, who we were as an organization, as co-founders as well, and what, which ones were our goals. We first had to define what is curation and curation to us is second order creation. So this is very connected to the question that you just asked because as we see it so valuable and we see it has so much future, then we definitely want to, you know, make sure that we give attention and intention to the whole process.

Trent (00:32:35):
I think that the algorithms, their purpose in, in something like JPGs protocol is to really empower and allow for then human curation to occur. Right. One of the great things about algorithms is like they can take in massive amounts of data and like data far into the past, right? Like I think a lot of the ways that people are discovering NFTs today is like in a Twitter thread or on Twitter, which is just so ephemeral. And so that element too, which through a immutable source of provenance, what someone has curated and discovered in the past can continue to play a role in what is being kind of determined as interesting or valuable today is I think a really powerful thing that allows us to pull this history in a certain way and not just like always be moving on to the next thing.

Anna Rose (00:33:32):
Is there any project that you would call comparable to what JPG is, or do you feel like it's sort of a new class of conceptual projects?

Maria Paula (00:33:41):
I think we're building a new class, but also, you know, as Trent mentioned just now and I was actually going to connect to his point what we're building a JPG is only one of the pipes from the cultural infrastructure that we actually want to see, and we hope to be able to be complemented by other groups, building different stuff as well. I think that the people that are building, you know, the museums of these new cultural industry are absolutely fantastic. MOCA is doing a great job. They're also, you know, doing curation, but it's about, you know, the curation within their community. And it's about the creation of the assets of each community member. So that's complimentary, what was the

Anna Rose (00:34:23):
What ws the name of that project you just mentioned?

Maria Paula (00:34:24):
It's museum of crypto art.

Anna Rose (00:34:28):
MOCA. Yeah.

Maria Paula (00:34:31):
So I think they're doing a fantastic job. We are also really not off platforms like on cyber that are not doing the kind of curation that we're doing, but they're, you know, they're allowing curators to create fantastic galleries. We, you know, like great VR experience as well. So we're hoping to, you know, be one of the building blocks. And we're also hoping for all of these platforms to come and test our work and, you know, obtain this record of on chain provenance from us, sort of like what we were at when we were building in Web3, you know, and that sort of diagram that you see very often, everything should be stackable and the modules should be combined. But you know, there's no monolithic solution because we, otherwise we would go back to centralization that's that doesn't really make sense.

Anna Rose (00:35:22):
It makes sense. And just a question though, now I kind of wanna understand how this actually works. Like how does, I think I understand conceptually what this is basically, I'm guessing you have like a site or some web element, which like collects a bunch NFTs, but are you actually doing anything on chain to collect them? Or are you just going to get them from like IPFS and like bringing them into one place? Because I mean, they are public in a way, like the links to the images you could technically track down.

Trent (00:35:51):
Yeah. So the way the protocol works currently, and we have some very fun updates kind of planned in the near future, which, you know, we want, we won't talk too much about right now, but essentially right now, the protocol exists on Ethereum L1. And so you show up to the JPG website, we have a allow list for some kind of alpha curators who are creating exhibitions. Currently those users show up to our curatorial tooling interface and they upload NFT token data to a sub registry that essentially functions as this curated exhibition. And then they push that exhibition on chain writing all of that data to Ethereum L1. And so that includes, you know, the contract address, the token ID, any sort of curatorial notes that they want to include for kind of, you know, their additional context that they want to want to record.

Anna Rose (00:36:45):
Very cool. And so this is where like art being displayed together. It's not just that it's displayed together on, on a website, but it's actually linked somehow together on an on chain commitment.

