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Episode Description
In this episode we sit down with Griff Green, one of the earliest DAO builders and a core figure in Ethereum’s governance history — from the original DAO era through today’s next-generation coordination experiments.
Griff was closely involved around the first DAO and helped lead white-hat recovery efforts during the 2016 DAO crisis. Since then, he has gone on to co-found and support multiple ecosystem projects focused on decentralized funding, public goods, and governance design, including Giveth, the Commons Stack, and several token engineering and coordination initiatives.
This is not a surface-level DAO hype conversation. This is a rebuild conversation.
We go deep on what actually failed in early DAO designs, what people misunderstood about decentralized governance, and what it will realistically take to redo the DAO model in a way that works — socially, economically, and technically.
We cover:
What really went wrong (and right) with the first DAO
Lessons learned from DAO governance failures and exploits
Why most DAOs struggle with participation and decision quality
Incentive design vs voting design
Funding public goods without governance capture
Token engineering, bonding curves, and coordination mechanisms
What a “DAO 2.0” architecture needs to include
Whether truly decentralized governance can scale
If you care about DAOs, crypto governance, public goods funding, or coordination at scale — this conversation is required context from someone who was there at the beginning and is still building forward.
Subscribe for more deep crypto conversations — no price talk, no hype cycles, just signal.
Drop your question in the comments:
👉 What must change for DAOs to actually work this time?
👉 Subscribe, comment, and clip your favorite moment.
👉 Tell us in the comments: What’s your biggest question about re-architecting DAOs?
Transcript
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It’s a Bitcoin contest. The only one that’s making your money in you listening to the Bitcoin market. So hold on. Listen to the coin. >> Yes, Ruby. >> Full house. >> So good. >> It’s so good. It’s so good. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Bitcoin podcast. This is episode number. Look in the description. We do so many of these. I just lost track. And it is what it is. Uh this is a special episode. So about once a year and it’s not seasonal. So there’s no seasonality to this. We get visited by Griff Green. Griff, welcome to the show. For those of you that don’t know Griff. So Griff has co-founded GTH. If you don’t know GTH, look it up in the show notes. He’s co-founded the common stack unicorn and also uh you know kind of like you know I guess his claim to fame. Uh he he helped lead the White Hat Group secured at risk funds representing roughly 10% of Ethereum supply at the time during the DAO incident. >> The Dow >> um the DAO. So if you read the title and you got hooked and you’re like, “Oh, Dow, new original Dow. What’s that mean? Is that new original crispy?” No, no, no. The Dow. The original Dow. We’re going to run it back. Going for 20% this time. No kidding. Wait. Um, what’s up, Jeff? >> I I have a question. Griff, you unicorn. You You have that ENS? >> Hell yeah, I do. >> Did you Were you organizing the folks at ETH Denver that one year when they were giving out unicorn masks and there was like some sort of unicorn memecoin and like this >> coin? I don’t think so. I mean, we >> I got this from some random dude, >> you know, if it was last year. Yes. >> Yeah. If it was last year, yes, because okay, Unicorn, it’s a infrastructure for starting your own wallet. Like a very wallet and ETH Denver has their own Unicorn implementation. So the ETH Denver wallet, like if you got a ticket to ETH Denver, you’re actually using our infrastructure. >> Ah, okay. Okay. >> You’re you have your little app.denver.com behind the scenes, it’s it’s unicorn’s like wallet infrastruure. Oh, interesting. Okay. Did not know that. Nice. >> Yeah. >> So, so Griff, welcome back. >> It’s good to have you back. >> It’s good to be back, man. >> Um, so this all stemmed from like a tweet that that Corey shot out into the abyss of Twitter like what was that? Five, six weeks ago. >> It all came from me. That’s what it is. That’s all that’s that that’s where we got the idea, you know. >> He said the Dow run it back, right? And so here we are now. So I’m gonna give my perspective of the Dow, what happened all those years ago, and then I would love it if like maybe everybody can remember where were you when the Dow happened, right? And then Griff, obviously you cap it off with like I was in the right? Like so, so here’s me, you know, Bitcoin enthusiast, Ethereum enthusiast at the time. I started reading all this stuff about the Dow and I’m like, “Oh, a robot company. I want to own a piece of that. That’s that’s literally what my brain thought. I was like, I want to own the the bots before they own me. So, I invest in it. I’m I’m in it. I send literature to some of my best friends at the time and they’re like, “Dude, I I don’t understand these words.” And I’m like, “You don’t have to. Just believe.” Right? And, you know, we invest in the Dow. We get all excited and then like I don’t know about a month later, you know, me and Corey were doing our thing and he’s like, “Ooh, the Dow is like I think it got hacked.” And I was like, “What?” And they were like, “Oh yeah, definitely got hacked. All the money’s gone.” And I was like, “Shit, okay.” And then like maybe a month or two later, I don’t even know if it was that long, the the the chain forked and all of a sudden I had twice as I had ETH and I had Ethereum Classic. Sold the Ethereum Classic. So that was great. And that was my perspective. So I know that’s short, but let’s go next. So that’s a good service level perspective of what happened at that point in time. >> Jesse, where were you when the Dow hack happened? >> I did I did not pay attention to Ethereum. Like I it was on my periphery. I was only playing around with Bitcoin back then. I just I think 20 like Yeah. I didn’t even join the Slack of this podcast to meet you guys until like 20 like late 2016, early 2017. Yeah, everything was Slack back then. The white hack group that that we talked about in the beginning of this was was a was a Slack channel in the Dow Slack. >> So, yeah, like I didn’t participate in the Dow, didn’t get hacked, didn’t lose funds, but I learned about it from everybody else post and uh yeah, it looks like a storm and I watched >> it was huge. It’s like a it was like a that made like headlines, people talk about it. It drastically shaped the the the course of Ethereum. >> Um, it really fueled the haters, that’s for sure. Like, >> yeah, >> but like there’s stuff going on now. Like, it’s back kind of. What’ y’all do? What are you doing? What are you doing, Griff? >> The the Dow is back. We’re bringing it back. We’re running it back 20% >> like the original like the original mean obviously new smart contracts because the other ones didn’t work, but like >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, actually, that’s honestly the main reason we’re bringing it back. Okay, let me I I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll pl jump through F Fergie’s hoop here and uh and just say like where I was when the was going down and and maybe give a little bit of backstory of the DAO and then we can go into the Dow security fund because that’s a whole new that’s a whole new thing, right? Um >> yeah. Uh so I was the first employee of Socket. I didn’t found the DAO. I mean really the DAO doesn’t have any founders. It was, you know, launched very autonomously. It was, man, like I mean, we had a huge community going and the idea was that Slocket >> the the idea was that Socket was going to build this thing called the universal sharing economy. I named it, right? Uh and and we were really excited about building kind of like imagine Craigslist for autonomous entities. Uh you know, a lock that could own itself. The lock would have a Ethereum address and if you want to open it, you send money to the lock. the lock will open and then you can get whatever’s in the locker and then you know to return it maybe you have to like hand it to a person and then they’ll like check it out and then put it back in the locker you get your money back minus a rental fee that sort of thing right and it was going to be this universal sharing economy where we could have more effective use of our resources I was super stoked about it I actually wrote u I have the first degree ever in digital currencies a master’s degree uh that I collected a week after the Dow was >> the first it was the Bitcoin academic >> first one. First one. My other claim to fame that no one really cares about. Uh but so um I wrote a white paper as part of my like college classes to uh about a bike sharing economy. And so I was like I want to work in crypto and do like sharing economy stuff. The only game in town was Socket. So I just like kept emailing them begging can I work with you? And eventually they were like, “He seems cool.” And uh they said, “You can