#citizenweb3 Episode link: https://www.citizenweb3.com/likecoin Episode name: Phoebe Poon, publishing, democrats & community In this episode, Citizen Cosmos speaks to Phoebe Poon, co-founder of LikeCoin, a decentralized publishing protocol, built on Cosmos SDK. Phoebe discusses how the changing social context in our ever-changing world is making Web 3, especially decentralized publishing ever more relevant. Phoebe sheds light on broader and lesser publicized use cases for NFT’s as well as giving key advice on how to succeed with a start-up during Crypto Winters. She addresses historic preservation in many different forms, potential avenues for monetization and the barriers to user adoption, as well as many other topics. 00;00;03;04 - 00;00;24;05 Speaker 1 Booth space. Samuel. In this episode of The Citizen Cosmos podcast, I speak with C.B. Poon, founder of Litecoin, an open sourced, decentralized publishing protocol built on Cosmos. As the game will discuss storage, publishing, history, social media and web3. We also talked about the importance of preservation, the role of the community and surviving crypto winters. 00;00;25;12 - 00;00;38;00 Speaker 2 Sometimes we need to wait for certain social context to happen to lead the layman or majority of them must understand why this matter. The mindset of running a startup is very important. 00;00;38;17 - 00;00;48;19 Speaker 1 The most important invention in the world is history, because it doesn't matter what weapon you have. If you control history, then you control everything else. What if there was no heaven? 00;00;49;00 - 00;00;56;01 Speaker 2 We know we cannot expand too quick to be lean. And so that's why we can survive a lot of crypto winters. 00;00;58;04 - 00;01;20;19 Speaker 1 Before we rocket off into our next episode. Here are some news from the sponsor of this episode. Cyber Congress Down. The foundation has started its delegation's policy for validators on the Bostrom Blockchain, and the Space Pushing Network was launched with 96% of its supply to be dropped to various cosmos ecosystem chains. Hi everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Assistant Cosmos Podcast. 00;01;20;19 - 00;01;31;07 Speaker 1 I have with me favorite A Day from Vicodin from Lakeland. Phoebe Hi, welcome to the show. Would you like to introduce yourselves and tell us about everything you do and working on? 00;01;31;11 - 00;02;03;12 Speaker 2 Yeah, Thanks for having me. Hello, everyone. I'm Phoebe. One of the founding team member of Litecoin. Also currently the team of like Elon, where we started doing around decentralized publishing and work with a lot of media and writers from where we came from. On utilizing blockchain and also decentralized storage to be a better future for publishing. We actually started in about 2017 on Ethereum, exploring the idea of reinventing the like more and monetization part. 00;02;03;22 - 00;02;35;07 Speaker 2 And then after we have almost complete our whitepaper, we decided to go one step further to develop our own sovereignty chain and application specific chain on publishing on cosmos in 2019. It felt like a long time ago, but yeah, that was a hell of a ride in Cosmos. And then now we are in 2022 having our chain connected with a lot of other chain using IBC and serving a lot of our users, especially in Southeast Asia. 00;02;35;17 - 00;02;54;19 Speaker 2 So yeah, it's a very interesting application specific chain on publishing. I guess in Cosmos, we might be the only one working on this area and vertical right now, and that's how Cosmos work, right? The Internet of Blockchains serving different kind of vertical in the space. So I'm very happy to be here today to share about what we do. 00;02;54;28 - 00;03;17;15 Speaker 1 Nice. Nice. It is a hell of a ride if you think about it. I mean, for crypto, since 2019, even 17, right? This is like a couple of dinosaur extinctions. Definitely. And I'm not joking around. You know, if you look at like all the projects that have been since then have been reborn, die then never came back. It's definitely like a few mass extinctions, so well done on that and we'll definitely talk a little bit about that. 00;03;17;26 - 00;03;41;23 Speaker 1 First thing is first that I would like to ask you, and this is going to be like a really lame, simple question, but I would love to hear your explanation as somebody who is, like you said yourself, spend already so many years working on that, what is the difference for person out there between media and publishing and decentralized media and decentralized publishing? 00;03;42;02 - 00;03;53;29 Speaker 1 So for somebody out there who's maybe a little bit clueless about what we are all doing over here, maybe has some experience, doesn't matter. But what would you explain to somebody who spent so long working on it? How would you describe the differences? 00;03;53;29 - 00;04;17;15 Speaker 2 Yeah, wow, that's a great question to kick off the discussions, because I have a lot of stories to tell about how we educate Non-Crypto people to get into the space. The first thing is, majority of the time you are not actually in doubt about the product, but actually educating them about the basic of blockchain. One The one a majority of the time are actually teaching them how to create a wallet. 00;04;17;23 - 00;04;39;08 Speaker 2 I think that's the first very funny fundamental part of being working with a lot of layman users is that before you actually introduce them what Litecoin is or what decentralized publishing is, you need to create wallet and why it matters to you. So I think that's the first part where you need a lot of patience to fill the gap between what three and Web two World. 00;04;39;10 - 00;05;09;28 Speaker 2 So that's the first thing. And I guess the second thing we observe is that we see a transition between at least from 2019 to today. 2022 is because the social contact is a little bit different. Now, I remember when we first started on Cosmos as dark to import users using our NASA on WordPress people are actually very intimate about creating wallets and all those stuff going on blockchain or why do we need to store on ipfs? 00;05;10;09 - 00;05;39;00 Speaker 2 However, because of where I came from, the social context told them, Hey, there are actually things that could be disappeared one day in just one night even. It could be a 30 years old newspaper, or it could be as simple as your Twitter account or Facebook account that could be deleted in just one night. And you actually spend your entire like ten years of time and effort building all your social graph, writing all your blogs, e-mail, all your content. 00;05;39;00 - 00;06;11;15 Speaker 2 Some people even have a lot of good status on their Twitter. You see all the Twitter storm or even on Facebook. And when they experience those situation firsthand, I mean, knowing something could be disappeared, they start to realize what we have been telling them is a solution towards a problem right now. So I guess is the learning for us to is sometimes we need to wait for certain social context to happen, to let the layman or majority of the mass understand why this matter. 