CROPS or Bust! Towards an Open Source, Censorship Resistant, Private and Secure Ethereum

Um, I prefer to take a decentralized approach to the intros. So, I'm going to pass the mic around and uh let our three panelists introduce themselves. Um, but first I just want to say hi. Uh, my name is Corey. been in the space for a few years uh organizing various events and really excited to talk about crops today with this uh with this amazing crew.

So uh please Benji.

Hi. Um I'm Benji. I work at the Ethereum Foundation um in the realm of trying to help demystify and explain what crops is for folks and hope to get to be able to do that today.

Hey, I'm I'm left. I've been in the field like way too long. Uh I'm the founder of Rodkkey. Uh, hi everyone. My name is Nick.

Uh, I am head of governance um at a project called GTO on Salana at the moment. I worked in Ethereum for several years uh trying to live the DAO dream uh with great pain and suffering. Um so I'll talk about that a little bit. I think

great um yeah so uh let's kick this off. We had crops introduced this year by the Ethereum Foundation and um it's I think incited quite an active conversation in the community and um I know that each of you may have a little bit of a different take on things. So we wanted to kick off a conversation today just to like have an open conversation around um yeah what it means um where it might be leading uh some maybe various opinions on uh the effectiveness of it. So um yeah maybe we could start off with um I don't know if Benji if you want to take it away and kind of give your take on on what crops is.

Yeah. Um, okay. I I think first of all like crops is definitely not maybe coined by like this the EF mandate in a way but I think it's something that's been in existence throughout real existence like throughout all of humanity. I mean censor censorship resistance open source privacy security it's in my mind it's like a freedom framework more than it is anything else. I think if you go all the way back in time uh to give you an example like Tutin Camun the very famous Egyptian pharaoh uh was actually trying to be erased right people were trying to erase him from history and he was discovered later by chance right this is something where like censorship resistance the act of defiance the act of being able to like preserve something even if people want to silence you the act of like being able to stand up and the idea of like having a freedom framework has been pervasive across our species across history across like the universe as a whole thing so crops is definitely a coin term but it's it's just been around a lot and I think um to me it's like we're taking that to the digital plane, right?

The the truth of the world is we're getting more digital. This is like a you can't really deny that like we're spending more time online, more of our values online, our money is going online, our identity is going online, right? And we deserve to have the same freedom substrate that we do in the real world as we move more digital. And crops is a way that empowers that um and allows us to continue fighting for it and allows us to continue building you know decentralized substrates that last are pervasive exist are central resistance are open source. Uh you know focus on privacy, focus on security.

Um so corrupts is like something that's always existed. I think we're it's now like there's a coined term I guess within the realm of what we're doing. Um but it's something that I think is just like another chapter in this long fight for freedom that humanity has been fighting for um throughout its whole existence.

Yeah. Yeah. Crops I also kind of have been working on software that is defined as as crops. But to be honest, I first heard of it from the mandate as a as a term. I don't think I have ever seen it before.

Um so to me crops are really really important. Um this is what I have devoted my well career so far uh on I have been building rod key which is kind of based on the ideals of crop. So it's like open source uh the idea is sovereign data so you have your data um saved in your uh system tries to focus on privacy. Uh it's not for the faint of heart though because it's a it's a very very difficult road and this is something that I I I think I I also try to give feedback to the foundation people when they shared the the mandate that mentions the crops um um as a definition that it's it's a really really nice uh term but we need to also be more practical and try to find a like a silver lining between crops and realities/ sustainability it is last what the users actually want. Um so I would like to maybe talk about this stuff um today like that crops is is really valuable, really good but how we can utilize what um the attribute that crops wants to teach us but at the same time like bring it to the masses and not just be like 10 people in a room that are using and advertising crops.