volunteer with us if you want.” I was like, “Hell yeah, man. I want it.” And so I actually never got paid for any of my stuff with the D. No, that’s not true. Eventually, like six years later, Kristoff gave me some money for my year of >> for that for that harrowing experience that that shaped your life. >> Yeah, exactly. But I was never really paid uh you know because Slacket never really made any money. So the idea was Slocket needed something to govern the the the universal sharing economy and you know someone’s going to put weed in a locker. Sorry, can I swear on this podcast? >> You can. It doesn’t matter. You can. >> So someone’s going to put weed in a locker eventually and it’s like, okay, what are we going to do? So we’re going to have to have like a DAO instead of a of a formal jurisdiction to manage the the decentralized autonomous network that we’re trying to create. So we need a decentralized autonomous organization to manage the network. Hence the DAO and you know this is 2016. Solidity the programming language is nine months old when we launch. >> Brand new >> time flies. Damn. >> Yeah. I mean it was the stuff was raw and certain things weren’t really well set and we but we made this kind of interesting approach where it was like hey if you put money in you can the DAO was supposed to name itself later and it was kind of this it was probably going to be called something like Genesis DAO because the idea was it will be this big DAO that then anyone could split off and start their own DAO with our same software and so >> a little mini DAO. Yeah. And because of that, it was effectively it felt like a risk-free investment to most people, right? Because you could put in ether >> and leave >> and get Dowo tokens and then you’re like, I don’t like this. Burn your Dow tokens, take your Ether back, right? >> And so, um, that’s why it was so easy to collect 14% of all Ether in existence at the time, >> which is now just ridiculous billions of dollars. less billions than a week ago, but still >> you’ll drag a kid. >> Yeah. And so, okay, so now let’s speedrun to the hack, right? So, the Dow launches lots of drama, you know, when you raised 100. We were actually >> We had nothing to do with our ETH at the time. >> That’s the only thing you could do with your ETH. We all put it in all of us. >> Pretty much the whole Ethereum I I was effectively the community manager of Ethereum at that point. like for that short period of time that the DAO existed, it was the main game in town for sure >> and I was managing the community and and uh supporting the community and trying to navigate what the hell we’re doing >> and uh there was lots of drama, but the main thing that hap issue was that there was bugs, you know, everything was so raw and there were lots of bugs in the contract, but there was one really big one that allowed a hacker to actually steal about 30% of the funds. Uh this would be somewhere around 4% of all Ether in existence that a hacker took, right? And so that was a problem. I I woke up in uh Midvita, Germany at the founders’s mom’s house. I was staying at his mom’s house, right? And uh was kind of the first person awake to the news and talking to the community like, “Oh my god, you know, it looks like it’s being hacked.” And you know, I’m pretty savvy with this stuff since I have a degree. And so I’m like, “Oh my god, it is it is being hacked. I’m like demon dialing everyone. They’re all still asleep. It’s like six in the morning, you know. Uh and so just eventually I got a hold of one guy and and we got everyone around and we’re just watching it drain. And so we have a call with the Ethereum Foundation. What are we going to do?” It was actually Vitalik’s first idea, like first thing. Well, maybe we should hard fork, right? And um we went through iterations of not doing a hard fork, doing a soft fork instead and these things. But in the end, the hard fork was an amazing option because unlike most hacks, the way this hack works is that the ether that was stolen, it went into someone’s child Dow. So it wasn’t just like they could sell it on an exchange. It was stuck in another smart contract for 30. >> Had a time lock to it, too. >> Yeah. So like it’s a 7-day proposal window to split the DAO. And then he actually split into someone else’s DAO, someone else’s split proposal. Uh, and so it he needed to then split again into another DAO. Uh, complicated details. Either way, we had 35 knew his money would be stuck in this address. So we could actually we had 35 days to hard fork the network and be like uh we’re gonna just like say all the Dow stuff just like we’re gonna end. >> Yeah. Like it’s still onchain. So all the you know a lot of people call it a roll back but it’s not really. It was more technically it’s an irregular state transition. So there was this hard fork that was like we’re going to take all the money that was ever in any DAO contract that’s still in Dow contracts. We’re just going to take it all and put it in a new contract and anyone with DAO tokens can claim one ether for every hundred DAO tokens they have. And so I was in this position like right after the hack before the hard fork where I’m basically running project management product management for the whole issues right there was lots of things. So we had I was leading the white hack group which hacked the other 70% that the original hacker didn’t steal uh alongside like eight other hackers and so there’s like dow wars and we were able to hack the other Dows and all this other that was just a whole another chaos right but so we were able to recover the 70% of the funds by hacking other Dows too but we couldn’t get the bad the main bad guy uh and and so that was one team. Another team uh post hard fork was the curators. And so even though people who are Dowo token holders got all their money back and they got etc from the white hat group, there were some people whose claims weren’t represented by Dow tokens. So the during the crowd sale for the DAO, people actually paid uh in the second half of it, people paid more than one ether for 100 DO tokens. it like slowly the price went up at the end until it was one and a half ether for 100 DO tokens. So um actually Nick Johnson from ENS and a few other OGs did all the calculations figured out who put that money in launched a token and uh gave like that gave them all um a claim for that that money. There are also people who split the DAO uh like the hacker did but without bad intentions. They split it according to the rules and so they would burn their DAO tokens to get child DAO tokens and but their ether was taken from their child DAO too. So now they don’t have Dow tokens to claim. So we had to fix that problem. And then there’s all the other ones which are like people who just randomly sent DAO tokens to the DAO itself. >> Yeah. ether to the withdrawal contract or send ether to god knows >> back then like you there it wasn’t it wasn’t nearly as clear on like where you send money or what you do and so people sent tokens or ether to all all kinds of places and be like oh we shouldn’t have done that >> exactly and so and being good guys like we were and also being kind of scared of the whole like DAO situation because this is like this is bad let’s just do the best we can make sure everyone gets their money back >> u me and five other volunteers stepped up to make sure all of these edge cases were solved. And that’s where this this part of the DAO story is actually where all of our money is coming from for the new era of the DAO. So, and it’s just crazy because like okay, all the DAO token holders were taken care of. That was 95 97% of the money in the DAO was like covered by DAO token holders. The other 3% were these edge case funds. And then there’s like just extra bonus money that came out of nowhere from ETC, right? All the Dow token holders got all their money back plus they got ETC. They made money. >> Then there was like the the Dow hacker himself, he had ETC because on on the Ether Classic >> fork. Yeah. Like the hard fork only only mattered on the the the main Ethereum chain and ETC kept playing it. >> Exactly. The ETC is like, “No, the hacker should have this money. Played by the rules.” Right. >> Okay. Well, he does. >> You said you said code is law. It’s law. It basically was was the argument of of Ethereum Classic. >> Exactly. Right. And so it code is law on ETC and so he has his money. Uh ETC wasn’t worth as much, but it was still a lot. He had 4% of all ETC in existence >> and you know that’s a lot. and he still has that ETC and like is selling it once in a while and taking that money back. So, you know, generational wealth for that guy. And uh and then but everyone made money off this gond even the people on the edge cases, we made sure they were able to get their money back. And so now here we are 2026. of that 3% 80% of that 3% was claimed. Right? So now we’re talking about like6% of the DAO funds that are left over that haven’t been claimed or you know aren’t sitting there. This 6% just of the edge case funds. Well, when we launched it was worth 220 million. Right now it's worth like 150 because Jesus Christ the dump last week was >> just like oh my god >> that was bad >> come back. It always does. >> Yeah it'll bounce back. >> But either way and and also at some points that 3% was like 350 million. And so the my me and five volunteers have been holding these keys for like you know 10 years >> 10 years >> publicly like our name next to this key on a >> how do you feel about that in terms of like personal safety with all like wrench attacks and stuff like that because like I know like some OG ETHs are walking around at ETH Denver all the time like I know some of the folks um like how do you how do you deal with that? I’m recklessly optimistic. I have >> But >> I know you’re a big guy, but like, you know, >> yeah, it helps. But, you know, and I just have this kind of feeling that everything always works out for me. However, I’m not a security dev. And the other guys of these five, you know, a lot of them are very security focused. And my experience over the last decade hanging out with security devs, they’re paranoid as Very risky. >> Yeah. you know, just like it’s like that’s what makes them so good at what they do, right? >> Mhm. >> And so, actually, it was um you know, the origin story of this new revival is that Seal 911, uh this guy PC who founded Seal 911, he was talking to Wintermute about how they don’t have any money. And Seal 911 is kind of this white hat hacker group. Like the White Hack Group was doing a lot of what Seal 911 does now. Yeah. back in like 2016 to 2019, we were kind of if your ICO went wrong, you called us. We rescued like 200 million from the parody multisig hack. Uh we we did all this like, you know, kind of behind the scen kind of like >> Yeah. Is this illegal? Who cares? It's the right thing to do. Give >> money back. It's fine. >> Yeah. You know, and we're trusted. We hacked the Dow. We gave the money back. So if we hack this, everyone will know it's okay, you know. So, like me and Jordy, we were like hacking all sorts of things back in the day >> for good. >> Oh, I didn't know you were working with Jordy. >> Oh, yeah. Jordy Bellina um co-founded Gim with me, co-founded DAP node with me. >> He wrote the Dow contracts, I think. >> Well, he didn't write the Dow contracts. Oh, he was >> he he he wrote liquid democracy for >> mini liquid democracy and then mini me stuff and then >> and the mini me token contract that we did with uh so that was the status uh token. >> That's what we did. >> Okay. Because I remember I see I saw Jordy on the status uh multiig contract. >> He's on the multi. He wrote he wrote the contract status. >> Yeah. >> So I have a question. >> This one's going to be a deep question. Um so how over the last decade have you dealt with like the philosophical juxiposition of uh this was a centralization was like a it's a keystone of what we're doing right but when you get a situation like the original DAO and it's you on the phone with other key people to make a very key decision that does not seem like a very decentralized thing. Is it for the better? Is it for the greater good? Obviously, I'd say 10 years later, it's been for the greater good. But >> there's a there's a carbon vote that like asked the entire Ethereum community on these things and there's overwhelmingly majority positive vote for for hard forking. >> Yeah. I mean, I think >> the the hard fork um thing I think we really proved that this is not it's about social consensus, >> right? >> Everybody had to upgrade their node. It didn't happen by default. You know, a lot of the hard forks that we do do actually do happen by default sometimes now. Like there's a flag and you can be like, "Yeah, I'll just upgrade my node as it happens, right?" Whereas this one there was no flag, right? Every individual node runner just had the choice stay on Ethereum or stay on Ether Classic and they actually had to actively stay on Ethereum to do the hard fork. So I would say in general not only was there a carbon vote that was like 80% of ETH holders said we should do the hard fork. There's also the hard fork itself which because it is a very decentralized network it is like uh it it's everybody had to vote. The people running the nodes are the real um real decision makers. And as far as the whole like you know leadership within a decentralized entity you know this is like a this has been a challenge for 10 years coming around this idea of like well actually you know I wish humans were like birds where they could like flock like swallows know the the yeah >> we're not like that's not >> it's very hierarchical >> yeah we're we're tribe tribal. >> Yeah. >> You know, so having a leader um and having leaders make decisions is I think kind of the default vibe of humanity. Um now will that change one day? Maybe new technology like AI will be able to allow different scaling of of decision-m maybe. But um man, 10 years, you know, I'm very active in the Dow communities and without leadership, we wouldn't get anywhere. And and the projects that try to stay leaderless always fail. I mean, I wish you know, um Bitcoin is probably the closest example to something that didn't. But even just Satoshi guiding it for the first few years and then disappearing. >> Yeah. >> Serve as a leader, but he just didn't update his leadership. >> Exactly. Yeah, >> exactly. >> And without them though, it's it's been it's it's oified. I can't really say that. That's not a fair word to to use. >> It's had some changes. >> It is. >> No, there's been changes. What do you mean? >> Sure, but they're so slow and that's they consider that a feature, not a bug. >> Yeah. And they changed the orange shade a little bit. >> Did they really? >> No, I have no idea. I'm just I'm messing with the Bitcoiners out there because uh they're they're a kooky bunch. >> Yeah. I mean, Bitcoin's got a come to Jesus moment with with uh quantum, you know, it'll be a slow like steady >> it's gonna have to because those keys are >> also going to have to break also have to >> it's also going to have to come to uh it's going to have a come to Jesus moment in terms of like when block rewards can no longer subsidize mining and then you're have you're going to have to >> fees are going to cut it, >> you know. Yeah, exactly. If Bitcoin price doesn't keep moving up, then you're going to have to charge more for base transaction fees, you know, to keep miners, you know, profitable. Otherwise, you know, the security of the of the chain is going to, you know, decrease, right? So, >> yeah, they got they got problems. It's not a complete pro protocol yet, >> but once again, you still have social consensus there, too. People can propose things like SegWit happened. >> There are things that can happen. It's just a little bit slower. >> Like, way slower. >> That's not why we're here. >> As a crypto enthusiast, raised in the streets of Bitcoin. I will say we've had these same conversations before in the past except for the quantum thing. So, I'll say just as an original from the streets guy, but let's get to the new old DAO. I'm gonna stop calling it that because that's bad branding. Let's get back to the DAO, right? So, um you know, if you >> you've I I I can continue the thread that I had because I I was gonna bring it to this. >> Bring it back. We were talking about you mentioned the wrench attacks and yeah, >> Jesse did and the and the whole like like how do we feel about that situation and that's really what made this happen. So um because initially we're like ah the Dow security fund idea I don't know maybe we should just leave things how they are. Um but then so so the origin story PC founder of SEAL 91 talking to Wintermute he's like we got all these white hats we can't even take money from SEAL anymore because SEAL is a 501c3 nonprofit they need to know where the funds go. So, Seal 911 was the flagship product and out of that Seal started and Seal is doing like a lot of other larger work like safe harbor contracts for white hats. Um, so that there's legal support in case they ever get sued for anything. Uh, doing like certifications and all sorts of really amazing stuff. uh documentation of what best practices are to secure your multi-IGs and all things in Ethereum. >> And then uh Seal 911 is this rag tag group of random white hats that are trusted that are have like a a 911 telegram bot. Literally like when you call 911 because you have a problem because like someone broke into your house. It's like hey someone broke into my crypto wallet. I'm gonna call Seal 911 by t talking to their Twitter bot. And that opens a new group, a new chat room on like Seal 911's behind the scenes Telegram group. And all these white hats can just help you and just be like, "Okay, you need to unplug your internet uh and talk to us on your phone, right?" or be like, "Hey, you know, like revoke your approvals really quick because they haven't taken all your money or you know, like um send, you know, do this, do that, tell tell you what to do when you get hacked." >> Yeah. >> And the thing is they're helping people who've been hacked and so they really don't have as much funding as the rest of SEAL and the rest of like the security industry because the security industry is helping people who have a lot of money