00;06;11;15 - 00;06;36;07 Speaker 2 That was quite a very remarkable months for us, especially in the past two years, where we see a spike in adoption of what we view, especially the tools that we have in place. People start to reach out to us instead of us reaching out to them. So I guess this is a very interesting atmosphere and user adoption observation compared to a lot of different projects. 00;06;36;20 - 00;07;03;02 Speaker 2 Thirdly, I think is also because a lot of what we project, they don't really have the right tool to own. But laymen without technical knowledge especially, we work with writers and journalists, meaning the expertise is in writing, meaning they don't have understanding on any turncoat work. And so you actually need to prepare a lot of documentation, a lot of tutorial and a lot of walkthrough in person. 00;07;03;02 - 00;07;23;11 Speaker 2 That will take a lot more time than getting people on board to any defi projects so easily. Gap because they like trading. They already in the atmosphere of being in ethics or tradition or trading. So when they adopted defi projects it's much more easier. But compared to us, when is the product that merge into web to use a flow? 00;07;23;19 - 00;07;32;29 Speaker 2 It's a little bit hot and you need a lot more workflow. So I would share a little bit the three of these about point on like the experience that we had. 00;07;33;08 - 00;07;56;19 Speaker 1 This is awesome and I still want to talk a lot more about the experience because it's really interesting to see what the projects have learned over those, the projects that are not there for like half a year but much longer. There is a lot, a lot, in my opinion, to be learned from you guys and it's awesome. But before we get a little bit more into that, I still want to dig a little bit about the decentralization spectrum that we started to talk about. 00;07;56;28 - 00;08;27;18 Speaker 1 And as you were explaining, you mentioned a couple of times, not why, but you mentioned that it matters the change to decentralized publishing. You also said that it will bring a better future and there was several times where you mentioned like something like that. But could you explain why in your opinion, that future is better? Why does it matter for us to change from the publishing model that we have today in Web two to what you guys are proposing and to what blockchain is offering in general? 00;08;27;26 - 00;08;49;27 Speaker 2 Yeah, I think I would bring up several aspect of things. The first is to reinforce why I mentioned social context is so important in terms of the understanding or why we need this product nowadays, today, not before or tomorrow. I think first is where I came from. A lot of pro-Democrat media actually got shut down in two weeks of time. 00;08;50;11 - 00;09;31;10 Speaker 2 Historical record of 30 years newspaper got whipped out in one night and that's part of the our historical preservation or content preservation is one of the important aspect of having publishing on the decentralized manner. I think that's the first thing is very important. And the second is how we can actually improve the current publishing industry from a sunset era to somewhere in individuals can actually parties pay and have much more ownership and potentially to monetize open content, especially because what to business model isn't really cater for open content. 00;09;31;18 - 00;09;59;24 Speaker 2 As you can see, a lot of media actually pursuing a paywall model or even a subscription model that actually isn't really working so well. And most importantly is if media set up a paywall for information that meant to be distributed much more wider, much more broader. So that important truth of some sort of social aspect that need to deliver is actually deterring them from doing so because of paywall. 00;09;59;24 - 00;10;28;19 Speaker 2 So meaning people who not afford to pay off or who cannot access are able to access all these important content. So I think for our vision is there should be a way for open content to be monetized and also to have a better way to preserve them as of history record. And also most importantly, there's a way to improve the content integrity of that particular content. 00;10;28;20 - 00;10;49;16 Speaker 2 I think this is quite important when you look back into history or also because of the social context that we have. And if you read the Book of Animal Farm, you know, social content integrity actually important when it come back to be a reference point of information where you actually want to have a place, you can actually fact check it. 00;10;49;28 - 00;11;31;25 Speaker 2 You can use some certain time timestamp to proven some kind of work and all this need to be done or is a better way to be done in a decentralized manner. So I think in combined there are three key words that I would say Why do we need decentralized publishing? One is content integrity, second is content preservation. And also thirdly is how open content can look for a better business model and monetized Asian model, not just for the creator themselves, but also how they actually build community around their fan base and also how they actually sustain a better content quality in terms of the ecosystem. 00;11;32;07 - 00;11;53;29 Speaker 2 When you think about it, currently there are a lot of media model actually relying on advertising and then I'm sure a lot of people already realize is the sole business model is relying on advertising, meaning whoever can pay you more, the more content you would create around those, and meaning you will see a lot more same content for the people who can pay. 00;11;54;19 - 00;12;16;22 Speaker 2 However, for quality content that actually not attracting advertising will have more or less presence in the internet. And then the other day humankind would be more less too exposed to quality content means that it will become a more commercialized content viewing in our daily lives. So I guess that would be leading to a more bigger problem that we see in the long run. 00;12;17;02 - 00;12;29;15 Speaker 2 So that's why I think it's very important to explore how we can empower all this kind of not just business model but different kind of how content should be published and how content should be owned and how content should be distributed. 00;12;29;22 - 00;12;50;08 Speaker 1 Of course, I think it was totally agree with everything you said. I think it was Isaac Asimov, right, who said the most important invention in the world is history because it doesn't matter what weapon you have. If you control history, then you control everything else, right? Including religion and including any other form of anything else. So preservation, definitely. 00;12;50;08 - 00;13;32;01 Speaker 1 I think one of the most important things and on a note of preservation, actually, I would love to hear if you don't mind your opinion, I think it's a big discussion of the history of when and how did we progress in terms of media and from going from newspapers to distributed media to the centralized media. Do you think that that progression, you know, from the New York Times or the The Sunday Times, the London Times, whatever, been number one or source of information for the whole world as that changed is are things like methods of distribute platforms that that allow you to do like like coin like mirror, so on and so forth. 