Your Code, Their Rules? Not Anymore - Meet Radicle. Eleftherios, Co Founder of Radicle - Privacy

Hi uh my name is Alfarios. I am the co-founder of Radical. Uh Radical is the only privacy preserving censorship resistant network for code collaboration. Uh as of 2022 I I'm also working on another project called Drips uh which is a platform for funding public goods. [Music]

Hi. Hi.

Thanks for

Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. context. So we are in Berlin. Yes.

Dapcon uh talking to people. Uh you already had your speech today, right?

Yeah. Earlier today, yeah, I spoke about Radical.

Okay.

About its security properties. Um yeah. Uh I had a marketing title. Five things you didn't know but should. You know, that was the vibe.

But yeah, it was a nice experience overall.

I believe that. But uh we'll start uh I mean we will go freestyle but will you start with your intro for people who don't know you just few minutes shortly how did you end up in the space where you are at like the project that you are doing like a bit of your background like professional I mean

yeah no that sounds great okay uh so u my name is eletherio from Greece uh people call me la feel free to use la simpler uh so I have a background in mathematics and statistical inference. I've been interesting in technology for my whole life. Uh already as a as a teenager, I was messing with computers and stuff. And then uh long story short, um I found myself in Berlin in uh 2011 uh where I uh joined a small startup at the time called SoundCloud. I was an early employee there and uh the reason why I joined them was uh because I'm a musician as well.

That's music is a big passion of mine, the arts and um you know I was very interested um at uh new technologies that were promising disruption of you know the exploitative uh exploiting music industry which I knew you know quite well as as as as a musician. And you know if you can go back in time this was around 2008 2011 this type of period was really the beginning of web 2.0 you know and at the time it was these companies that were making the promise of disintermediation right so I joined with them you know like stayed with them for uh almost seven years you know became quite senior there I was running all of their um um machine learning uh analytics data engineering um teams and then around 2015 I you know started to become a bit of a bit cynical about this you know new model I basically realized that this this uh you know um new intermediaries um they were maybe a little bit more well-intentioned than the previous wave of intermediaries but this whole model wasn't it uh simply because incentives did not align

and then I started looking into um cryptocurrency things um and um I had heard already about Bitcoin in 2011 from a good friend of mine in Greece drunk at a party and then you know she was like oh you have to check out this thing and I was like I'm not interested in money I'm not interested in finance this isn't my thing sorry you know I'm not going to you know engage with that and then funny story in 2015 um when uh Ethereum was happening when they were like uh you know like Vitalik was really starting to push that vision they were spending a lot of time in Berlin uh so through some of those circles I actually heard about that we looked at it uh with SoundCloud already because hey interesting technology what about you know intellectual property and then uh we quickly decided that this thing wasn't yet usable for the scale of SoundCloud. SoundCloud at the time had 200 million active users type of thing you know large like yeah like massive you know massive massive audience. We realized that like hey this thing isn't ready for more uh but I got you know hooked. I was like, "Okay, interesting. Some really interesting ideas here."

Um, and then, um, around 2016, I started to, yeah, be very bored and not interested and not aligned with what, uh, where that industry was going. So, yeah, I started going deeper and deeper and deeper uh, with uh, with uh, crypto networks. And then uh towards the end of 2017, beginning of 2018, I co-ounded a project called Radical uh which is a decentralized network for code collaboration. In fact, it's the only privacy preserving um network for code collaboration and we can talk about that

and uh yeah and then basically started pursuing that vision. Um so that's one aspect of the things I do. I'm still very, you know, I'm still very active uh with Radical. And then in 2022, uh our ecosystem also uh released a new product for public goods funding that's called DRIPs. Um which is, you know, quite distinct.

Its model is very different than any other public goods funding platform out there. We can I'm sure we can zoom in on that if if you're interested in that. Uh but um yeah but I mean the fundamentally the the things I'm after uh is I've been you know I've been pursuing platforms and ways for communities to collaborate without intermediaries. Um um and yeah that has been you know a big passion of mine. How do you align incentives between you know users you know node operators um developers right?

How do you do this? Um on the one side and then on the other side, yeah, public good funding is very it it is important for me simply because um having experienced this myself as a developer like I know that like a lot of a lot of what makes the internet such a magic place is open source software.

Um and um yeah, many of these projects actually struggle to define themselves in traditional market terms. Um and I think as an intellectual challenge and a real challenge, it's it's it's really impactful work. Uh so yeah, these are these have been the two things that

um I'm after.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's both of them are super cool and like I like them personally a lot.

Um yeah. So maybe like yeah for once again like quick take on radical first like how it emerged why and maybe what challenges you had to overcome because you are competing with a really serious guys like Microsoft.

Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of a like David G thing.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Probably it's not that easy, right?

No. No, it's absolutely not that easy. So okay. So so why radical? Why is is this exciting?