Trent (00:36:56):
Exactly. And so in the future, as these kinds of exhibitions stack on top of one another, we're really building out this social and interest graph in which you can start to look at the connections between curators who have these NFTs coming off of them can look at the, the relationships between the curators between the characters and NFTs and NFTs and NFTs such that it's in the long-term the vision is to then be able to actually have on chain reputation for this curators on chain scoring for the NFTs themselves based on, you know, how many times has this NFT or this collection been curated, was it all in one week and around launch and then never curated again? Or is this collection getting curated consistently, you know, every week for a year, who was the first person to curate this collection? Who, who was in there before? It was cool. So having that dataset on chain permissionless and accessible to anyone, I think just, just, is really starting to lay some of the groundwork for how future of decentralized social networks can, can start to look and can start to play out on chain. And I think that that idea is one of the things where we're most excited about one of the coolest elements of this whole NFT thing is the degree to which we started to put culture and put social networks on chain, right? The whole Bored Ape Yacht Club group is essentially a social network that, that exists on chain. And like you see the relationship of these human beings existing on the, on the blockchain, which is just such a fascinating shift in the last 12 months, 12 months ago, when you were interacting on chain, it was like, you're interacting with this kind of nameless address. There was no feeling of a human being on the other side, and now we're living in this world in which it really feels like when you're interacting on the blockchain, there's kind of a human being on the other side.

Tarun (00:39:02):
One interesting thing I think of like, what you just said was, and perhaps this is sort of, kind of like the principal agent thing that you're hoping changes is that the sort of backdrop of the current art industry doesn't emphasizes like the donors and the museums and not really the curators themselves. Right. You don't walk into a gallery and you see like the curator's name, right. You mainly see like funded by the XXX foundation and like this museum's first attempt at YYY theme, I'm just making up placeholders. But the description you're saying also makes it sound like part of the goal is to actually make the curators sort of the principal agents versus like the museum or donors. Would you say that's a reasonable characterization?

Sam (00:39:52):
Yeah. I would say that's reasonable, although it doesn't need to focus in at the individual level. Right. I mean, you know, could be more cooperative, could be cooperative broken down into those constituent individuals, I suppose. You know, so the idea of having like five people, co-curating a show together and like obviously, you know putting those, those five identities, the four or a DAO curating from them multisig or whatever it is. And then the reputation is occurring to a sort of organization of, of multiple individuals. So it is, and it's an interesting point. It's true. I mean, from my background, like I do actually know who a lot of those curators are and, you know, I noticed that names on the wall, but it's true that they're smaller than the BP name or the whoever it is, who sponsored the thing. And, and we do definitely want to put the focus on the people who were performing the labor, as well as on those things that they are curating. But it doesn't have to be sort of necessarily as individualistic.

Tarun (00:40:59):
Yeah. I, I guess I meant, you know, the entity, whether it's like a DAO or an individual or whatever, there is some notion that you have to have a identity to the entity that's during the curation. The entity could be made up of many people, but it's, it's just somehow that it flips the narrative from like, Hey, it's like whoever provided the capital gets like the biggest sign, which maybe in, in, in Britain it's less obvious, but here, I feel like in the US the museums definitely put like the donors that like 10 times the size,

Trent (00:41:31):
We're definitely more interested in like, who's doing the work. Right. and I mean, it crosses over into some of the like retroactive, public goods, funding conversations that have, that have been going on basically. I think Vitalik talked about at ETHCC in relation to some of this decentralized social media stuff as well, that like, you can actually look back at what someone did in the past to figure out whether they did a good job and so less focused on, you know, who the individual is. And more in terms of like, what they're contributing to the network is I think a really, a really interesting element.

Anna Rose (00:42:11):
How do you imagine sort of those, that reward system though, because so far, what we, what I've understood it as is a, it's a curation space for people to make this thing, but I don't really understand, like other than the glory or the fact that they can point back on the chain and be like, I put this, I was the first to find it, what else do they really get from this action? And maybe this is the future of your protocol, and you don't want to tell some of it. I don't know. That's also, okay.

Trent (00:42:38):
I think there are a number of potential systems that were, that were still considering. I mean, one of the ways in which we're definitely oriented towards the future is TCR type models. Token curated registries, which were a huge meme in kind of the 20 17, 20 18 timeframe. They were the, they were going to be the thing that is what a theorem was used for pre DeFi.