00;13;32;11 - 00;13;45;16 Speaker 1 Has that really changed the way we as humans, as the end user perceive information and where we take our content from, Or is that still a progress that is still going to be going on for many, many years to come? 00;13;45;25 - 00;14;19;07 Speaker 2 I definitely see it is still evolving, especially from what you said. Editorial generated content, right? New York Times, BBC, CNN, Wall Street Journal, they're all majority of them are editorial generated content, which is, I would say the gen one of how media started. And they still hold a lot of centralized power in terms of influence and impact. However, I do see a switch with the rise of patron medium substack like even mirror that X, Y, or z, even like point. 00;14;19;11 - 00;14;43;11 Speaker 2 We're actually doing some more focusing on user generated content. And I still see it evolving. I think they're all looking for a way to sustain this, a whole business model. And in terms of how we can get other writers and how we get the readers is because I think we're not lagging of writers, we are lacking of readers how we can actually gain the attention span of readers to read quality content. 00;14;43;17 - 00;15;10;12 Speaker 2 So I think it is still evolving. And now with the word free in place, people can have more imagination of what potential it could be in terms of this transforming. And I would say I think especially during COVID, we see a lot more information or have the rise in terms of readership on this kind of user generated content during COVID, especially because it was a bit different. 00;15;10;12 - 00;15;36;20 Speaker 2 China China has a more compressed media landscape. So in terms of people wanted to know what happened inside it, the actually rely on a lot of this web3 media platform to actually distribute their information. So I would say social context issue also play a very important role in terms of how people are thought of how, how, how people have to change their behavior of where they preserve information. 00;15;37;01 - 00;16;10;24 Speaker 2 And different like major crises will also bring a new behavior. And I think I see this a lot more during COVID and post COVID actually also during some Western event, right, Like the presidential election of Donald Trump, the whole thing, how they switched from major media to social media, I think the whole landscape, no matter, is institutional player or users like from the funnel bottom of the funnel, the whole funnel is actually evolving to become more and more hybrid. 00;16;11;06 - 00;16;37;12 Speaker 2 And even I think Tier one media actually struggling to keep their writers or columnists on them because why would they pay? What would the New York Times like take a majority cut of their readership or even traffic is that they can actually start their own patron or medium or something like that. So I think there's still like an unspoken battle between two and I think the balance between these two will be very interesting to see. 00;16;37;26 - 00;17;03;17 Speaker 2 Yeah. So one thing that we also observe and notice is people who actually care enough about their content, they also are moving away from platform centric publishing platform, let's say mirrored X, Y, Z, or mirror or medium or SUBSTACK. So one thing that writers actually don't have time to manage is you need to handle multiple platform or distribution channel, and that's actually a headache. 00;17;03;17 - 00;17;24;29 Speaker 2 LESLIE We had a podcast today. Want to put it on YouTube, shop at Spotify or even like Google Podcasts. They there's a lot of distribution channel and how they can actually distribute better sometimes might not be like on one single platform. So our approach is also the same. So we're like is in the platform itself is actually a infrastructure. 00;17;24;29 - 00;17;46;05 Speaker 2 There is like a publishing stack that can facilitate in all kind of websites, especially WordPress, because we believe if a writers actually care enough or for their own content, they actually want different autonomy of their sites, their topics so that they can work on the SEO, so that they can monetize or explore different business model is just not one. 00;17;46;23 - 00;18;08;29 Speaker 2 We believe it could be a hybrid business model, so some might still rely on a lot of work to business model, let's say subscription, let's say advertising, but then they can also add some element of web free. And that's where our plugin also is came in, where they can actually play around with collect as an NFT or even monetize with or like button. 00;18;08;29 - 00;18;29;18 Speaker 2 So all this kind of mixture I believe would fit in the current publishing landscape because it's still evolving. I don't think there would be a clear cut between what to and what street, so we won't see like a clear jump. Let's like for journalists saying, Oh, let's jump directly into Web three, let's set everything on. We are the X, Y and Z or something like that. 00;18;29;26 - 00;18;50;03 Speaker 2 I think it's really hard for them to get over that hurdle. That's why our position of our product, majority of them actually the bridge between Web 2.3, they have a choice to get the hybrid business model. They have a choice to store that stuff on ipfs or weave, or they can also still chose to store on a centralized platform. 00;18;50;04 - 00;19;18;09 Speaker 2 It doesn't matter. We just we believe it will be a process of education to laymen users, especially in the publishing industry, for media plays, for publishers, for journalists, for editor to understand. Hey there. Actually something new that you can add in to your current workflow. So I think that's very interesting to see their acceptance level. I think also on the reason like NFT hype, a lot of maturity of a magazine or newspaper actually exploring that as well. 00;19;18;12 - 00;19;32;08 Speaker 2 I think times that are some of them not quite successful, some of them do quite well. I think they're all start to explore new business model to survive, right? So I would see these evolvement coming along. 00;19;32;21 - 00;20;01;28 Speaker 1 Would you say on the topic of advertisement model? Because I think that is a very important part of that. And would you say that it's fair enough to say that it's not about so much the advertisement model? Because I think that will change a lot. And I think the Web trademark is still going to explore that, you know, whether it's going to be, like you say, like a plug in a tool or whatever that you guys use or the fact that you can monetize your own content and so on. 00;20;02;06 - 00;20;27;01 Speaker 1 I think the biggest change is from people going thinking in their mind, okay, I'm working for a company or I'm working for freelance company. To me, I'm the content and a lot of people, when they kind of understand that what are the hustlers economy, right? I guess, you know, when they realize I am the content, not the other company, then that's when the big change, the big shift, I think happens with people. 00;20;27;01 - 00;20;46;01 Speaker 1 At least that is in my experience. Would you say that is true in your experience and the experience that you work with other people or for them? It's more important to understand. Like you said, you know, we have a tool that can make us money. Doesn't matter who is the content, who produces it, whereas the shift happen in the mind or in the tools that the person uses. 00;20;46;01 - 00;20;47;05 Speaker 1 I guess that's the question. 