to protect. >> Easy to get money out of them. Yeah, >> seal 911. Hey, someone just lost it. All >> gone. >> They're not going to be like, "Oh, yeah. Here's 10K. Thank you." You know, >> I saw Zack XBT complaining about this and I remember when Seal 911 like Samsung posted about this originally like the formation of the group and how the process is for like what you mentioned like opening support tickets in Telegram groups and getting some support from White Hat hackers. But like you said, like I I just see like Zack XBT complaining about like he always gets pings from like people who've lost, you know, 10,000, but they don't tip like after he helps recover them. And he kind of like he got he he like the public seems to have like think that he's not being generous with his time, but like in reality, I imagine the guy's like super busy with like, you know, actually profitable security work. Exactly. So like >> Exactly. If you know I remember you know Corey and I were talking about this like a few years ago and I remember there was like a big push to include more security researchers and I remember um you know Rajie was trying to do Securium and like people were trying to help produce more security auditors for the ecosystem because of all the security issues that are plaguing the entire EVM ecosystem. like do you guys still like need help? And how do you how do people like how do people jump in and try to, you know, get into the pipeline to to uh help? >> Well, you know, it's it is kind of a closed group because it's also very sensitive. >> Um, you know, I I was actually fished just maybe six months ago, right? Mhm. >> Uh I I lost uh like yeah 20K making a bad approve because I was just >> distracted doing other things. >> Went into a Discord that was >> you know taken over and it had like a fake guild. >> I click approve on something and the second I did I'm like oh no oh no you know and so then it's like h can I revoke in time? couldn't revoke in time and so I just right and even when that happened >> I got three DMs from a bunch of other scammers >> that are like >> oh well because it was my griffith address right and so they fig oh that's griff let's see maybe we can oh well maybe they didn't know who I am but they're like >> okay I can find this guy okay it's this guy okay maybe we can get them to click another bad >> approve one >> they sense blood in the fast. >> Those things are monitored. You can monitor for those types of attacks and then go after them to follow up. >> It's all on chain. You can see it. So the shark swarm, you get you make one mistake, the sharks swarm to try to get you to make another. And I can be like, "Hey, is this guy with you guys?" And they're like, "No, that guy is another scammer." You know, like I'm glad I'm talking to you guys because he had some good advice. He should said I should revoke this other approof using his scam website, you know. >> Yeah. >> Right. So, it's like >> having seal 911 there is so valuable, but even I didn't tip them, >> you know? Because I just lost money >> and I understand I'm a white hat myself. I didn't even tip them because like I lost money. What am I going to tip them for, >> you know? And so it's um anyway PC who co-founded it with Samsung, he he uh he was talking to Wintermute and one of the guys who works at Wintermute, he was 17 years old. He was eight years old when the Dow was hacked >> and he was like, "Hey, you're looking for funding, right? I noticed these old DAO contracts. There's like a multi-IG with 15 million in it. Maybe uh and and there’s a blog post that says if these funds aren’t claimed then it could be used for Ethereum security and you know the claims ended like a decade ago >> because yeah basically when we decided to take this on as six volunteers we said we’re going to do it for the next like six months basically and if you don’t put tell us that you you know we’re going to automate most of it but then there’s all these other edge cases if you don’t tell us that you’re getting this money like claims are over January 31st, 2017. >> Yeah. >> You know, and we’re gonna donate the rest of the money to Ethereum Security. >> That’s what we said like back in 2016. >> And so he brought this up. He was eight years old when we said that. But somehow, you know, he brought >> There are little kids forever. >> Yeah. There are little kids who dabble in this stuff for random reasons. I came across that in 2015 and I’ve told that before. They use it because Skril was in inaccessible to them. They couldn’t get their parents to open a PayPal because they didn’t have a credit card or anything. So like I saw t tons of kids playing with crypto like 2013 to 2015 and Yeah. Yeah. We’re just corroborating that there’s a lot of young folks. Yeah. >> The reason I imagine you go on like a a leisurely walk Jesse and you stumble upon like a a wooden of like wild kids in a like treehouse. You’re like, “What the are y’all doing up there?” And they’re like, “We got a whole economy up here, bro. What are you doing over here? >> Yeah, dude. I mean, like is is it is it I’m I’m not going to take over the conversation. So, I’m just not going to tell more the stories that I’ve told before, but like when I just when I was a kid, I also needed money and I also look for ways to engage in like black market economies and crypto, I can see how it’s very useful for kids and they go down the rabbit hole and they they upskill themselves to participate. So, yeah. Moral of the story, parents, give your kids an allowance that’s feasible so they don’t get into the dark web on accident, right? They have no need for the dark web. Give them some money >> or or a bank account and a card, you know? I mean, if they need it because that’s the that’s the real thing, right? Their kids are excluded from the economy almost as bad as Iranians, right? So, you know, it’s like uh it’s it’s just a it’s fulfilling a need. But so anyway, PC and and Fade from Wintermute were talking about how these Dow funds were supposed to be donated to Ethereum Security and they never were. And then uh PC reached out to me and I was at Burning Man at the time, but when PC reaches out because I know I mean co-founder of Seal 911, I’m in the White Hat circles. I know who he is. Like my first instinct is, “Oh what happened?” Right? Like >> it’s always that’s always the thing. Oh no, what am I gonna deal with now? Because Ry man, I try to do a digital detox, you know. I try not to be online, but when I see PC me, you don’t you always answer this man, you know, and so I’m like, “Oh what’s wrong?” You know, he’s like, “Actually, I have this crazy idea.” You know, you know, there’s this old Dow money. There’s like 200 million over here, you know, in this other contract.” >> That’s cute. >> Yeah. So, we’re not talking 15. We’re talking like 220, you know, and at the time it was over 300. >> No, 300 million in the in the extra balance contract. So, it’s like, yeah, let’s talk about this, but maybe a little bit later, right? And so, then we start working through it and and uh figuring out what to do. And so, I bring it to the other curators and at first the answer is like, no. No way. Like, why would we touch any of this money? It’s finally done, guys. Like, you know, >> bury it. >> We don’t need this stress, right? We don’t get paid for this. What are we doing? You know, >> we’re gonna donate this money to Ethereum Security. Sounds like a lot of problems. >> But then, you know, we’re looking at it and balancer gets hacked and all these AI hacks, right? And then, you know, our keys have been exposed for 10 years. Like, who knows if some of them have been, you know, I clicked an approve, you know, I clicked about approved. like how if maybe my keys been taken and maybe one other person’s key is taken by North Korea or one >> compromised potentially at all. >> Yeah, it’s a three6 multisig, right? No. So, >> it’s like, you know, all these things combined and it’s like, wow, we actually can’t do nothing, you know, >> and the idea with the security fund is to and and is is to not just like give away this money like that that it still has people actively claiming. Uh 50 ETH has been claimed since we announced it. Uh and so instead, it’s like let’s protect the money because it needs to be protected anyway. the the old curator multisig which was deployed when solidity was only nine months old probably written when solidity was like two months old has bugs in it for sure like known bugs >> in this contract that is the 306 multisig and it’s enshrined like it can’t we can’t like change it to a new multisig right we’re stuck >> with this contract this old contract that could have a bug >> so there’s nothing we can do We need to with all the AI weirdness happening and tax, we need to rotate our keys and we need to move money out of this contract. >> That makes sense. >> Why are we going to go through this stress? We need to talk to a lawyer. We need to cover our cost. If we want to move 200 million and secure 200 millions like safely, we actually need money to do that, you know. >> Yeah. Um, and so the idea was we can stake most of the funds while it’s not while they’re not being claimed and use the revenue from staking to cover the operational security costs. >> And the revenue from staking will be so much. >> Yeah. >> That we can do a lot more than that. >> Yeah. >> So, uh, and that’s where the Dell security fund came through. And you know, we needed more curators. We needed more than three of six. Two of the curators wanted to resign anyway and didn’t want any like, dude, I’m done with this. >> Yeah, I wipe my hands. This is too much stress. I got to get over this. >> This was a decade ago. I’m retired. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Like, and so, uh, we brought in basically the best curators we could imagine. We got Vitalic. Vitalik’s been a curator all the way through. >> Yeah. You know, >> we have Taylor Monahan, like leading expert on on also her and her boyfriend at the time flipped the coin that even determined what the Dow was, right? Because when we launched the Dow and we put the bite code out there, anyone could deploy it and then there were two that were deployed from pretty anonymous sources. So, it was like this one or that one. And Taylor actually flipped the coin because she was huge in the Dow community at the time. Uh we have Jord right. >> Yeah. >> White hat group also. He’s building ZISK which is probably one of the future clients of Ethereum when it moves to ZKVM right. So Z leading ZK expert in the world. >> Yep. >> PC front lines. >> I don’t know who PC is but yeah I know that everybody else mentioned >> reputable very reputable. Cardasio. I I guarantee you >> Oh, he works for Web3 uh Web 3 now or Web3 security. Web3 privacy, right? >> Yeah, probably. >> He’s definitely into privacy and he’s got like >> Negative R S P S P S P S P S P S P S P S P S P S Pseudo is his name on uh on Twitter and he has >> Oh, no, no, that he’s not in that. He’s Okay, I know who you’re talking about. Okay. >> Yeah. So, he he’s rockar. I mean, like no one knows. He’s on the front line, you know, seeing everything. We have Alexander who’s like UX security expert. >> Uh we have Lansky and me. So like I’m running the DAO operations. >> I know Lansky. Yeah. Yeah. >> And then Lansky. Yeah. Pull Lansky from DAP node because DAP node is doing staking. >> And so we’re not the we’re not the security experts. Like I mean I’m I’m okay. And actually Lansky is really good at node security stuff too. >> We have our role to play but for the most part we’re operational. the real rock stars, the rest of the group. >> But >> I get that. >> Yeah. So, so we could bring them in. We we moved everything to sosis safes or well now just safe, >> right? Way better security. Actually, that old multisig that was a three of six is now a one of one, >> which means it’s just like a random contract in the mix, >> which is way more secure than it having a lot of power. It’s also only managing 1300 ETH, which is the ETH that we left in the extra balance. so that claims could continue normally. So instead of managing 75,000 ETH, we’ve reduced our, you know, like like about 90% of >> the risk >> and now it’s in like topofthe- line secure contracts that we know are earning interest. Well, it will be earning rewards by staking when the queue starts to catch up with us. >> I like that. Gotta roll that back. Gotta say rewards nowadays. You can’t just throw that interest word around. >> Dude, I got a lawyer. >> Earning interest. We’re earning rewards. Great. >> Yeah. >> Very important distinction. >> Yeah. >> Jesus. The banks are the banks. Anyways, let’s not go into that. >> Taxes on and some things you don’t. Okay. These are the >> um >> mind it’s not yours. Yeah. >> So, so Griff, this is a great interview because it it we’ve had, you know, multiple discussions about Dows in the past, I don’t know, what do you guys say, three to four months? Ever since we kind of respsparked up the Bitcoin podcast, it keeps coming up. Obviously, it keeps coming up because it’s such a good idea. It’s not, you can’t ignore it. But, um, I just feel like the execution for Dows, like you said, we don’t we don’t swim like fish. We don’t fly like birds. And you know, I’ve had these, you know, stupid ideas like, “Oh, maybe we’re getting backwards. Maybe we need to organize and then automate and then decentralize and then that’ll be a system that works.” Um, I mean, I don’t know. But like, how do we elevate the execution and performance of Dows? Because right now it like everybody’s let down by them. They’re not really they’re not fulfilling what is in like everybody’s got these gigab brains and they’re like oh it’s going to be great autonomous organization but then the execution is like it’s like oh it’s like two dudes having a private chat running how this is going or chicks dudes or chicks you know >> or or but >> it’s so true I mean I feel like a lot of it is also use cases you know we’re >> in the end we think of Dows and and I always thought governments Right. Yeah. Like I want to I’m here to build like I and I’m still here in this space. My main driver and like internal incentives or internal like intrinsic motivation that’s the word. Uh is to build something better than governments. >> Parallel state stuff, parallel network societies. Yeah. >> Absolutely. And like you know there’s there were three revolutions last year. There’s probably going to be three this year. And crypto is still not ready to be the civil like infrastructure for new countries. We’re not there. We don’t have good private voting, you know, like a lot of, you know, I’m I’m a huge delegate in arbitrum, huge delegate in optimism, very active in ENS as well, huge delegate in ENS. I’m also on the arbitrum ENS security councils. I’m active in a bunch of Dows, right? and uh and started many dows and I think the the governor con whatever contract that compound did it’s horrible I’ve always hated it this like the goal for me with Dows was to go past Dunar number right >> but the goal for someone starting a company right that’s going to try to make money in crypto they need more something akin to shareholder voting right in and a board, a decentralized board that they’re not actually looking to replace governments or have like real stakeholder representation. They’re just trying to figure out some wisdom of the crowds and get some feedback so that they can make a bunch of money building their product. And that’s that’s very different than you know hey we have these shared resources like the roads and you know uh you know an economy and we want to you know distribute funding that we all collect towards public goods that’s not what arbitum really needs you know um so I think a lot of the DAO stuff has happened in a place where it’s really just replacing a stock you know and sher board of sheriff holders kind of thing and and so they don’t need private voting. In fact, they’re more worried about conflicts of interest. So they don’t want private voting. >> They don’t want, you know, a lot of the things that a government would need for distributing elections and initiatives and tax money and these things. So things that I thought would be obvious use cases like liquid democracy, which Jordy built for the DAO in 2016. I haven’t seen a single liquid democracy experiment that got outside of an internal group. I know stat had one. Give it >> couple. Yeah. Like liquid democracy sort of is out there, but who ever uses it, you know? It’s not like, you know, and there’s a lot of things there’s I would say there’s only a few tools that have come out of crypto that have actually surpassed Dunar number. quadratic funding. >> Uh the VE curve. >> What? >> Sorry, I was gonna add to the conversation. We keep going. Keep going. >> Yeah, quadratic funding. VE curve like VE bal ve like the vote escrow voting kind of this algorithmic uh gauges, you know, that like uh what was it? the there was like a stable coin that was doing rebasing that used gauges and then like even one inch had gauges like that sort of worked past Dumbar number and then uh gas voting in Ethereum right nodes voting on the gas limit that’s also kind of a good decentralized vote like node voting in general um I think there’s some examples in Bitcoin too where it’s like you can you know throw in your node a vote >> yeah a little bit >> so Like that’s it. Everything else is like how do we aggregate into less than dumb number you know all the delegation >> see like the the the word DAO the concept of DAO encompasses all of that and more. >> Yeah. And so like it’s really hard to say like do they work or do we need better ones because it like you said it’s contextual to like what you’re doing and who’s doing it >> and the right way in which those that group organizes and for some cases like a government how you organize and who you get representation from and how you wait that representation is very different than a a company and shareholders. I think the thing is is that you never really get rid of government >> because you can never get rid of governance. Like governance is how humans communicate, right? So >> I don’t think it’s about getting rid of government. I think it’s about upgrading it, elevating it, maybe changing it, >> but you don’t get rid of it. And and perhaps like >> the