Um yeah, I agree with everything that you've just said. I think um I think it was that the term was coined in in the mandate, but I think I think it was bankless David who's just like decided to exit Ethereum recently and FUD it on the way out for some reason. Um but he was saying, yeah, why why did like the real spirit of crypto is gone or something like that and and and actually the like Ethereum or rather the spirit of Ethereum and actually it's the opposite. It's actually a articulation of what the spirit of crypto is in an acronym effectively. It is about these things.

That's the point of it all. Um, and as to why we're talking about it now and why I think there's been a very interest from a governance perspective is kind of my general lens on things. I think the Ethereum Foundation has decided to effectively go allin on on this, right? It's like pot committed. We they don't have uh I work in Salana now.

Salana Foundation has loads more money. The Ethereum Foundation doesn't have a huge chunk of its premine left, right? It has to concentrate. It has to focus its efforts and and that's where it's doing. as to why now I think um there's a kind of uh the only way I can describe it is a kind of a great evil that's arising in the world at the moment that is deeply troubling and it's a kind of quest for control of of systems that are getting out of hand basically.

So, like the like just today I if you follow me on Twitter, you'll know I just spend all day ranting into the void about the UK government. Uh because they're [ __ ] insane. And um today they announce like every day they announce some insane [ __ ] and then it's more in insane than you thought it was going to be. Like today, you know, we're going to ban social media. Well, for under 16s, how are you going to do that?

Well, we have to ID everyone to use the to KYC to use the internet now. But it's not just that. We going to add internet curfews for 17 year olds and shut the internet down at night for so presumably they go to bed and read books instead. The 17-year-old kids like the [ __ ] are they thinking? It's just nuts.

So, it's all going insane, right? and the this is the time to focus on these technologies because someone has to do it. Uh and I think what's happening is Ethereum has kind of writ large has kind of assumed the responsibility of of doing it. That's that's kind of my lens on it anyway.

So you see it as a good thing?

It's a necessary thing. It's um um like I've been worried about this stuff for a long time. I'm just like a when I got into cryptography about 15 years ago now I was teaching it and um I came in completely I came as a physicist into mathematics for a bit and taught number theory and the the way I got my kids interested in number theory was uh through cryptography and when you get into cryptography you take on like an adversarial mindset right in order to protect secrets on online you have to you have to think in an adversarial game design, which got me into mechanism design, game theory, all these sort of things. And they're just they don't are totally incapable of seeing the adversarial game that is about to ensue and and it spirals, right? So, we're going to ban kids from using social media, but oh, look, they just use VPNs, so let's ban VPNs.

And oh, the VPN guys aren't complying, so let's do more insane [ __ ] And before you know it, we've all got a orb to use the internet, right? So the um yeah, we don't have a choice. We just have to do it basically.

Well, then maybe another question is like Terrace, you said something interesting about like the maybe the gap between what crops is putting out there and reality. Um do you have maybe more to share on that? like what your take is on the tangible impact that crops would actually have in reality. Like is it is it just ideological or how do you see it actually playing out? Um

yeah. So uh it's not so much about ideology but about um uh okay. Okay, so let's say the people in this room would very interested in crops and they would uh download and use whatever you put out there, but you want a lot more people than this. So that's what I mean by reality um being able to appeal to the masses. If you tell them it's um so they will ask you why would I use it?

It's open source. What does that mean? I don't care. You tell them I can that means that you can audit the code and understand. They're like blah blah blah.

I don't understand. I can't audit the code. I I I don't I don't get it. Okay. It gives you privacy.

What does that mean? Um I don't have anything to hide. This is what they will respond. I have had this conversation too many times. Um then censorship resistance will go close to privacy.

They will say I don't have anything to hide. I don't care. Then um I had this conversation happen with one person who later got um actually uh affected by a leak and got um how do you call it a post letter at home from the letter leak um that they you know like trying to scam them only then did that guy realize oh [ __ ] it's actually important you know I I I have to be careful about this. So uh what I'm trying to say is that um the only effective way that I have personally found to advertise about privacy or about data sovereignty is uh for someone to actually get hurt by it. And this is this is a terrible way of advertising or pushing something because uh you're trying to you're using the the stick and not the carrot and this doesn't doesn't scale at all.

like we have never managed to to work uh to to make this work. Um for data sovereignty the same thing uh works. Uh you're using um a SAS platform and then suddenly they go down and they had no export. So you lost all your data. This has happened to to people and then only they realize oh no I need to be careful.

