Sina Habibian Podcast

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Aya Miyaguchi: reflections on Ethereum and the Ethereum Foundation May 25, 2023

Show notes

This is my conversation with Aya Miyaguchi, Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:01:20) - sponsor: Optimism (optimism.io)
(00:02:32) - reflecting on early days of Ethereum
(00:08:54) - Ethereum as an Infinite Garden
(00:19:08) - books and ideas that influenced Aya
(00:24:48) - the insignificance of titles
(00:31:56) - what does “Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation” mean?
(00:40:27) - the “teacher” mindset and how it applies to management
(00:47:18) - the importance of diversity
(00:51:35) - sponsor: Privy (privy.io)
(00:52:57) - the idea of subtraction and how it plays out in practice
(01:05:46) - funding in a non-profit context
(01:08:42) - why it’s difficult to describe the potential of Ethereum
(01:16:40) - embracing imperfection
(01:20:37) - learning from (un)natural disasters
(01:33:14) - what the 'next billion' means for Ethereum
(01:42:53) - Ethereum in emerging economies
(01:49:03) - outro

Links:
Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games
Aya on Executing with Subtraction - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noXPewi5qOk
Ethereum Foundation - https://ethereum.org/en/foundation/

Thank you to our sponsors for making this podcast possible:
Optimism - https://optimism.io
Privy - https://privy.io

Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

Disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell securities. The host and guests may hold positions in the projects discussed.

Dan Romero: Farcaster, building a decentralized social network Nov 04, 2022

Show notes

This is my conversation with Dan Romero about Farcaster - a decentralized social network being developed as an open protocol.

We talked about how product decisions in social networks have ripple effects on society, Farcaster’s strategy in the highly competitive world of social products, and Dan's personal philosophies around hiring and team building.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:02:08) - why this problem?
(00:12:54) - both product and protocol
(00:23:41) - the algorithmic feed
(00:29:40) - Farcaster’s strategy for competing with Twitter
(01:00:52) - approach to team building
(01:14:41) - how to use social networks, and meme’ing

Links:
Dan Romero - https://twitter.com/dwr
Farcaster - https://www.farcaster.xyz/
Farcaster docs - https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol
Varun - https://twitter.com/varunsrin
Keybase - https://keybase.io/
Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

Jango & Nnnnicholas: Juicebox, programming internet-native organizations Sep 28, 2022

Show notes

This is my conversation with Jango and Nnnnicholas from Juicebox Protocol. Juicebox is a playful but ambitious project: the DAO operates as a full-stack instantiation of the protocol it's building, and fully reconceptualizes the relationship between contributors and shareholders. It has powered projects like SharkDAO, ConstitutionDAO, and AssangeDAO in the past.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:01:37) - an alternative to traditional org structures
(00:09:53) - philosophical alignment
(00:27:30) - the key mechanisms of the Juicebox Protocol
(00:35:51) - fundraising mechanics and the extensibility of Juicebox v2
(00:46:05) - a DAOs’s origins shape its culture
(00:54:46) - guiding principles for compensation
(01:02:06) - working backwards from the future
(01:12:11) - the subtraction philosophy and Ethereum as the Big Bang
(01:31:25) - StudioDAO and models for permissionless DAOs

Links:
Jango - https://twitter.com/me_jango
Nnnnicolas - https://twitter.com/nnnnicholas
Juicebox - https://juicebox.money/
Nouns - https://nouns.wtf/
StudioDAO - https://www.studiodao.xyz/
Juicecast podcast about StudioDAO - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-9-kenny-from-studiodao/id1623504302?i=1000576149672
Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

Nadia Asparouhova: on public goods & peer production Aug 31, 2022

Show notes

Nadia Asparouhova is an independent researcher. She previously wrote about her research on open-source communities in "Working in Public", and more recently, has been researching the history of and approaches to philanthropy - which she defines with this phrase “if venture capital is risk capital for private goods, philanthropy is risk capital for public goods”.