Anna Rose (00:43:03):
Why have I not heard this word in so long? Oh my God, can you define it again? I actually don't know if I remember

Trent (00:43:10):
Token curated registries. So essentially they're the systems in which, you know, it's just a registry. So at least the way to get on that list is through some combination of like staking and challenges and, you know, proposal periods and very governance heavy type stuff that also back then was all curating off-chain things. And so it like became a total, nothing burger. I mean, they just went nowhere because it felt like this like business maintenance task. I mean, we have so much better context for, you know, how governance is, is actually acts in this space now. And like, we know that if you're asking a community to do something like monitor a spreadsheet, assuming that they're economically rational actors, like it's a lot of times not going to be super, super effective. And then of course, like back then we didn't have anything on chain to curate. So it was all of this kind of like necessary disconnect of off-chain on chain stuff. Whereas now, I mean, they're like 25 million NFTs probably more now that exists, like there's stuff to curate on chain these days. And so that's kind of one avenue that we're looking at in terms of like how some of this reputation that you build up on chain kind of actually interacts with the protocol and kind of how you interact with that, that system. I also think like the glory is also a very powerful motivator, especially in what is kind of fundamentally a cultural and social space. Right. I mean, people have an innate love of curating and showing off their, their expertise and their knowledge in a way. Yeah, exactly. That, that not only just gives them kind of an internal satisfaction, but also you know, helps grow their, their following and, and notoriety. So I think kind of at this stage, we're really more focused on empowering people to kind of experience and reap the benefits of, of that more social curation for curation sake elements with some of this more classical crypto incentives in the background in kind of in development.

Maria Paula (00:45:23):
It has to be added that we do have royalties for curators. I think that we have so many good ideas for them that we forgot that tiny thing, but yeah, we have a royalties for curators. But we also have like huge ideas, like transects

Anna Rose (00:45:40):
Kind of, how do you get royalties though? Like how does that work? Cause like, to me, like, where's the, where's there a monetary exchange? You're basically just saying like, here's a bunch of things that I think are cool. Boom. Like that's the thing I'm not completely clear on. Like, are people paying to see your curated collection?

Trent (00:45:56):
Rather than royalties? It's really more like commission fees. So currently in the protocol, there is like marketplace functionality, I think in doing some soul searching and looking at the space, it didn't make sense for us to try and build an aggregated marketplace on top of building a curation focus layer. We really believe that like the proper way to, to build a crypto native kind of platform and protocol is to focus on one layer of the stack, do it really well and integrate with other players who are doing that, that same thing. And so most of the, you know, most not all of the marketplaces that, that exist today have the ability for curator splits. And we think that that trend is, is only going to continue such that if you are curating a thing that is for sale on a marketplace that we've integrated and a sale occurs then a commission will then flow through to you as the curator of that, of that thing.

Anna Rose (00:46:56):
Got it. Okay. That makes sense. That was the little piece that I didn't fully get there. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. But as you said, MP, there may be many more ways to incentivize people to be these curators.

Tarun (00:47:08):
One thing I think I've started to see, which I'm not sure exactly if it's a form of monetization, is that a lot of DAOs will do in-person or like real life events with some sort of gating from membership. And I'm sure that curators could effectively do the same thing where there's like events that they throw for all the people who, who follow them and stuff like that. And those events could be online. They could be IRL, but it does feel like the curators can have their choice. There's like a lot of ways once they like have the infrastructure to not have to like, think that much about it.

Anna Rose (00:47:45):
That's interesting. I mean, in the case of what we've been talking about, the, the form of the NFT and not the JPG, you guys are JPG the form of the NFT, the form of the NFT itself

Tarun (00:47:57):
No Gif for JPG hate allowed here. All right, this is, this is a judgment, judgment, judgment, free zone.

Anna Rose (00:48:08):
But what I was trying to say is NFTs, NFTs that we're thinking about, they are relatively simplistic, right? Still like NFTs, ERC 721, maybe ERC, what is it? 1155. Yeah. So like, just on a previous episode, I interviewed this group they're over on Kusama, they're building this like really like a very different kind of NFT project with all these other characteristics. Like, it's basically like a little bit advanced as itself, like the possibilities, the characteristics, the associations. And I'm wondering like right now, you guys are very focused. It sounds like on L1 Ethereum, but are you looking around at other types of networks basically where you could potentially do more like the NFTs themselves? Do you see them growing in their own functionality like themselves?