I I need to always question where is my data saved? How can I can I export it? Can I use it somewhere else? But the people who care are, at least from what I've seen, the only uh they are only the people who have been hurt by this, have been affected once. And we can't just um we can't just rely on this.

We would need to find ways to advertise crops that would appeal to the masses. And this is a the gap, one of the gaps, the other is funding, but let's go there later. So the gap of uh the gap of um why would I use crops as a average user and this is the question that I actually wanted um the f guys to try and put in the mandate but they it was difficult they they couldn't find because this is a a very difficult question to answer how would you make people use crops not just because they are the good thing but uh because they will uh actually benefit from it because in the end That's also what people would end up paying for. So this is like what I mean by the gap between reality and um the ideology that crops wants to put out there.

I can I can try to answer that. I think so um I agree with you. I think I think you need use cases. You need people to actually be using the stuff to be proliferated. Um you know like values without a product or an identity are just like stories and stories are impactful.

stories have like gone throughout existence for humans. Like we live off stories, we give each other stories. Uh but products matter too, right? And I think it's important to also like really create this like precondition of like crops is not a wall that we're building around everybody and like we're in our crop circle. Um it's a floor that can lift everybody up, right?

Even people who don't want it, even people who may never think about censorship resistance or give a [ __ ] about open source, like this substrate will exist and fight for that and will be there and will be a sanctuary for all of these things no matter what, no matter who you are. So there's importance in that. But on the flip side of this, it's like okay, who's using it? Like what are what are the actual products being used? Like is anyone actually like utilizing this stuff?

And when we dig down like what's happening on Ethereum right now is there is a lot of usage around crops principles. It's just like said in a different way. Um and it's a lot of like language in a way I'd argue like for example um you know people are like the institutions are in crypto now and stuff. Um the institutions don't really use the word decentralization. they say like minimizing counterparty risk and for them that's their version of crops and having these properties like central resistance all of these things help them kind of maintain that counter minimization of counterparty risk so like it's a wording thing and I think that's a communication thing that I'm excited to explore more um but on the flip side when it comes to products I think it's really important to think of crops as not just necessarily an Ethereum thing only you know this is something that's been in existence throughout human history it's what's allowed for cultures nations etc.

to form is like this resilience of being censorship resistant um and continue fighting even when you're trying to be silenced and now we're building technology that like kind of carries on that torch. Uh but there's things like signal that exist, right? There's things like bit chat that exists. Um these are all crops tools. There's a lot of like brothers and sisters and everyone in between who's like been a part of this and I think this is Ethereum's chance to maybe meet those people um and build other sort of products around around it.

One thing on like direct where I think crops can actually have a really interesting um productled thing that actually like everyday people might be interested in using is I I generally sense this tide where people are sick of like the current internet. Um you know people are saying like the dead internet and all these like people are craving human connection. Um and there's been some interesting ideas circulating around like peer-to-peer social um things around that lens which is like inherently kind of like you're using crops technology to build something that's consumerf facing. Um, and there's some people working on these sort of projects. To give you a direct example, just to name drop one.

Uh, actually I don't know their name. They're just hacking on it. But it's like if you know Bit Chat, it's like Bluetooth powered mesh networks. Um, personal story, I'm from Nepal. The internet shut the internet was shut off by our government at one point.

Um, and people were actually downloading Bit Chat to communicate, right? Bit chat basically uses Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi to communicate and you create this mesh network. Um, but that's a wartime app, right? That's a wartime app that uses crops. That's a crops app technically.