In this conversation, we talked about public goods from this broader perspective. We talked about how previous generations have thought about this question, and how the tech ecosystem outside of crypto are grappling with this today. We talked about the second-order effects of wealth booms which have happened in both tech and crypto, how peer production happens, and the role that intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards might play in the development of crypto protocols.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:02:01) - working as an independent researcher
(00:06:09) - understanding wealth booms in tech and crypto
(00:13:01) - the unique perspectives of each successive community
(00:25:46) - the right (and wrong) question to ask
(00:34:41) - the landscape of public goods provisioning
(00:39:22) - innovative philanthropic funding models
(00:45:35) - the first wave of open source communities and crypto
(00:54:42) - different classes of stakeholders
(01:05:00) - research methodology and tools for thought

Links:
Nadia Asparouhova - https://twitter.com/nayafia
Nadia’s website - https://nadia.xyz/
“Working in Public” - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578675862/
Gitcoin - https://gitcoin.co/
Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

Julien Niset: Argent, building on StarkNet, and a primer on account abstraction Aug 24, 2022

Show notes

Julien Niset is the cofounder and Chief Science Officer at Argent, a crypto wallet that's used and loved by many people in the crypto ecosystem.
In this conversation, we talk about how Argent has evolved to get to where it is today. How Julien sees user experience evolving broadly in the ecosystem, and what the flow of a new person interacting with a crypto application for the first time might look like in the future.

Another topic we get into deeply is L2s, how Julien and Argent have thought about the topic of EVM equivalence and compatibility, and why they ultimately chose to build on ZK Rollups like ZkSync and StarkNet.

And lastly, we dive into what has been like to build on StarkNet, what the early community feels like today, what it's been like to write code in Cairo, and as a bit of a snapshot into this experience we do a deep dive into what account abstraction looks like on StarkNet.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:01:56) - leaning into zk rollups and account abstraction
(00:07:29) - scaling the self-custody experience
(00:13:20) - what onboarding users to crypto will look like in 3 years
(00:20:24) - some of the friction points that still need to be abstracted
(00:33:52) - L2s and the trade-offs between different rollups
(00:39:45) - is breaking EVM-equivalency worth it?
(00:48:01) - Julien’s experience in the StarkNet ecosystem
(00:58:24) - a technical primer on account abstraction
(01:15:38) - session keys
(01:28:17) - starting a sensible wallet set up from scratch

Links:
Julien Niset - https://twitter.com/jniset
Argent - https://www.argent.xyz/
StarkNet - https://starkware.co/starknet/
zkSync - https://zksync.io/
Topology - https://www.topology.gg/

Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

Pedro Gomes: WalletConnect v2, account abstraction, and building a communications protocol Aug 11, 2022

Show notes

Pedro Gomes is the cofounder of WalletConnect, a communications protocol that enables wallets and apps to securely connect and interact.

In this conversation, We talked about WalletConnect v2 and its architecture, account abstraction, potential downstream effects of a crypto-native chat protocol, and other topics.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:08:00) - developing the user experience before creating the product
(00:10:23) - account abstraction and the spectrum of security and convenience
(00:20:39) - WalletConnect APIs and “Log in with Ethereum”
(00:28:55) - how WalletConnect works
(00:37:45) - light clients and generalized messaging protocols
(00:45:36) - the politics of making big changes to the Ethereum protocol
(00:50:14) - connecting wallets with WalletConnect Chat

Links:
WalletConnect - https://walletconnect.com/
EIP2938 (account abstraction) - https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2938
WalletConnect APIs - https://docs.walletconnect.com/2.0

Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

Josh Stark: the Ethereum Foundation & Atoms, Institutions, Blockchains Jun 14, 2022

Show notes

Here is my conversation with Josh Stark.

Josh has a long history in the Ethereum ecosystem going back to the early days of the community. He cofounded one of the first L2 scaling protocols with Counterfactual. He also cofounded ETHGlobal which is a much-loved series of hackathons/events that brings the community together and which acts as an entry point into the ecosystem for many people. And nowadays and most relevant to our conversation, he works in a leadership capacity at the Ethereum Foundation.