bait we’re trying like we’re reaching for something that’s just way too far. Like we need to take like this is a shout out to one of my favorite books I recently read. We need to take an atomic habits approach like let’s start with like governing small things right just like there’s different types of businesses structures that you set up for different reasons start with like small governance and then if that starts to rally around itself you could develop a ring around that and then there’s a governance that governs the small things like you got to start from the small steps but I think Ethereum and crypto in general is always like listen I know right now we’ve got sticks and stones but we’re going to Mars tomorrow and it’s No, that’s not that’s not going to happen, guys. Like, there’s a lot of steps there. And the most important step that I think crypto forgets is there’s social consensus that goes into all this because we need the social consensus because we literally need the value to keep this stuff going. And if people don’t believe in any of these things, they’re just going to like, ah, you know what? Screw crypto today. I’m going after Google stock. Right? Like that’s what the general public is going to do. I know because I literally just had that conversation like six hours ago. So it’s I feel like if we are actually going to put our best foot forward and we’re going to evolve Dows, we need to think a lot smaller. Like >> hey to your point to your point like it’d be nice to see like for instance there’s a lot of deep pin projects in our industry trying to do something more than just you know financial transactions like I know that like you when I go to ETH Denver all over conferences like people are trying to create like data dows or like um like uh not not drug Dows like Sidow or like random other you know Dows for everything right >> drug there’s drug Dows too like Vita Dow good drugs, not not not like Yeah, I’m sure I’m sure there are. But I guess my I guess my point is to to to echo and to kind of like extend what Dia is saying is like there should be like some sort of um traditional company model where there’s revenue that’s produced and you can at the at the small a smaller unit like maybe like you can think of it like a subdow that eventually once it’s profitable can plug into like a governance larger abstraction Dow where they want to feed as like a not necessarily a social service but maybe some sort of like um like a privatized social service that people can pay into and and I know that like you know Logos is trying to work on a decentralized identity system because at at some point you do need that right and everybody’s got one tries and there’s there’s other projects that are trying to do the same thing but like I know D tried to manage a Dow within the like there’s a lot of processes that happen that you need you know delegated authority to approve approve the next checkpoint of of a of a decision. So like when you have you know a decision is made from the bottom up you have to have some sort of approval of checks for funding to get dispensed you know like nouns dow or something like that right where somebody comes up with a proposal says I’m going to make a comic book strip to try and improve the value of nouns and I need 50k and I’m going to produce 10,000 magazines like I think we need more practical examples to what D is saying of somebody taking the DAO concept that can provide social services, but trying to make it into some sort of hybrid of like a traditional company that can have sustainable revenue because otherwise you’re going to like we’re going to have like a bunch of nonprofit orgs where we’re all dumping crypto and then it’s not sustainable financially for people to be able to participate because they don’t have, you know, infinite time to be volunteers forever. >> Yeah. I mean, I got great news for you, man. We are in the Dow Security Fund is exactly this. We are in a very lucky place where we can stake >> 69420. >> Oh, is was that for the meme number? Um, but yeah, we’re >> we’re staking 69,420 ETH. Uh, and and that is going to be a clear revenue source, right? And then with that revenue, we can actually distribute funds in a bottomup way using Dowo tooling. And that’s our goal. So the goal the goal of the Dow security fund is kind of twofold. Number one, fund Ethereum security. Security is one of the hardest public goods to figure out. Like this is the police. Like in real world, it’s the police. It’s the, you know, it’s the army. It’s like always like, you know, when you talk in the libertarian circles, it’s like, yeah, but you know, we all need nation state level protection, right? You know, it’s like, okay, well, that’s always like a lot where the libertarian conversations break down. So, we’re going to try to approach just the focused goal of how do we make Ethereum more secure? Uh, and but to fund it, we’re not going to be like the seven of us curators being like, yo, I like that guy. We’re sending him money, you know. No, no. Like we’re going to do one donation here next week and that’s like the only time that we will actually do uh a direct donation. The rest are all going to be rounds and we’re going to work with different DAO tooling providers to figure out different ways and experiment with different DAO tools to try to find good ways to distribute funds to the people who are providing security or even hopefully figure out what projects are needed the most >> and and then fund, you know, maybe we do like an RFP voting process where it’s like, okay, >> here’s these different ideas of of projects that need to be done, you know, and uh which which idea should get like 3 million. This one there's 10 of them, 20, right? >> Yeah, I got ideas. >> The community will vote. Same >> and then we will fund the one that, you know, gets the top top choice. >> Yeah. >> I too would like to I like I I think I've watched enough Shark Tank to know what good looks like. You know, I'd like to >> I think the problem is like accountability though like right even like once you dispense the funds and even if you like you know uh do it in phases like we expect this amount of progress this is you know you're asking for 100,000 we're going to do 10,000 get to phase one and there's 10 phases >> like it's really hard like I I see it some people work some people do it well and some people don't and some people just take the money and leave and it's like how do you even solve for that >> project risk assessment Yeah, >> to Lucen. If you're watching on Twitter, there's quite a people watching from Twitter right now. Lucian actually did a project, a successful one with being able to prove that people said that they were going to do what they were going to do and then the funds were released. So, Lucian, if you get if you get a hold of this, I know you're on Twitter a lot, like uh maybe join up join this join this right now and talk about that. But we'll keep going. We'll keep going with the interview. >> Yeah. I mean, I think it's context dependent, right? So in a quadratic some some rounds like quadratic funding rounds or retroactive public goods funding round it's like these are active projects that have a history of success. We're only throwing them like not gamechanging money. It's not an RFP, right? And it's like okay well that's a little bit easier. It's like a little bit of money to a lot of projects and the projects that get the most is kind of like based on donations, right? So quadratic funding that's like one thing and I don't think it needs a lot of like oversight. It's like, well, you're getting these donations because you already did stuff and and really the oversight for quadratic funding is the eligibility requirements, right? It's like you get in the round or not, you know? And maybe I mean I think we're actually working with the Ethereum Foundation for eligibility requirements all the way through because this is a very much an Ethereum focused security effort. So EF is the natural person, the EF the specifically the grants management team at the Ethereum Foundation. They're going to be doing the eligibility requirements and helping um every round operator actually decide the eligibility requirements. But then maybe we'll also do a deep funding round which is going to be based off of like your open source contributions and AI is going to do something there, right? or but for the RFPs we need to have a provider like because the Dow Security Fund we're kind of like low operationally. Giveth does operations and the Dow Security Fund like actual board is uh you know just the seven very busy people that will meet once a month to and our decision is which rounds are we going to run right with the funding that we have and then GTH is going to do all the operational stuff find the round operators collect you know be the fa be the like interface right and then we will work with a round operator And depending on that round operator, like if we're going to do an RFP round, >> we can't give everyone money up front, you know, that was a classic mistake. It's got to be like milestones and if someone fails >> you're out their process, you know, and it's