00;20;47;14 - 00;21;20;19 Speaker 2 I think the NFT hype actually proven that is more on the mind than the tools because we have been trying to educate them on Metamask on why you need to own your key, own your content. All these kind of same tools already, I think is the people not ready. And once you see more peer getting into this landscape, they start to switch in terms of their conceptual of what is crypto, what is blockchain, and what took NFT do. 00;21;20;29 - 00;21;51;16 Speaker 2 So I would say minus over tools as tos is quite easy to build, frankly speaking, although like with a really seamless experience of you all, it could take time but is not that difficult. Is that how people are willing to accept? And the first try is the most difficult one. So I would say mind, and I think most importantly for free compared to Web two is does it allow individual to have a choice? 00;21;52;01 - 00;22;14;12 Speaker 2 I think that's very important for what to see as majority of our daily consumption on social media or publishing or media, they are quite centralized. You actually don't have a choice or don't have a say in terms of how you actually want to own your content or how you want to monetize. You basically don't have choice in the infrastructure level where things should be done. 00;22;14;16 - 00;22;41;29 Speaker 2 Everyone there is even royalty is quite central ISE structuring now, but in the high side where we could deliver a better future. In terms of this, however, I think what is lacking right now is the successful use case, especially in our vertical, I would say NFT, but a lot of more discussion in terms of creators, economy, but majority of the discussions are still around art pieces, gaming assets. 00;22;42;10 - 00;23;03;25 Speaker 2 But for more data take content is still lack of discussion of how it could evolve or how it potentially can be. And this is like a both way sort, right? Because NFT kind of now Lehman had an image of what NFT should be. They have a framework because of what the story of the market has been telling them. 00;23;04;03 - 00;23;24;25 Speaker 2 Oh, it could be a pixel art, it could be something like that. But that how could be a blog as an NFT. But when you think about it and ideas, use a format of how you carrying all this kind of content, what you're buying is on the NFT. What you're buying is actually the content itself. So I think this story would still take time to evolve when more use cases start coming up. 00;23;25;05 - 00;23;59;23 Speaker 2 But I do see a lot more industrial leading towards that. And like Football League, how this book in NFT format, the publications are actually thinking about adopting royalties in terms of launching royalties because it actually does make sense. Well, if you are having a huge secondary market of on on publishing for school, school publishing. So I think this is more like a mine or storytelling type of tools, tools already not the heart, but like it takes a lot of different elements social context, pure industry. 00;24;00;04 - 00;24;10;29 Speaker 2 Also, the reason market might scare off some people about crypto as well. So I think it's a little element coming to that storytelling and transitioning for people get into this industry. 00;24;11;11 - 00;24;32;08 Speaker 1 Definitely. I think one of our things like as a project is to say that our goal is building for decentralized or at least distributed communications. There is a lot of projects out there. This is actually my next question that are in one way or another trying to do that. That I guess my question is about the differences and about how like COIN stands out there. 00;24;32;16 - 00;24;48;20 Speaker 1 So there is, from what I know, from the ones that I'm going to mention, like on top of my head, I'm sorry for anyone else out there that I will now not mention, but I can think of all of it, which is a weird one, but that's definitely still communication. Not much. Many heard of it, but still there is like estimates. 00;24;48;20 - 00;25;16;26 Speaker 1 There is Miller, X, y, z, like coin. There is cyber with there, like the social graphs, there is the think office building right now. Right there is the ether I thing goes on cosmos. So there is I think the 2017 I remember a lot of them, those like Alice was Japanese project which didn't really survive that long but but anyways from the big ones that's come to my mind now and all of them, they kind of pursue different methods of distribute, of decentralized communication. 00;25;17;08 - 00;25;40;15 Speaker 1 But the ones that I think I would like you to talk about, are you free to talk about all of them? Are any the ones you want are what is the main differences between like COIN for a point of what it's offering from the proposition from the value proposition I guess compares to things like a Steemit and Mira or hive or hive, I guess if you want to call it Hive or whatever. 00;25;40;15 - 00;25;42;15 Speaker 1 So yeah, sorry for the long question. 00;25;42;26 - 00;26;10;23 Speaker 2 Yeah, no worries. I got it. I think the major difference is Litecoin is a West Sea publishing stack and is not a particular platform that we want to offer to users. So there are several layers that we want to deliver to users. First is when media come to us, they actually have a application specific chain that is ready to facilitate in terms of different kind of module and module. 00;26;10;23 - 00;26;43;20 Speaker 2 It means what we include in the chain level. So the one thing that we build is called the metadata registry. So it's like the library system having an ISP and catalog. And I think this is one of the thing is very unique in our chain level because we do believe if you need to improve the current publishing landscape or set up better infrastructure for people to get into West and be build the point publishing, you need a ESPN layer first so that we can build things on top of it. 00;26;43;20 - 00;27;07;29 Speaker 2 So that's on the chain level where we want to take care of metadata registry so that when you point to different storage, you can actually have a card just like how you go to the library, you can actually search, Hey, this book is actually in somewhere in the world in which library you can see the inventory, you can see all the metadata of this book, which version of it you can even see is available on Amazon. 00;27;08;07 - 00;27;39;06 Speaker 2 So it is actually the base layer of how publishing should be organized and cataloging. So I think that's the first thing that are very different compared to other centralized platforms because I don't think they have the infrastructure support in terms of how things should be organized in catalog and metadata. How is there a framework of how publishing in WiFi should be and this infrastructure can actually facilitate a lot of different platforms, So meaning standard can actually adopt this module into that platform. 00;27;39;14 - 00;28;07;24 Speaker 2 Even Mirror can actually take this module to use it to catalog their stuff. So it is a more generic framework that can be suitable for all kind of publishing, no matter its web to a BlackBerry. So that's the first layer, which is the chain layer is a very application specific for publishing design. And the second layer, which is the application layer that we have instead of building a platform as you to come to adopt a new, entirely new ecosystem, we built plugins. 