In this conversation, we talked about two topics: one being the Ethereum Foundation, and two being the question of why blockchain is matter — this being something that Josh has spent a lot of time thinking about and which he's written about in a long form piece titled Atoms Institutions Blockchains.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:03:50) - subtraction
(00:07:22) - creating a self-sufficient crypto ecosystem
(00:12:33) - the property of ‘hardness’ for blockchains
(00:17:47) - understanding decentralization
(00:23:11) - Atoms, Institutions, Blockchains
(00:26:00) - blind men and an elephant
(00:33:06) - our civilization’s infrastructure
(00:43:33) - digitally-native hardness
(00:59:38) - how the EF operates
(01:06:21) - challenges with decentralized coordination
(01:12:08) - infinite players have nothing but their names

Links:
Atoms, Institutions, Blockchains: https://stark.mirror.xyz/n2UpRqwdf7yjuiPKVICPpGoUNeDhlWxGqjulrlpyYi0

Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

0age: Seaport, and protocol development with OpenSea Jun 02, 2022

Show notes

0age is the Head of Protocol Development at OpenSea, and this was a conversation about Seaport, the new marketplace protocol for buying and selling NFTs.

0age takes us through a tour of the Seaport protocol, talking about how it's architected; how conduits and zones work; and we even get into the low level gas optimization work they've done on the contracts. I hope this can be a helpful resource for anyone looking to understand the Seaport protocol or anyone who's building with NFTs more broadly. I also consider 0age to be a true veteran of the space, and hearing him talk through the design of the protocol can be an educational experience in its own rights.

Timestamps:
(00:01:42) - why build Seaport
(00:10:20) - the Seaport architecture
(00:12:44) - EIP712 signatures
(00:14:17) - the global concept of a nonce
(00:16:02) - EIP1271 and bulk listings
(00:17:18) - the Executor and conduits
(00:25:08) - zones, additional rules that can be applied on top of an order
(00:29:47) - implementing English auctions via zones
(00:32:17) - layers of the stack
(00:36:05) - fulfillment
(00:40:42) - gas optimizations and understanding the low-level behavior of the EVM
(00:58:40) - the interaction between OpenSea the product and Seaport the protocol
(01:07:06) - criteria based items, and partial fills
(01:17:50) - ideas to build on top of Seaport

Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

Charles St.Louis: Element Finance, and voting vaults as a primitive May 24, 2022

Show notes

Charles St.Louis is the COO at Element Finance, a protocol for fixed and variable rate yield markets and previously the governance architect at MakerDAO. In this conversation, we talked about Element’s governance system - with a particular focus on voting vaults, a powerful new primitive that decouple the relationship between capital and voting power and allow much more expressiveness in how users are given a governance voice in the ecosystem.

Timestamps:
(00:02:54) - MakerDAO’s arc of decentralization
(00:07:51) - how Maker influenced Element’s design
(00:10:22) - the Governance Steering Council
(00:21:25) - voting vaults
(00:29:10) - L1 and L2 for governance
(00:33:23) - qualitative evaluation for contributions
(00:37:50) - the ElFiverse and NFTs in the Element community
(00:42:24) - on being a protocol delegate

Links:
The Governance Steering Council - https://medium.com/element-finance/the-governance-steering-council-63aea7732262
Voting Vaults - https://docs.element.fi/governance-council/council-protocol-smart-contracts/voting-vaults
The Elfiverse - https://elfiverse.element.fi/

Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

Henri Stern: Privy, building for data privacy and security May 19, 2022

Show notes

Here is my conversation with Henri Stern who is building Privy.
Henri was previously a research scientist at Protocol Labs and worked on Filecoin’s consensus protocol. And after many years of thinking through problems related to data privacy and security, he recently co-founded a new company called Privy where they provide a suite of API tools to store and manage user data off chain.

In this conversation, we talked through a set of topics that Henri has a unique point of view on — starting with the question around the seeming trade-off between privacy/security on the one hand and UX/convenience on the other. We talked about principles he has in mind in designing an off-chain data system; how privy does encryption and key management; how they do permissioning; and how they think about data storage.

Timestamps:
(00:02:30) - designing the product/protocol roadmap
(00:10:30) - privacy/security vs. convenience
(00:19:27) - building an web3 application
(00:23:20) - decentralizing Privy
(00:32:09) - key management architecture
(00:46:11) - verifiability, transparency as a disinfectant
(00:59:02) - building a product with private data
(01:07:08) - cofounder relationship

Sina Habibian: https://sinahab.com
Sina Habibian on X: https://x.com/sinahab

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