Trent (00:49:01):
I would say we're clearly in a multi chain world now. Right. and that's definitely something that like we want to, to support. I mean, some of the artworks and culture that we're seeing emerge on on other chains are really exciting and clearly have a lot of traction, great communities. And we absolutely want to support like where that culture is happening and making sure that we're properly kind of tracking and recording that history as well. I think in general, we do view that like Ethereum L1 is kind of a focal points or like headquarters of where all of this stuff is happening. And we don't really see that likely changing in terms of the kind of other NFTs standards that, that you might see popping up. That's a little bit of a harder question to answer when you start to introduce things on like, outside of this, this kind of cultural Homebase that don't conform to, that it's has the potential to be a kind of weird outlier situation. And so I think in general, we do view and deacon probably talk a little bit about this, that there is a kind of need to conform to some of the standards that have been established within Ethereum.

Maria Paula (00:50:28):
So, you know, basically when you're thinking of the artists, they want to show all of their legacy. If you have to actually refer to the websites to see all of what's being minted around different chains, introduces is a huge problem, you know, because they really don't have a way of indexing anything. That's why I think that, you know, everyone should start adhering to the Ethereum standards instead of reinventing the wheel, because there's already an overflowing market in Ethereum slash Polygon, maybe optimism, whatever Solana. Solana is, you know, part of the problem. So,

Anna Rose (00:51:07):
Okay. It's different is, I mean, Solana, is it a very different code or is it in any way emulating the ERC 721 it's completely different. I can imagine

Tarun (00:51:17):
I'm really different center to the point that FTX had to make their NFT marketplace support, like transfers between the two. And they were like, oh, we're going to do it in a week. And then that never happened. So, oh,

Maria Paula (00:51:29):
So imagine if that's, you know, that's one of the problems and right now it's mostly, you know, generic PFP projects going on in Solana imaging, the problem that it brings you you know, creators and to the whole ecosystem, it might like right now we have a huge problem with OpenSea being like a huge garage. Imagine when the other, you know, when the artists are trying to gather, you know, their collections from Hen, their collections from Super Rare, they're like, it's a compatibility mess. And you know, it's going to be like the problem's going to just like blow out of proportion. And that's why, you know, I believe that they should be trying a little bit harder.

Trent (00:52:08):
Yeah. Cause it really doesn't serve the creators. If the creators are minting assets, according to token standards that don't have longevity and it becomes this, like they have this work that for this brief period of time was according to this standard that never got any traction like that work ends up just being lost. So it's like, there's some really careful consideration that kind of needs to happen around there for the creators. And like, of course, something like Solana probably has the capacity to create their own kind of ecosystem and standard. And like it, you know, it's, it's not going to be a huge issue, but as those things proliferate, it's, you know, it's that old comic of like, oh, we have 14 standards. We need one standard to unify them all. Now we have 15 standards.

Anna Rose (00:52:58):
I have a weird question for you. Do you know if the original CryptoKitties are actually listed on OpenSea, can they be listed because they're not ERC 721

Maria Paula (00:53:06):
They are an OpenSea. Yeah. You can view them. I'm not sure how or how they breached them, but, eh, yeah, there they're definitely there.

Tarun (00:53:14):
I feel like they, they just made custom support for them because of like the historical context, not. Well, also like in the bear market, it was like, there was other NFTs for a while, right? Like, so like, what else are they going to do? Like they're building their platform. They need someone to trade something.

Trent (00:53:33):
I also thought that CryptoKitties were the first CryptoKitties are the first ERC 721.

Sam (00:53:40):
Crypto Punks won, but I'm pretty sure CryptoKitties were, at least that's what is always... Yeah.

Anna Rose (00:53:44):
I always understood it. Not as, or maybe it was done before formalization, but I, I have always been under the impression. I'm sorry. We're just gonna like, leave this on air. Someone out there knows. I do have four against one right now saying that it's it was ERC 721.

Tarun (00:54:01):
Yes, it is. It is. It it was definitely a 721. I was just looking at the source. It's it's definitely, I mean, actually in fact, the EIP for 721 mentions CryptoKitties.