00;28;08;05 - 00;28;32;05 Speaker 2 So the first very stand out example would be the WordPress plugin that we have. So basically there's no migration needed for writers or media site that want to try web3 solutions. They only need to download free plugin where they only have to create a wallet and they can actually start publishing to our live to ipaffs to register about the data. 00;28;32;05 - 00;28;54;22 Speaker 2 And my point change everything in one plugin. First is we do believe each site choose to transform themselves. We shouldn't ask writer or journalist to move their entire site to a new platform because that could just go. At the end of the day, we don't want to be the one maintaining the platform. You should be the point because you know your friend, the world, you are the content creators. 00;28;54;27 - 00;29;14;24 Speaker 2 You want to work on a traffic with some what to business model. Go ahead. You want to monetize your fan base. You can try to split it. So basically we are powering each site to be their own mirror, the X, Y, z. Instead of asking everybody come to a platform to create a couch to write on it. So I think that's the second major difference. 00;29;14;24 - 00;29;38;27 Speaker 2 Even on the application layer, we want to have a plug in that can facilitate all the people to transform even into the institutional media sites. Or it could be as small as the individual blocks. So that's the plug in that we have. And then we also have the ecosystem where we bought a very different set of validators. In terms of all the change in cosmos, we have the hybrid set. 00;29;39;11 - 00;30;13;13 Speaker 2 We bought early, all media player last first check center media from the web to space. And then we have Cosmo's well-known validators on book so that they can actually create a community and a DAO and an ecosystem where we have domain expertise of how publishing should be in the future or how the gatekeeper, the entire ecosystem, whether proposals related to, Hey, how can we vote on certain things, they can actually come out and tell their domain expertise. 00;30;13;23 - 00;30;32;24 Speaker 2 So that's something that we when we invite our Genesis validator, we already had the mindset in mind if we want to create a ecosystem for content lovers that we want to attract media, publishers and readers, what kind of people, what kind of governance that should be? It can't be solely with three. It's because they don't understand what they're doing. 00;30;33;01 - 00;30;56;12 Speaker 2 But instead we see Future Center here, media here. Oh, they're still doing something interesting. Then people are more wildly open and we can actually maintain the governance in a more down to earth level is not something always on parameter. To change is not something always on the chain level, right? So as the ecosystem to grow, we believe this hybrid so that this could help us drive a more. 00;30;56;23 - 00;31;29;16 Speaker 2 And also I think the last thing is that the publishing stack that we provide is actually very wild friendly, is not a competitor to all those project that we mentioned is that we are able to connect, to plug in to something that they find useful. Let's say we had that plug get actually integrate apps and we so project don't have to go between protocols to think about storage users don't have to think about, Oh, if I need to publish this blog into our weave or apfs, I should go to somewhere else and they come back here. 00;31;29;28 - 00;31;54;09 Speaker 2 Everything is packed in one thing, they just only click. You want to publish it here and we basically So this kind of ready tool is available for other project to use. I also see this is the most interesting part of what free projects where you can actually cooperate between each others, even platforms, because the start itself is open source and you can use it as you want. 00;31;54;19 - 00;32;19;09 Speaker 2 So I think that's the major difference of us and today we have about 1000 active installations on WordPress. We have almost 8000 sites that are actively installed. I will like one button where you can like as a reward for your content, etc. So you can see all these media stand alone themselves, can facilitate as mere the X, Y, and Z with what we provide. 00;32;19;21 - 00;32;24;17 Speaker 2 So I think that's the major difference between us and other projects approach. I would say. 00;32;24;24 - 00;33;02;25 Speaker 1 It's interesting that you mentioned that because I think if anyone was to follow the change that the industry has gone through from the last major bear market, I'm talking about 17, 18 or 1819 here rather, I don't think that they were in the first two bear markets, the 15 and the 13 or 11, whatever, whatever we count is the change because there was no much projects, but there was a big change in terms of where the projects on application level up specific projects have tried to change to the model you're talking about instead of like, okay, we have a product come to us, you know, we're build it on your chain. 00;33;02;25 - 00;33;19;01 Speaker 1 You see in a lot of like projects are trying to do what you're saying. Okay, what we need is now a plug in. What we need is not the projects to just come to us. We need to go to them and for them to understand that we have the tools. But the question I do want to ask is actually a very interesting one. 00;33;19;03 - 00;33;42;02 Speaker 1 I'm going to like start a little bit ahead as well into 2016. I had the experience of trying to launch the first ever Russian social network on Web three. It was called Colors, and we launched an ICO. And you know, it was an experiment. It was a big thing for us and for the whole Russian blockchain market. This was back in 2016. 00;33;42;02 - 00;34;01;07 Speaker 1 This was before, I suppose it was the first official 4 minutes. It was like really official forum. And the question is this what was the biggest failure of this experiment for us? And in my opinion it was depends how you look at it, whether it was a failure or a success was, in my opinion, the economical part, the economics, underlying economics. 00;34;01;14 - 00;34;22;11 Speaker 1 It was not. No, it was just like you could milk it, you could like, you know, people could use it, could abuse it. They found ways worse, you know, And this was, in my opinion, the biggest failure. And this is why I think what kind of pushed me away from Web three social networking for a while, a Web three social, like those things for a while. 00;34;22;24 - 00;34;53;01 Speaker 1 In your opinion and in the form of how Litecoin does it, how important is economics? Because this is something we still haven't talked about. I mean, we talked about the stock, about preservation, about, you know, creating a better future. What about the economics, the rewards? Is that important and how important that is? Will people do all those things, install those plugins, build their own media if they wouldn't get anything for it, rather than just the preservation and the ability to fact check or whatever, for example. 