got to be >> Yeah. >> to be objective, too. Um, go ahead. Go ahead, Jess. >> I like Do you have any >> foundation for a lot of this stuff? >> Do you have any literature on like learned lessons from failures that you've collected? not only from like you know the DAO but also other Dows that you've been working with because you said you run like small Dows and you're part of big Dows like for L2s arbitum optimism like do you have like written work somewhere like people like myself who are like I remember I got involved with working with Corey is because like I tried to stand up a Dow by myself and I realized holy it's it's a lot of work and like >> like D was saying like we have sticks and stones and you can't build anything reasonable because there's a lot of there's a lot of technical expertise required. there's a lot of uh expertise in the in the domain of like being able to secure contracts properly like there's just a lot of people that are needed like do you have somebody like so so myself and other people who are interested in trying to help out as you know third party people how do we help like I I saw Vitalik's post like we want more people experimenting with the Dows in the direction that you know idealistically why a lot of people got involved with Ethereum in the first place right >> do you have like anything that kind of consolidates your learnings from everything, gives people a good launch. >> I do. I mean, we have a I I have my for personally, I have a lot of uh like different blog posts that are within my other orgs like the token engineering commons and the common staff. There are lots of lessons and retrospectives because that was really an applied research project and we even shut down the token engineering comments recently >> and uh the you know and had like uh you know it was built on a bonding curve and so there was actually a lot of ETH that was left over and so like we could actually basically shut down the token and give token holders the ETH left over for that was that was in there you know and and things like that. So, no shortage of lessons. Like, you know, I was very involved in optimism with the retrofunding rounds and >> um but I wouldn't say I have it all written down. I'll be honest, I'm not the organized human that does >> Hey, get yourself some agents, my friend. >> I know. I need a Cloudbot. Hey, Cloudbot, like or whatever. Open Cloud, whatever you want to call it. >> Open. >> I love it. >> Do you like a brain dump? Write me a blog post based off of >> I got you. I'll set you I'll set you up one. >> Yeah. With Jarvis. Jesus, man. You're looking at Tony Stark right there, but redheaded and not Robert Downey Jr. >> I got things going. >> Yeah. Very modest DevOps dude over here, I'll tell you. But uh >> please uh set up a 4D3D3D3 call that we can nude. Sorry, please. Sorry for the last month and they it's not really e feasible to get like a new device because there's no way I can use this device with anything. Um, but I'm going to go to Denver next week and I'm definitely going to buy probably a laptop instead of a MacBook because I also want to separate my crypto from like tooling from my actual work now. >> Yes, sir. >> Yeah, it's been too long that I've been using hot >> I literally just gave advice on this yesterday. you need a separate separate VLAN like just isolate the network if you're going to do those types of experiments cuz like Cory and I talk about this all the time we're dabbling with all the but like it's very flawed right now and so like we we have separated isolated setups so we can experiment with >> Can can we just pause for the for the branding cause right now? This man said I'm probably going to get a laptop instead of a MacBook. >> That's a hard Apple. >> Oh, okay. Okay. I was about to say that's how hard Apple brands they don't even consider it a laptop. It's its own entity. The MacBook. No. Um >> I meant Mac like me. That's just speaking. I probably will get MacBook like a you know or whatever. >> Don't dox yourself. >> Um >> well, we'll see. I guess to to add a personal touch to some of this conversation, man, how do you have so much energy year in and year out to continuously put the good foot forward when in crypto it's like out of n out of a hundred people, one of them is putting the good foot forward, 99 of them are like the sharks we were talking about earlier in this conversation. Like we need approve, let's get his ass. But then there's one person that's like could we not be evil, right? like there's better things we could do if we weren't evil. And so you're definitely the one in 99. How do you sustain the energy? Is it good wholesome food? Is it good? You know, is it pumpkin seeds high in protein and good fat? Like what's going on over there? >> It's like, you know, my diet, man. I was just eating pumpkin seeds. No, but uh I mean I I think that that is true in crypto today, but I'm an OG crypto guy. you know, 2013 like uh full on ever since, you know, mid 2013 been like, oh, actually end of 2013 been full-time in crypto. And I think from that class, it's not one in 99, it's like 5050, you know, that crypto. >> The ones that are still here. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >> Definitely the ones that are still here, it's like 5050 are heroes, you know? And and so, you know, I don't know. I I for me personally, it's just like I'm not I've never been money motivated. I retired in 2011 with like 60k, right? And I was like stoked. Like >> interesting decision, >> you know, right there. >> Damn. >> So for me, as long as I have 60K, I'm good. I can retire and live in Thailand for like, you know, a couple years and not not worry about it, you know? So, >> and he's he's someone that would do it, too. So like it's like it's not a lot of people can like say like I'll just go with so and so and live meagerly and but like no Griffin definitely has lived that life and has shown to be able to do that type of thing. So >> I mean I still live meagerly. I basically live out of a backpack. I've been nomadic >> this whole entire time like >> Santa costume and a backpack. >> I really like that sometimes. I think I'm the exact opposite. When I retire, I'm going to adopt a Wakanda accent and buy the most badass that >> I are today. >> It's okay, Corey. You can you can not do that. >> Well, no one's retiring this week. man. >> No, we're not. >> Tell me about it. Push that mountain back a few years. >> Yeah, I definitely did. I mean the Dow security fund we launched with 220 million. You go to the Dowf fund. I think we got like 150 now. What happened? We lost like 70 million in a week. >> It's a whole another episode about what's going on with that. But we, you know, we don't want to talk about those things. >> You know, we were just talking about like separating the the hot wallets from AI and stuff. And one thing that I've learned in the last year basically hanging out with PC and these other white hats is like the hot wallet is the biggest issue in our in Ethereum security. And it's not it's and it's it's to the point of it's a systemic issue. The fact that we have these hot wallets is creating a whole industry of scammers and malware. >> Just just the fact that they exist on your wallet. It's not just like, oh, you better protect yourself. It's, and this is what's turning me around to not doing it. It's like, oh, you know, if it's convenient and da da da, but actually by not doing it, you're kind of a dick. You need to use hard wallets because if you're not, you're effectively like indirectly supporting a whole industry of cyber crime. Uh, and and the fact that there are so many hot wallets with so much money is why there's like slaves in Thailand. >> And it's also the entry point to to naivity. So like whenever you're signing someone on, >> you give them the thing that is the most like easy to scam as opposed to like signing them up with the thing that teaches them how to actually secure their funds and be resistant to scamming, which is the whole point of this technology. So like >> and now we have account abstraction, right? Now we have smart contract wallets that are actually way safer than than uh um hot wallet hot wallets like >> you know >> I didn't know that >> like I almost thought that the abstractions being built in it's like they got all kinds of things cool thing this is all started I would argue started with Alex Bandisan's like universal >> login or whatever it was um he started these things >> like in in earnest and then they've they've they've grown pretty substantially since Yeah, I mean you can with a smart contract wallet, you can put all sorts of like uh like with unicorn the way like with the ethere app and these things uh we have graduated security levels, right? Like if you only have 1,000 on it, it’s not a big deal. You have over 10,000, get a hardware wallet. here’s a referral link and we’ll get some money too. But honestly, you need a hardware wallet. You have too much money to lose, right? >> That doesn’t need to be that can be built into the wallet. That’s not a centralized kind of surveillance mechanism where like you’re watching everyone’s wallets and being like, “Oh, this