Anna Rose (00:54:11):
Yeah. But I always thought I thought it had been slightly different.

Tarun (00:54:15):
No, I think in fact, CryptoKitties is what led to the standard because the 721 standard came from Dieter and like the Dapper for now Dapper Labs, people, the earliest ones were not, I think, based on this, because basically, basically they tried implementing it and then they needed to make the ERC. That's like what the ERC suggests...

Anna Rose (00:54:37):
But then maybe another example would be something like flow at Dapper Labs ended up doing, so they have their own blockchain and it's incredibly popular NFT blockchain, but just so removed. It feels like, do you know, are they using an ERC 721?

Tarun (00:54:52):
Well, I mean, they're using move, right? So they're using a totally different programming model. So like, for instance, you don't need like storage in the same way and stuff like that, but, but no, no, no, no, theirs, they have their own, but you know, they don't really have a bridge yet. And it's its own, it's its own extremely segregated ecosystem, I guess, would be how I would describe it.

Anna Rose (00:55:14):
That was my actual follow-up question to what you were saying, Trent, which is this idea or MP it was this idea that like, if you are only on one chain, obviously it's a lot more simple, but if you are on multiple chains, would it be important then that bridges and bridging systems also are taking into account some of these differences, because maybe they're not right now they're focused more on like simple transfers or something like that, but yeah. Is this something you're kind of paying attention to the bridges between the different ecosystems?

Trent (00:55:43):
Yeah. Some of my intuition is that most of the time you don't actually need to except in the case of transfer or sale, actually move an NFT from one place to another, to do a thing with it, to play a game with it. Right. All you need to do is prove that that asset is owned by the, the user. So I think there's been some interesting work being done for kind of cross protocol ownership. One of the early contributors to JPG sandbot is, is working on something called like zero X essential, which does some of this cross protocol ownership tracking. So I think there's something potentially interesting there, it ties into what we're doing in that all were concerned about is the, the data, the NFT token data, right? Like the asset doesn't need to be attached or included in, in anything. It's just like, we're just trying to chronicle this, this data history as opposed to, you know, actually interacting with the assets themselves.

Anna Rose (00:56:51):
Got it. Do you picture the curator, having a DAO of its own. We sort of said a DAO could be a curator, but like in this model that you're proposing, like, would it be possible to like, do a fractionalization of that one curated show? Like, would you basically take these different pieces, make this collage basically, of, of different kinds of art that referenced each other? Like, I don't know if this is something that you're kind of considering, I'm just sort of trying to understand the ways that this role could actually develop its own community potentially like, or does it have to have a community that is then curating?

Trent (00:57:27):
We've definitely thought about the idea of like, okay, you could create an NFT of this particular exhibition. Yeah. Yeah. It's a super interesting, super fun. That's one of the big ways in which we diverge from some of the other kind of companies doing anything related to displaying NFTs is that we have this on chain component, which does offer these interesting possibilities in terms of DAO's being curators in terms of smart contracts being curators. It does just open up a really interesting kind of dynamic there as Tarun was alluding to earlier this degree, to which, you know, a curator could have some sort of, kind of curator social token, they gives that community some access or role in the decision-making process ownership in that NFT, that of the exhibition that's created. I, I think we're at a stage where, I mean, there's like a million fun things to go do experiments. Yeah, we're focused on getting kind of some of the most essential kind of like beta product things in place now. And then as we, as we build up that community kind of seeing where people want us to take this things, cause there's so much fun stuff to do here.

Maria Paula (00:58:50):
It's interesting because you know, it like a few years back, or maybe just like last year, you know, the, the meme of, you know, we're opening everything to the community was like a sign of, you know, the, the core team being a little bit lazy or not only what to do, but right now actually, you know, you see how people are building on top of certain things. And loot is probably the best example you have of that. So, you know, if people can create these sort of like meta metaverse, eh, I don't want to use that word right now or anymore. You know, if people can build on top of, you know, what, like this crazy idea of a dominic, then there is the capability of, you know, people creating different universes based on, you know, someone else's creation or their own.