00;34;53;01 - 00;35;05;00 Speaker 1 But what if there was no rewards? Like what if there was no heaven? If you're a religious person, let me say it in a different way. And the other day there is no heaven. Would the religion be still as valuable and I don't mean it with a fence. 00;35;05;00 - 00;35;31;10 Speaker 2 No, no, no. That's a great sharing. Thanks for sharing your experience as well. That's a great question. I think economic incentives always come into place because that's the human nature, right? So like what started as like as a reward. So like as a reward where we want to promote the idea of educating the public about, hey, content should be paid in some sort of way and your content should be rewarded just like how much like you receive on Facebook. 00;35;31;10 - 00;35;52;27 Speaker 2 They're just up in the air, but it should be like a real reward. So that was like a really early idea in 2017. I think people are really hyped about that around that. However, when the social context that come in, when we evolved to be a more decentralized publishing angle, I think we also changed it evolve along with the social context that we are in. 00;35;53;08 - 00;36;15;21 Speaker 2 I think at least nowadays, journalists in my area or in some ways they are fully aware that their stuff cannot be stored on central AI. Storage is not something that we educate in all. We give them money to do so, but because they experienced first hand of how their stuff could be disappeared in one day. So I think that's a little bit different in terms of social context. 00;36;15;21 - 00;36;42;23 Speaker 2 So I think that rely on what kind of experience they have in their own society. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is, yes, I think the economic incentive is still very important as well. And that's why we offer not just like the tokenomics incentives, right, but also how they can own a piece of NFT, the fate of their memories of their blogs or even book NFT. 00;36;42;24 - 00;37;05;21 Speaker 2 We recently had a campaign on book NFT, and people are actually exploring this in this format. And NFT also live with a little bit of economic incentives, right? When people collect NFT, they would have thought they could have resell it with a high price or they can actually own a piece of NFT that could grow in value. So I think that's to lie under people mind. 00;37;06;03 - 00;37;30;04 Speaker 2 But you would be surprised when we tell them, Oh, writing NFT or book NFT, we are not actually looking to that kind of NFT hype that flipped that inflated price model. We're actually looking for something. How much would you like to pay for this kind of content that you present? Would you you liking it or you want to subscribe to authors? 00;37;30;04 - 00;38;09;27 Speaker 2 How much would you pay? You'd be surprised you are actually willing to pay than we saw in terms of something they value. So when I say value, it means the value of collective memories. It could be non economic incentive, different kind of value. So I think that's the most fascinating part that we discover, especially because we started as like as reward campaign become now more on decentralized publishing, more on integrity, content preservation, and now towards the new understanding, not new understanding, but more reinforce on the value of the non economic side. 00;38;09;27 - 00;38;30;05 Speaker 2 Because you can imagine there are still a lot of people actually paying for content. I believe, especially if you're in the podcast. I've been paying a lot for audio books for newsletters because if you are a person that actually consume a lot of this kind of content, you will see good content actually need to be sustained with someone willing to pay. 00;38;30;15 - 00;38;55;05 Speaker 2 And I think we actually gathered a community that had this similar mindset along the years, and I do believe these kind of people exist. If those people who tell you they won't come in for incentives, I would say they are not our target audience for now. But there are still a majority of people who are willing to do so, especially if you see the rise of Patron. 00;38;55;23 - 00;39;20;10 Speaker 2 They are actually paying just for the content. They don't really have incentives on the economic side where their content would be flipped in terms of like the NFT hype, the market. So I think we should take a balance of that where what economic incentive driven social network will be a sustainable model for people or real users to stay. 00;39;20;20 - 00;39;53;20 Speaker 2 I think the more we see it is not the answers, is it need to be a hybrid of truly find out what people actually care and what they value a long above economic incentives. So I think is a great we are in the great state is where we exploring this especially with writing in it. We've been asking a lot of our community members, why would you purchase a writing at your blog that won't increase price or won't be like a hyped up piece of work you will find different fascinated reason? 00;39;53;20 - 00;40;16;22 Speaker 2 It could be because they pursue for collective memories, because they're getting a postcard. I myself am I personally post up my wedding ceremony on as a blog and they're actually ten and 22 collected it and they're paying for it because they want to be part of my journey of my life. So I think there are a lot of value in terms of what the product could offer to people, and you'll be surprised. 00;40;16;22 - 00;40;54;12 Speaker 2 Therapy on economic incentive. However, for a project like us for application specific projects, you often see a gap between trading activities and you say itself. I'll say, I still think this is a difficult gap for us. We need to fill in how you can attract people to speculate your token in terms of because trading activities. Right are something that you want volume, liquidity versus you have a superset of users that actually using your stuff every day, but they're not people that will attract to trading, which mean the economic incentives that attract them to go trade and increase in value. 00;40;54;24 - 00;41;16;07 Speaker 2 So I think this is a dilemma of a project owner, how you can actually bring this to a common ground where you can show people the holistic view of the entire project. So that's a headache problem that I think our project would face. So yeah, I'm not sure if I answered the question, but since that's a great to spark some new discussion to. 00;41;16;15 - 00;41;45;29 Speaker 1 Definitely. I think the whole movement of trying to put on the same weights objective income because as well the income is objective is not subjective people you know we can change that to money if we want. And I'm not saying that something isn't mining or always money, and I'm being like kind of like high overview that even if somebody clicks and it's like, can X, y, Z, which is subjective to somebody today, the liquidity allows us to change it to objective income. 00;41;45;29 - 00;42;18;00 Speaker 1 And it's interesting that we can put objective income and personal value on the same scale. It's interesting. And again, I think that that a lot of things like you say, they haven't changed. There is still a lot to explore there. Yeah, I've been watching that that st for a while and definitely very excited to see what will win, you know whether or not rather what what how like what would be the combination of value and income that will have a reward and value that will help people to make that final slip in their minds. 