one has too much money. Let’s send them a notification.” That can just be built into the software so that it’s local. >> Exactly. I mean, it’s all on chain, too, right? It’s like, “Hey, your assets are in this smart contract wallet.” That’s public knowledge. It’s one of our smart contract wallets. We don’t know who you are. But, you know, you can log in with maybe you’re logging in with a hotkey. I mean, you can still log in with your MetaMask and and now that’s a little less secure because now your MetaMask key gets hacked. If the hacker figures out you have this wallet, they can do it. Honestly, it’s Google login is probably more secure, as sad as that is, than your hot wallet, you know, and and so there’s like but there’s levels, you know, and you can do you we can do so much more than the lack of days, you know, the the hot wallets that we were using in with the the DAO curators, they were JSON files. >> Yeah, key store files. >> they’re just key store files. Yeah, >> exactly. Because this was before even MetaMask and >> it was even probably my ether wallet key store files which was just a website URL >> mostly. Exactly. You know and we we and who knows like what if we are using I mean this was before the profanity exploit and and actually that that library existed but you know how did those keys get generated? What if there’s a bug found generation of those keys? You know, it’s like, dude, like it’s so scary these days in crypto, like with all the new AI, like every black hat has a clawbot or has like a, you know, open claw ex going just trying to attack us, right, 247. So, it’s like, >> you know, we we really need to do our best to secure our crypto, not just for ourselves, but actually for >> everyone else. >> Yeah. Because Build some herd immunity. >> Let’s start a campaign. Start. So, uh, we’re we got a short message from our sponsors, aka us. >> Are you working in a job that sucks bows? Does your job suck and ergo your life? Do you want to change that cuz your life is sucking? Join the TBP slack. Get a >> That is not theack. It’s a discord. >> What are you talking about? That was hilarious. >> You could go, you could join our discord. Scan that link right there. Uh you’ll join a discord. In that discord, you’ll find founders, investors, active developers, uh very good deep conversation, um security people. Um there’s layers to that too. So if you get into the better chat rooms with some of the OGs, you could feel safe, you know, that you’re having conversations with people that are going to give you good guidance in this crazy ass industry. All right? And we’re really keen, too. We have her immunity in that Discord. So if you come in there and talk to some bull, we will kick you out. Okay? I’ve kicked some people out. >> It’s invalid. >> We’re not good technologists though. >> How? It’s the same link as always up there. Oh, does >> Discord, bro? Just just.com. Just go to >> go to the bitcoinodcast.com. That’s a Discord link. >> Just click on Discord there. Yeah, there you go. >> Oh my god. I didn’t know. See, I’m a noob. I didn’t know that. I thought that was a static thought that was a static link. I’m so bad at like >> expires. So, >> I read the website. It’s more like a library. It’s fun. It’s engaging. You can search on it really easily. >> Yeah. >> I should write a book, World’s Worst Marketer, and it be creep out like tell people to go to dead end streets. They’ll love it. >> Just go to bitcoinpodcast.com. Um but anyways, I don’t want to deroll. We can get back to the top. We have to pause for the >> wrap up. You do we have to >> I got I got work to do. No, it’s been fun. >> I got meetings. >> It’s been fun. Uh it was Friday. >> I always have meetings. Don’t go away. >> That’s right. Well, maybe I can just throw down a few random facts about the Dallas security fund before. >> Please do. Please. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, we have what used to be 10, whatever. The crash has been tough, but uh we we still have we have a bunch of funds that are staking and we’re really excited to fuel the Ethereum security community and be a shelling point for it. And it’s not going to be just us funding things because if it’s like one thing I learned from nonprofits is that if you’re just like kind of yoloing it yourself, you’re going to just blow the money in the wrong direction. And so this is really an we’re hoping to become a selling point for the ecosystem and to actually work with the other groups who are also spending on their own a lot of money on their own security for their protocols. Whether it’s Aigen layer or like arbitrum or all these groups, they’re all dependent on the security of Ethereum and they’re all blowing insane amounts of cash on security. And I know that with this shared goal, if we can build a coalition around this, uh, you know, we can be large funders, but we can actually save the industry money on security just by working together on solving some of these major problems. Yeah. >> So, I’m really excited to like put ourselves in that place. And if anyone out there is like, you know, working in a protocol that is probably spending millions of dollars on security and wants to try to reduce that spend, like let’s start some conversations. You know, we just launched. >> We have a protocol that needs auditing. Do you have a website we can go to and just jump right in and say, “Hey, we want to help and we also need help.” >> I mean, that’s the thing like we launched last week. Okay. >> Oh, okay. Okay. >> Helpful, baby. We’re getting the news. >> Just wait. Just wait. >> Straight up front. But I want to talk to you and understand your needs, you know, and I want to talk to as many people as I can to understand the needs of the industry so we can figure out what the biggest wins are and where we can step up because right now we have the Ethereum Foundation. They’re doing an incredible job like the trillion dollar security like effort is just amazing and they’re but it’s really a top down thing. And then we have like Seal and Seal 911, but they actually help everyone. you know, it doesn’t care if it’s Ethereum or Salana or whoever. >> Yeah. The security group. >> Yeah. This Yeah. What the ETH security group. >> Yeah. Like the Telegram group. >> Yeah. That’s great. you know, um, but I I think that we can be I I hope that we can have a role of really coming as like a a a shelling point for not only industry leaders but also users and every stakeholder in the Ethereum security vertical uh so that we can figure out how can we reduce the spend and increase the impact. Uh so anyway, that’s my pitch and I’m really excited to be able to take this role uh and and and really push it forward. >> You’re the man for it. >> Yes, you are. >> Couldn’t think of a better person. >> Jesse, did you notice that tomato tomato movement? Corey was like the e security. And Griff goes eth my friend. ETH security. Who’s right on this one? >> I am. >> Tomato tomato, my friends. It doesn’t matter. You know how time it is, Griff. You’ve done it three times, maybe four. I don’t I can’t can’t keep track of this stuff. You know, in 10 words or less, uh, describe, define Dao. It’s already three words, so just do your best. Like adding seven >> bottomup decision- making for communities. >> Okay, fair. >> it’s going in the book. Y’all will never get because we don’t have that kind of time. We got an old book. I got >> you got you got AI. It’ll do it for you, man. >> Oh, you’re so good. Oh, you know what? I’m gonna do that on the website. >> I got It’s fine. I got to open claw. I’ll just parse all the transcripts of every of the thousands of hours, >> make throw it on Amazon. >> For all the me to write a blog post, you know, not me though, of course. you >> all the people that chimed in on on Twitter and and and gave us a little bit of your time today. Thank you very much. If you go to the bitcoinpodcast.com, little known fact, we were like one of the first five crypto podcasts in this whole damn thing. Um, not that other the Bitcoin podcast that seized the moment when we stopped producing, but we’re like the original one. And uh, you can go to our website and listen to hundreds of conversations, thousands, almost thousands. is in between 1,000 and 2,000 hours of crypto content for the last decade. So, do that. Enjoy it. >> I’m making it better and easier to move around and search find things. >> And then I’m going to be deploying a a token for those who want to help us >> provide guests, provide sponsorships and grants. We’re gonna we’re going to do like exactly what you guys were talking about in terms of try to create like we’ll look at the podcast like a nonprofit and then you know there’s a percentage that goes to operating costs like paying for StreamYard subscription, paying for the G Suite. It’s not lot that much money and then just paying out people who want to help out. It’s like a good entry point we think. So >> it’ll roll out sometime soon. >> Crowdfunded crowdcreated podcast. >> Crowdfunded podcast. So yeah, join the Discord. Talk to the bot. Get yourself some tokens. Anyways, we’re looking forward to seeing people come in. If you do uh play the outro.