Anna Rose (00:59:43):
You just brought up something MP, what, what do we call it? We can't say metaverse anymore. We really need to brainstorm some new ideas.

Maria Paula (00:59:50):
Facebook.

Anna Rose (00:59:52):
No, I know what that is, Paula.

Maria Paula (00:59:58):
I mean, culturally appropriate us. So we culturally appropriate them.

Anna Rose (01:00:02):
Okay. We call ourselves, we're working in the Facebook.

Maria Paula (01:00:05):
I am working on Facebook.

Anna Rose (01:00:08):
I feel like we're helping their brand more than hurting their brand with that though. I just think we need a new world word for the world that we're working in. I don't, I don't love web3 world either. I find I say it, but I'm always like, oh...

Maria Paula (01:00:21):
Web3 it's terrible as well. It's terrible. The internet.

Trent (01:00:26):
People have been throwing out ideas on Twitter. I see a lot of like Cyberverse. Hyperverse.

Anna Rose (01:00:33):
Hyperverse, I like that. Very late nineties. I like it.

Tarun (01:00:40):
I get that. Everyone loves Neal Stephenson for, for coming up with this, but we should just find a new, like scifi novel instead of like literally regurgitating the same boring novel over and over and over again for all the words.

Anna Rose (01:00:56):
I by chance read Snow Crash like last year, just cause I've been, it's been on the list. I finally got to it. It's not a great book. It's got some great ideas and sorry, I'm going to like, I hope I don't hurt anybody's feelings, but like, it's not what I expected.

Tarun (01:01:10):
I don't get why, why have we just like decided that this person gets like to choose the name for everything? And I honestly, all their names just sound like they took some acid and listen to Carl Sagan on like 2X speed.

Anna Rose (01:01:24):
While driving around on skateboards, which were,

Maria Paula (01:01:27):
Which would be a great experience. Right. it has to be said that this guy, Neal Stephenson actually tweeted that he has no connection to meta. I respect that. I respect him for that. You know, that was badass.

Trent (01:01:44):
Tarun, what do you think we should call it?

Tarun (01:01:46):
I have no real horse in this race. I'm not good at naming things, but like, I just really hate the fact that we've basically made portmanteaus of like astronomical objects and very pedestrian concepts. And somehow we just like keep doing the same thing over and over it. Like, there's gotta be something better than that. Like, people are more creative than that. Hopefully, unfortunately, those people don't have marketing prowess. So we're kind of stuck back in the, the enterprise metaverse by that, that is a real phrase that was used in a company call quarterly call and Microsoft, Microsoft quarterly calls said, they're going to make an enterprise metaverse just think about.

Trent (01:02:34):
Blockchain now, enterprise metaverse. I honestly, I I'm full support. That's hilarious.

Tarun (01:02:46):
I'm surprised people have it didn't mean that, but it's like maybe like slightly too obscure, but like I, yeah.

Anna Rose (01:02:54):
Okay. I have one last point I really want to talk to you all about, and this is actually, I don't know if you have ideas on this yet, but something you were saying earlier talking about all like kind of every activity you do on chain is even more written and immutable than every activity do online. I think people don't always realize that like online, yes, it's there forever, but it kind of isn't there are ways to get things off line, but once it's immutable on the blockchain, maybe you could hide the images if they're somehow changeable. But a lot of things are like your actions. The things that you're doing are very much written and recorded for posterity forever. So I mean, this is where ZK privacy, like the topic that we bring up often on the show comes in this idea that like, if all of your activities are so fixed and, and potentially like searchable, sometimes it's awesome. Cause you can say like I was there first or this was my idea or something like that, but other times mistakes or bad choices, or like what if you do curate something and the art that you choose changes, meaning after some time, you know, like it gets used and appropriated in ways that you didn't want to. And now there's a record that you curated or, or even minted some something that's not good or not acceptable or something like that. So one of the thoughts, and this is something that we've been in the ZK community and in our chats. And like we did a Sessions where we talked about this as well, this idea of privacy and NFTs, ZK and NFTs. It doesn't have to be Zika, but I did want to sort of throw it out there if I don't know if this is something you guys have started to think about, or if you know of groups within the NFT space that are thinking about it, or do you think it's like, we're going to go ahead with this kind of phase. And then later, like have to sort of incorporate some sort of privacy.