Um, how do you make that an engaging interesting app in the peace time world? Well, you can actually use these properties and be like more and more people are sick of connecting with random strangers online all the time. People want to make connections in their local space. So, if you create like a Bluetooth mesh network app that's like a way to connect with people near you, that's not just a messaging app, but it's like almost like a dating app, for example, that uses Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi. Um, you can actually come up with these like interesting creative concepts of like P2P social.

Um, which could be fun. And I think we're in a we're in an era where you can like oneshot these front ends using AI or whatever coding tools you want to use to actually like experiment with them at scale, but we have to fight for the substrate to be crops such that you can do so. Um, and I think like in terms of the reality side, this is like a broader question for crypto as a whole is like what are the front ends that people are using? Like what are the what what are the general what's the general value people are providing like crypto is providing for people today? Um, and I think we're in an era where you can actually create more and more of that especially on the front end layer.

But that's only relevant if the substrate is actually like as crops as possible. Um, yeah, that's so that's like there's a couple ideas there that's circulating that I think we're in a we're in the right mixture of like perfect storm where people are people want to be closer to the people around them. So that's P2P in a way. Um, people want to try new apps. it's easier than ever to build new apps and now it's easier than ever to build new apps on a fully like decentralized substrate aka Ethereum which will always fight for crops and we'll always like try to push this torch forward um you know in in being one conduit for central resistance open source privacy and security

um yeah I'll jump in the so I think we're kind of both wrestling with or we're all wrestling here with how do we how do we make it a reality I think you you mentioned like the pragmatics of this being um being really important. I think Polar told me yesterday all you need to do is add the word imaginary onto the word after it to to make it academic. But the crops imaginary if you like would be they're crops, right? So we've got to grow them. So how someone's got to plant the seeds, someone's got to water it and it's going to take time.

Uh where's the resources coming from? There's there's basic fundamental resourcing of getting this done. I think a big part of the problem is Leto was telling me before, it's been challenging for Rocky because people are just leaving crypto. Just like previous subscribers to his open source app that was making it sustainable are just leaving because crypto is so depressing and and and just dull at the moment, right? That I think we we've forgotten how to have fun.

It was like the we were talking about this last night, but the this is kind of what we're framing this around is like it feels like bunker tech, right? we're preparing for some world which is getting and it is getting dicey you know and like you know but we're that the the problem with the kind of privacy sort of community at large if you don't mind it's a bit paranoid right it's all a bit moody um and um and that is not something that people want to worry about anxietyinducing to have to worry about like having to being surveiled right um no one like no one likes the feeling of being watched It's like a it's it's not a fun feeling. So people just avoid thinking about it. So it's not just a a challenge of how do we make engaging apps that are going to get the Zoomers to ape into privacy tech or anything like that. It's like the there's a fundamental um uh barrier or or resistance to the adoption of this technology that's both institutional u there's active institutional uh desire to like crush this like signal are talking about leaving the UK because they're they're trying to force them to put client side scanning into their their apps um which they refuse to do.

So um the the interesting thing is like you know we we talked about mesh networks there there's uh project here called Rejavaet which is talking about building a mesh mesh network for places where they've actually shut off the internet. You mentioned like do we have to wait until the state switches off the internet before we care about this stuff or do we try and in peace time put down the substrate for uh freedom of communication and freedom to coordinate. um that's outside of uh top-down control. uh how do we I think that's the practical reality that we need what is what do we need to do as an industry or as a network or whatever to um create that uh event to happen like how do we make that how do we make these open source like signal's great and everything but they might I might not be able to use it soon by like because it's banned from the UK so what am I going to do then right we need decentralized versions of these things that can't don't don't have a CEO that can just like go way. Um, so how do we do it in peace time?