00;42;18;09 - 00;42;43;03 Speaker 2 So my co-founder is so his name is Keen. I always remember something that he said about a movement, I think where Free right now is a movement. Even what we did since even though we started in 2017, we still think what we write on the white paper. This is a ten year movement as a movement because we knew it could be a very disruptive idea in terms of decentralization, in terms of the tools that people need to adopt. 00;42;43;03 - 00;43;09;01 Speaker 2 So right now we're just in the middle of it. So ten years it seems very long. But when you think about it, it actually takes a new habit or new era or some new business model to evolve, actually take ten years is a really short time. And I do believe we're just in the middle of it. So I think there's also a vision where we believe, like all will take this much time to evolve to a different kind of but we could achieve as a decentralized publishing solution. 00;43;09;06 - 00;43;28;00 Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure. It's definitely just the beginning, I think of the journey. I don't think it's just the beginning, like a lot of people say, but it's definitely not the end for sure. A quick question on the journey. I mean, for a project that has been around for a while and not just the project yourself, I've been around in this space for a while. 00;43;28;00 - 00;43;54;24 Speaker 1 You've seen ups and downs and you've seen projects while you're developers disappear or, well, it's hard to make a crypto disappear, I guess, but to the extent of what a crypto can disappear, what would you say as a piece of advice to people not necessarily starting out their projects but working on their projects already? And, you know, maybe also for a while or maybe not? 00;43;54;24 - 00;43;58;23 Speaker 1 What would be your advice to these people? To do what or not to do what? 00;43;59;05 - 00;44;20;01 Speaker 2 It reminds me of one of my recent tweet tweet about our learning, because it was the three years of the coin chain last week, especially during the chaos of the fall of, I believe a lot of people suffered. And I actually personally feel better to a lot of friends as well. So I was sure that one was a summary of my set. 00;44;20;11 - 00;44;47;13 Speaker 2 So there are three things I think First is to make sure you know why you were here and during what you're doing. So our team has been told that we were too serious in terms of our product flow, internal procedures. We have been using Multisig like really early on with like I need to learn about command line, how to manage our wallet and they actually benefit us from the recent incidents because we understand how important it is, even though keeping people telling us how you guys are too serious. 00;44;47;13 - 00;45;10;16 Speaker 2 Come on, let's find something more convenient. So at this point where you need to stand on what you believe and you need to be persistent on it. So that's the first learning and the second learning. Is there a lot of temptation in Web3 where you can gain quick success came from hyping up an idea or a product and people actually came as often to come and ask, Hey, you have a whole food dev team. 00;45;10;16 - 00;45;32;04 Speaker 2 Why not just start another DEFI or NFT projects that can make a good learning? And the hard part is actually say no to these opportunities. And I think that's also come back to the first point where I say you need to know why you're here and what you are building. Certainly, I think the mindset of running a startup is very important, so I'm very fortunate. 00;45;32;05 - 00;45;53;01 Speaker 2 I have a lot of my co-founders and or our angel investor are from us. Like a lot of them are Y Z alumni. They have their successful business in the what to in the recipe. We've been studying a lot of like what is the Lean startup methodology. We've been working on internal procedures and how a product should be in terms of learning and communicating with users. 00;45;53;06 - 00;46;12;28 Speaker 2 So I think how the mindset to run your project as a startup and beautifies feel for us is something that we also learned in our experience in the past few years and also because of the learning of the startup. We know we cannot expand too quick to be lean, and so that's why we can survive a lot of crypto winters. 00;46;13;03 - 00;46;37;07 Speaker 2 I forgot how many winters already, so I truly believe that where three is so big that isn't just about trading ethics or just about Defi. You actually need to bring in solutions to problem that people are facing, not the other way around too, so that the potential of the actual uses of crypto. So when you come into the game, I think it will. 00;46;37;07 - 00;46;54;28 Speaker 2 You have to have a myself being this is something in the long, long haul. It's not something in the short time that if it doesn't work for me, it will hurt a lot of your time and effort in this. So I think that will be three of my learning. And also the last tip. Maybe before this I was in an exchange. 00;46;54;28 - 00;47;18;03 Speaker 2 I was in another crypto fund before being full time with the founding team of Litecoin. And I think being with the right people is very important, especially I love surrounded by others. My team accept me, they're all coders, so I'm very fortunate that they I am actually learning from them every other day. I think that's very important in terms of being impressed as well, because they're very close to tech. 00;47;18;12 - 00;47;39;00 Speaker 2 So that actually give you a lot of faith in terms of what you're doing. And then also thank to the community. Actually, stick around with us for a long time and they actually see us evolve from different products and give us active feedback. So I think community is super important in terms of supporting your mission. So yeah, hopefully not too long, but that's nice. 00;47;39;12 - 00;48;00;09 Speaker 1 No, no, it's perfect. I was just going to say that the thing about Crypto winters, we were lucky this time around, locking rockets, We fucked up two months before the crypto winter came, so we were already working in advance. So for everybody out there, if you want the good advice, fuck up early and that sets you up for the better markets. 00;48;00;24 - 00;48;19;17 Speaker 1 The last kind of question has blades that I wanted to ask you is that we ask that was the one that we ask all the guests. If You could give me three projects from the crypto space that are interesting. What could be protocols as well? That could be a first, for example, that you're interesting and that you follow and that you think are interesting out there? 