Maria Paula (01:04:46):
I'm not aware of anyone that's building a privacy solution for NFTs. And that was actually one of my concerns around February. Like I was not really into collecting NFTs just because I felt that it was exposing me more on chain. And at this point, you know, like being aware that I also took part of, you know, 2020 DeFi summer and what else, you know, like all of my mistakes, people can look them up, but also they can look up really interesting stuff, you know? Like they can look up, you know, how long have I been in the space? They can also look up my mistakes, which are many. They can look up as well. The directions that my life has taken because, you know, I joined a multisig. Then I joined the other one and that is really, really daunting. And that was worrying me. I thought about this problem. I was, I was worried of collecting NFTs because of this, but it's so much fun in the end that I ended up collecting anyways. I think that actually, you know, it's very hard to solve that problem, but the very friendly solution that we have around it's actually just, go anon and have a good running wallet make sure you follow everything to not doxx yourself. Jesus Christ. And it's not that hard to not doxx yourself.

Anna Rose (01:06:08):
Although it's getting harder, it is harder. Cause it's like, it really is like emails and it's harder to, to sign up for things without some reference to yourself.

Trent (01:06:17):
Yeah. I also, I also just assume every single thing I've ever done on chain is, is doxxed. And that it's just all out there. Because if any normal human being wanting to look hard enough, they could probably figure it out. And I know chain analysis and the government, if they wanted to work hard enough to figure it out, they, they, they could, I think that's just kind of like one of the realities of this space and it's hard to get around. I mean, some of the, the ZK stuff I think is like going to very clearly be important frontier that like comes next. I think we're right now in this period in which like, okay, like we're kind of explicitly trying to do a social thing here in which like identities anon or otherwise like are explicitly tied to these actions that like the whole point is like, yeah, if you curate a pump and dump PFP project, that becomes a part of your kind of on chain legacy. And like, we don't know how that kind of thing is, is going to work out. We've seen it a little bit in the last couple of weeks, just in terms of how many people have been getting doxed for their mal behavior 12 months ago. It's like, if you did a lot of this stuff that people have been getting kind of more or less canceled for, nobody would be able to figure out who they were. But the number of doxxed addresses has just like exponentially increased even on a relative basis, it feels like.

Tarun (01:07:48):
But we should also take a slight, like maybe anthropological lens of like why this current boom is different, which is that it's about flexing in a lot of ways. And so people don't want privacy for that. They want to be like, Hey, look, it's me. You. I own 5 million or I don't know, whatever. Like I don't understand the hype beast subculture, but like that's clearly was like a very big early driver before it became more broadened in terms of the user base. In which case you you're actually very antithetical to privacy, you don't want privacy. And like, the problem is like somehow when the movement seeded itself with this kind of like that type of persona, it can't really escape that. So I feel like you need another thing that like triggers the private movement. And I don't know what that is.

Anna Rose (01:08:40):
I want to share a few ideas that have already been like in our community been discussed. So I think so far when, when you hear ZK and NFT, you think are private and it's like that the NFT ownership would be private that the address connected to the NFT would somehow be obfuscated. But It's Like, what if instead the NFT is like securely in the wallet in an address, but the use of the NFT could be done. Like you could use it in z ZK context. So potentially like you could submit the fact that you have the thing, but not submit what it is or that like, maybe it, it like gives you the membership into something and it's not on the minting side or the trading side where the ZK part is. But rather in the use, when you talk about curation or something like this, and here, this is just, this is what I'm getting kind of excited about. So I just wanted to bring it up. I've been thinking about it for a while. Hadn't mentioned it on the air, on the show, but since we're talking about all these different ideas, I thought maybe I'd throw it out there.