That this is the kind of great sort of question of our era and like I think it is a it's a kind of branding thing is is right. We need to get people um believing that this is important and it is because it it li you if you can't ban VPNs because of things like Nim, right? And if you can't ban uh messenger chats because they're peer-to-peer and decentralized and there's you can't shut down the internet because there's mesh networks, you're less likely to flip into being insane authoritarian nutters, right? Because you just can't do it. Um so if the tool if the capability of like top- down control is not available, then I think it's a good sort of game theoretic equilibrium of society actually.

So yeah, it's an important thing for us to to work on. I I strongly agree with the branding side as well and like I think like honestly changing the words helps. I think it's really hard to go to someone on the street and be like you should care about like open source directly because it's not they don't have a direct like image in their head and like like you said like imagery is very important. Um and I think parts of you you're kind of building like defensive tech like like a Bluetooth mesh network is defense tech. It's a wartime tech.

Um, so the question becomes, how do you Trojan horse this in peace time? And the answer is fun. Like honestly, we just have to like get very creative. We have this substrate that is like, you know, not going to make any compromises. You can build fun things on top of it.

Um, it's not a local LLM. It's your own private AI that lives without the internet. Like it's like your buddy or it's like your neopet on your phone, whatever it is. Like there's certain levels of branding that I think we can get a lot of people who might be interested in building something around this to maybe think about and maybe like work with the tools that exist today to build a front end that rethinks how an everyday person comes in and interfaces with crops. Um yeah, like it's it's one of those things where fun matters a ton.

Um it's hard. You can't really go and like go directly into um advertising that you're like this is more private than the other thing so you want to you're going to want to use it. Um, you're gonna there has to be other things as well that people may benefit from uh where it's like this might be a better experience or this is an easier way to get your friend on board or this is a way for you to be able to send money to your friend in another country or like you have to come up with stories and then people reverse engineer from that into like what they actually end up um associating with. So I I just want to just bring back things a bit down into reality again because it's it's great to have fun but um you said you like signal right? I also like signal and I do not understand why people still use telegram yet people in crypto even in crypto which is insane uh will tell you that they don't like um the UX of signal even though personally I just don't see the big difference but people just will tell you that telegram is is better etc blah blah and they also do the same thing they use the proper marketing words they say we are safe we are secure they don't say encrypted because they're But they say that it's a secure messaging app.

And it's insane because it is not a secure messaging app. Yet somehow people believe them. Uh they have the marketing, they have the money. Um, so what I'm afraid of is if we rely on um um privacy basically being if we try to make it a game, then someone will just copy the thing and start inserting this kind of um um shortcuts and make like make something that's more fun, better, and basically not be a crop anymore. Like just uh how do you call it?

Um jump up on the name. But you both mentioned wartime tech and this is this is where these things are really really useful and maybe so this is like I spend way too much time on this uh field and at some point I I've just gotten maybe a bit too um like um pessimistic but maybe indeed that's what we need wartime tech and that's it. Like you can't uh maybe the masses just don't need it. Maybe we just need to build the wartime tech that will be used by the few now and when it's needed then it will be there. Uh if that is the case which maybe that is the case like I I can't change how people perceive an application then we would need to think how to how to fund it because you can't mass fund uh wartime tech.

Nobody will just say I like a people in the western world will just tell you I don't need this. I don't care no matter how much you try to convince them until it hurts them, until they need it. So then we would need to think about how to fund those and um yeah, that's a very big conversation to start about funding crops basically.

Yeah, I think that's let's talk about that there. I think the I for years I've thought we need to get ICOs back which was like a um people look at you like you're a criminal for saying such a thing and um and I was there during that time and it was like I left academia around sort of ICO boom era and it was like I left being an associate dean at a you know after 10 year academic career to join the world of crime. It was it was insane, right? Um and consequently, people were like, "Let's never do crowdfunding again because it's just crime, right?" And when this was the point of Dows, this was the whole DAO dream was that we could raise money into structures that were decentralized and there was some accountability over the money and people just couldn't rug it and run off, you know.