00;48;19;24 - 00;48;50;02 Speaker 2 Yeah, I think the first one I would say is I had a really good time working with Protocol labs, people I ipfs community has been very supportive in what we do and I got to spend a lot of time with them. So I think that would be something good to look at. You haven't heard about them. So again, I've been lately studying a lot about last protocol, although that's not a Cosmo ecosystem, but I think they're doing a great job in terms of the stack of what they can offer because it's quite similar to what we wanted to do. 00;48;50;15 - 00;49;29;09 Speaker 2 So I would love to learn more about them and certainly let name and favorite projects. Well, I don't have a particular name of the project, but I would love to share a group community, especially because I attended their event in August. In the US. They are the De Camp folks direct. I think they're amazing people. I have never been to any kind refereed events that the discussion is in there about tokenomics, But in terms of the mission and vision and the first question that they were asked when they come to you is how they can actually help. 00;49;29;22 - 00;49;57;22 Speaker 2 And I meet a lot of great founders there, including Gate Point, including protocol apps, including ceramic, the like. There are a lot of like establish whether they there or I had the conversation and know them as a person. So I think if anyone want to especially if they are looking for some kind of support no matter who is mentally support or in terms of your product development of how you want to get new inspiration, I think they're great community to be surrounded with. 00;49;58;03 - 00;50;11;15 Speaker 2 I think I benefit a lot from my presence there in the last couple of months, so I would like to share this piece of opportunities to people who are looking for something different, especially Westby. So hopefully that helps. 00;50;11;27 - 00;50;23;24 Speaker 1 It's funny that you say that it last night, ironic or not funny that I was recording and most of the discussion happened around protocol clubs and the web added episode I was caught in. Really? Yes. Was fusion. 00;50;24;16 - 00;50;27;28 Speaker 2 So then, okay. No one. Yes. 00;50;27;28 - 00;50;50;15 Speaker 1 This. Yes, This is second question. Wait, that is the second question. Two things that motivate you and daily life to keep on building the centralized distributed communication, I guess, and keep on building Litecoin and like land and everything else that you do. So which two things motivate you in your daily life if you could share them? Of course. 00;50;50;23 - 00;51;11;16 Speaker 2 One is community for sure. And when I say community is because I host our community core every month, even though that could be a small scale or large scale, I would love to connect with uses that actually give us active feedback and people who actually care about our product. I think that's especially important if you're a product owner knowing someone actually cares about what you do. 00;51;11;29 - 00;51;35;22 Speaker 2 So I think that gives you a lot of motivation. And the second kind of community of causes like Citizen Cosmos, I just came back from Lisbon and I got to meet some Cosmos people face to face in person for the first time and I'm very glad I actually did it because I finally know them as a person, not just knowing their project, but actually knowing what kind of wine they like to drink or what kind of food they like. 00;51;35;22 - 00;51;59;23 Speaker 2 So I think it's important to have these kind of human connections, especially after COVID. And there are a lot of change in the world where human connection at the end of the day is some fundamental demands of being as a human. So I think that's quite important. So if you get chess, go meet some people out there. And I think in general, a lot of Cosmo people are really nice excuse me, because they see me as a girl that just hanging around by myself. 00;51;59;23 - 00;52;24;24 Speaker 2 They're very taken care of. So I'm so glad that I actually met them. The other thing is that I think I mentioned already, but I would like to reinforce is surround yourself with tutors so people will actually understand what is going on. Spend less time on Twitter, just in between some argument of some kind of proposals. I think it takes a lot of manpower to be fully on those kind of conversations. 00;52;24;24 - 00;52;46;28 Speaker 2 But when you actually understand more about the technology, like even though like just how Cosmo works, talking to all the projects actually make you more confidence to talking to more people because I guess a lot of people have a hard time to jump in. A lot of high end conversations like those that we see home Twitter. So now is just too intimidating for other people to jump in because we become our own circle. 00;52;46;28 - 00;53;07;00 Speaker 2 And I think that's not really healthy. But instead, like go talk to more builders in the space and try to understand what they do. Will support what we're doing right now. Even though you are just a speculators, you are a builder, you're project owners. So that helps. So it's awesome that we have this kind of podcast. We have a chance to share our experience and get to know more people. 00;53;07;07 - 00;53;25;13 Speaker 1 Last one one person could be a builder, a book writer, a coder, a writer that you know doesn't have to be a crypto person. One person that you would suggest if it's a book, the book, if it's a person or a blog, or if it's a builder, it could be a GitHub account for everybody out there to follow. 00;53;25;13 - 00;53;27;11 Speaker 1 That will be interesting for them. 00;53;27;23 - 00;53;29;27 Speaker 2 I'm a little bit biased on this. 00;53;30;24 - 00;53;31;08 Speaker 1 Goods. 00;53;32;11 - 00;54;01;21 Speaker 2 Because I think there are a lot of excellent English content right now. Already. I think my co-founder, Kim, he's a serial entrepreneur, has been gaming for a lot of years and he co-founded like COIN and he wrote a book on sociology of blockchain. Actually blew a lot of mine because is the first blockchain built that. Now I'll talk about Tokenomics, but talk about the fundamental what is the value of money or what is the value of consensus? 00;54;01;21 - 00;54;29;02 Speaker 2 Why Dao exists, like all this kind of thing I think lies behind actually the fundamental of blockchain in the sociology. Expect to understand it. It's great, especially for crypto one on one, I guess. So if you are interested, I think a lot of majority of them are translated into English too. But he already got a book that was quite bestselling, I think last year, earlier this year, the first half usually so out in Hong Kong and Taiwan. 00;54;29;02 - 00;54;50;28 Speaker 2 So if you're interested, I'll follow Kim Co C k Express dot com. That's his blog. And he's a creative common offense, so his stuff is open source and open content for sure. Africa on that. And you can also support him like join or subscribe as well. Yeah that's my recommend. 00;54;50;28 - 00;55;10;27 Speaker 1 Asian I think bias is good. You know it's good to be subjective I think sometimes and definitely we will include this in the show notes and everything else. Of course that you mentioned. Femi, thank you very, very, very, very, very much. It was a huge pleasure catching up with you and talking with you and hopefully we'll catch up again in the future. 00;55;10;27 - 00;55;12;11 Speaker 1 Thank you very much. Else for joining in. 00;55;12;18 - 00;55;26;18 Speaker 2 Yeah, thank you. Thank you also for the link here which is one of the community I yes hope Taiwan crypto writers and a lot of analysis has been awesome. So I also want to mention who is a. 00;55;26;22 - 00;55;52;01 Speaker 1 Nice one will include all of them will include all of them. Yeah thanks. 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