Trent (01:09:41):
It's a super fun idea to have like the owner be mysterious of something. I mean, to, to Tarun's point it's like part of this flexing and stuff. And like the antithesis of privacy is like the only way NFTs are getting value is as a result of who owns them. Right? So something like JPG potentially in terms of creating this more cultural, culturally based community-based value system, like would allow for value to not be so tied to individual identity. It's not that, you know, Vincent van Gogh has this thing bought this thing. So it must be, it must be good it's that all of these people have thought it's cool and you know, included it in one of their, one of their exhibitions. And so I think it's a really interesting point that for some of the ZK stuff too, around NFTs gain prominence, there does need to be a different kind of value system associated with them.

Tarun (01:10:42):
Privacy has this hard part that bootstrapping it does not really provide people immediate value. It's always like they're, they're betting on some future, like counterfactual that someone will find them and like, they want to avoid that, right? It's almost like buying insurance, no one wants to buy insurance. Right. Everyone wants everyone, like only buys it because they're forced to, or they've been fucked, right. There's only two options. And so somehow like flipping that narrative becomes important. I suspect my sort of vague thesis is that if you have say DAOs or groups curating where individuals do not want their votes to be public, even though the DAOs whatever, like the final mechanism for doing curation or picking, doing something related to the NFT is public such a mechanism might actually make sense where like DAO members don't want to influence each other on their curatorial decisions. Right? Because like that, there's obviously going to be bias if everyone can see things, but that's like also kind of a bit of a niche application, right? It's like the Base-y hype piece, people are never going to, they could never care about that.

Sam (01:11:49):
No, I just think it's a very interesting conversation in relation as well, to compensations have been taking place in sort of arts and culture for many decades now, these questions of authorship, the importance of authorship things. You know, when a work is finished when it's not, when it's part of an artist's body of work and when it's not, and also, you know, obviously the whole discourse around identity being either performative or mutable in various ways. And so, you know, campaigning for like a fully on chain culture with no privacy provisions flies in the face of, I think a lot of what people would have seen for been achieved in those areas, in the arts artists shouldn't feel pressured for example, to mint everything they make and when they do mint it, what does that mean about the work? Right. can you mint a sketch? Can you meant something that isn't like, you know, a part of that top tier of things you really feel complete? You know, obviously having everything traced back to these identities and addresses really foregrounds like the signature, right. And it, and it does foreground that kind of individual entity. And also like, I think there are some artists to reinvent themselves. Either some metaphorically speaking, I know some artists who have three completely discreet identities they may completely different work as three different people. And, you know, how does that translate to this context? Right. All of these things, which is really thinking, I think very laterally to how the space works and things at the moment are interesting things to explore. I don't have answers to any of them.

Anna Rose (01:13:18):
Yeah. As you were saying before experiments, this is what we are doing. We are trying. And my, the one I want to sort of seed to the audience in general is this one where we try to experiment with ZK.

Tarun (01:13:30):
I think in, in some sense we probably need privacy preserving DeFi first before we could actually imagine the NFTs use case being palatable to people because like, people can't even transact without giving out their email or like effectively right now. Right. Like, okay. Yes. I want to sell something Open Sea, what am I going to do? Like hit refresh and like stare at the page 500 times, like, right. So like we still got along with the go in that world.

Trent (01:13:56):
I totally agree. But I think there is an interesting idea here of experimenting with some of the ZK stuff, in terms of like, maybe it's a minting contract where like the minter is totally anonymous, anyone can utilize it and you try and get big artists and like imitations of big artists, like all doing this thing, such that there is like speculation around like, is this actually X copy? Or is it like one of, you know, X copies kind of followers or, or yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Tarun (01:14:29):
Or again, that's trained on X copy, that's a auto-generating X copies.

Trent (01:14:33):
Yeah. And so like, where's the potential for like the fun of NFTs to allow for some experiments and early experimentation around ZK that gets people who wouldn't use it otherwise to go kind of like play around and, and understand the technology. I think it's a really cool idea.

Anna Rose (01:14:53):
Cool. Thanks everyone for coming on the show. Big thank you for this conversation. Yeah.

Trent, Maria Paula, Sam (01:14:59):
Thank you. Great. Thanks so much for having us. This was super fun. Thanks.

Anna Rose (01:15:04):
All right. So I want to say a big thank you to the podcast producer, Tanya, podcast editor Henrik, and to our listeners. Thanks for listening.