Um that's what we need to do. We like we there is enough clearly enough people who care about this um to um like get together and and put money into shared resources and fund the important infrastructure that's needed. The problem is is that you know if you try and live off Gitcoin grants or whatever um they're buttons you you just you can't run a there some the previous panel was talking about privacy tech is expensive and it is right it's it's like it's expensive to do securely. So the S bit on the end is like now you're fighting literal super intelligent models like um you know with nation state actors on the other end of them prompting your contracts to try and rug whatever's in them. So it's this this stuff is not cheap because you're in a game theoretic war with uh black hats, you know, and consequently the this is this is not cheap stuff and there needs to we need to get back into doing the the actual cipher punk stuff for me, which was like you do it yourself, right?

We've got to find way VCs are not going to buy us out. They're not going to they're not going to fund wartime tech. They're not going to fund crops. they're not going to fund any of this stuff. So implicitly what we have to do is find paths to just doing it ourselves.

New crowdfunding technologies start selling NFTts again, you know, just like like do do the things we crypto is good at money. It's good at making good at launching coins. It's good at like tokenizing ideas and and and artwork and stuff like that. It's it breaks my heart that we're not doing this and raising money for stuff that's important. Instead, it was just the scammers that did it.

Like the the good people didn't actually do any ICOs. You got people like Left Terrace and myself and people who've been in crypto for a decade and we're still grinding away because we didn't do, you know, like some scammy [ __ ] years ago. And and like that's the that's the unsettling thing that we need to get out of. How do we build an ecosystem and a culture that does like humane and ethical ways of raising money from people who care about the same things and and have that money accountable and we get things done. That's just like the challenge ahead of us basically.

Um I think on on that like crowd is such a key word that I think this is the best moment ever to index on. Um is the crowd like how do we feel being here? you know how how does it feel to talk to a person in crypto like is it optimistic is it pessimistic is it dreary is it exciting like 10 years ago it's probably every like very stareyed like ICOs right it's like oh my god we could do everything we can rule the world and now it's like not exactly like that I think there's like a general wave of nihilism in the world at large um there's definitely a wave of nihilism in cryptos like okay what are we doing here and I think we can't like ever underindex on the crowd part of crowdfunding on the crowd part of crowd sourcing like how does it genuinely feel if you were to be like start from zero. Let's say you've never been in crypto before and you come here to this event and you meet somebody and you talk to them. Do you walk out of this being like, "Fuck, I want to be in this industry."

And if not, that's a problem we have to solve. And the way we solve that problem is by having these conversations is by really opening up and realizing like, why are we here? What are the values that anchor us? What is the world that we want to build? How does someone who's not here come into our world and want to be here?

You know, how how friendly are we to that? How optimistic are we about the future? All these sort of things matter. Um, and I think when you have that, it's like the base layer, right? It's like literally ground zero is that crowd.

You can then do crowdfunding, then you can do crowd sourcing, then you do crowd identity and trust and everything else. But until that part is like really cemented, I think that it's hard for us to like be able to anchor. Um, so in this way like I think crops is interesting, right? because it allows like it's a general freedom framework and people can change the terms and obviously do whatever they want with it. But um it's like a interesting way for the crypto industry to potentially like anchor itself on a set of things that I think a lot of us like unanimously agree on like but then you know from from that agreement comes community from that community comes like you know trust and from that trust comes all these other substrates that we're going to be building on top of it.

Um, so I think like crowd is something that um I think we all feel in this room. I think we all feel it in crypto right now. It's like okay, how do we bring back this strength? And um events like this are really really important in doing. So I hope everyone here gets to talk to at least five new people that you've never spoken to before.

Um I hope you share one optimistic thing with each other even no matter what. Uh that's what gets us going. That's what's going to keep us going and that's what's going to get other people to want to also push this forward a bit.

Well, thank you. I think that's a great closing statement for our panel because we're at time. Uh if you want to add something really fast, you can. But otherwise, um our panelists will be around if you want to ask questions um uh off the couch. And um yeah, thank you for a really interesting discussion.