So um when we started to think about you know the state of the internet and um we started looking into crypto networks specifically. One of the main observations we had was that this is technology that is really disruptive. It has the potential to challenge really powerful actors not just you know powerful combants but more fundamentally states state structures. And our thinking was that hey if this whole thing play out if all of these people that you know are stating that they want to go and challenge their structures if they if they are effective at doing that then the code layer uh will be you know the the new frontier. This is where many of those things will actually manifest.

So in short we just realized that you know a truly sovereign infrastructure for code will be needed. It was also around the time that you know a lot of people relatively early within the cryptocurrency space had the foresight that there is an institutional collapse that basically trust in institutions is is decreasing and um with a geopolitical landscape that already was getting more and more complicated. Of course nothing like today different different story. Um yeah, we just realized that this whole like this this whole idea of openness on open source will be challenged. It's only a matter of time and you know the home of open source which already in 2018 was GitHub won't cut it.

In fact, it will be the new place where you censor it will be the new place where potentially you know like um uh you know anonymous contributions won't be allowed. Uh so you know we started to speculate that this thing we love actually will be um fragmented and will be up for grabs. So we decided to build an alternative um and that's that's you know where radical came to be. Uh we started working on those things in 2018 and it took us a long time. So with regards to challenges you know we already shipped an early uh an alpha in 2019 based on IPFS.

Um it got a lot of attention which was great for us but we also realized that this isn't scaling uh the fit um the fit to the technology you know uh the technologies we were using were not the best fit for that solution. Um in 2020 we shipped a beta based on a custom you know radical product protocol that we developed that one actually went viral was number one in hacker news. We had like all sorts of like you know large D5 projects uh using it and trying it out and then as it was scaling actually we faced a lot of um problems. Um we had uh in fact a lot of networking problems where the network will get uh flooded with messages and then you know if you were running a node like you know your you know your your node will actually start consuming a lot of your uh resources. Uh so you know this is you know this was this was our beta and then this was a really difficult moment for all of us simply because we had something that it seemed like you know already like people are very very excited to use but unfortunately wasn't scaling um and then you know we took a step back tried to use all of our learnings and then finally in September 2024 after six years of development we actually shipped radical 1.

0 um right now we are already at 1.2 two has been working great. uh there's a really really a large community of non-paid developers like there's a team you know that is that is paid to work on that but there are also like you know all sorts of people around the world that they are contributing their free labor effectively in making this thing a a better tool and it's growing uh you know to today there are more than 1,000 nodes on a weekly basis active there are more than 4,000 projects uh hosted on radical so it's you know it's not uh what they like to call in Silicon Valley a hockey stick. Uh you know, but it's actually growing. It's up and to the right and you know, it feels healthy.

Uh which is something that I'm really really um happy about. But it's been it's been it's been hard and it's also been very hard as you said competing a against a corporation that has you know it's a trillion dollar entity and then on the other side um you know um competing with a product that is is a really good product and also has network effects you know um so lots of learnings um on how to do that uh but yeah um this is this hasn't been an easy journey but it has been a really rewarding journey Uh because one of the things I try to think with regards to my work is that you know there are a lot of those ideas out there that um there might be great ideas if you're looking for an idea that can be impactful but they're not distinct enough meaning that you know like there's something that if you don't do this someone else probably will you know and with radical I feel that like you know this is an idea that not many people were actually willing to pursue because of the complexity of of the operation and we did you know and it's something that actually you know because of its distinct positioning and impact to the world is something that is really rewarding you know with all the challenges that we face with with regards to bringing it to market.

Okay let's uh uh yeah going to the state of crypto now and like very broken incentives.

Yeah. Yeah. So it takes

Yeah. Um yeah so I'm I'm really happy that there is drips and I want you to explain like how it works and why do you make it and why why it's so important that it exists.

Yeah.

For people who once again who are not familiar with that.

Yeah. So so so um so okay how drips came to be? Uh from the beginning we had two hypothesis. One is that news over infrastructure for code that is more resilient to geopolitical tensions and you know um um um illegitimate or sketchy corporations uh is needed. And then the other thing that we saw which wasn't a problem it was more of an opportunity around the problem is that we thought that all of this new value creation that was happening within the cryptocurrency space and all of this financial market financial um infrastructure that was being created we thought that there is an opportunity to do something novel and try to create new value flows for open source projects.

Um why do we care about open source projects? Simply because we understand that uh there are thousands maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions of projects that are extremely um impactful but they're really struggling to def to define themselves in the traditional market terms. Go sell a product, go sell a service. Uh and um yeah and and we think that this is extremely important for humanity. uh with something that you know we benefited massively ourselves.

So you can think of this as a selfish endeavor, you can think of this as an alter endeavor. I don't think that it matters. Um you just need to be honest with yourself. Do you value this thing? 100% yes.

you know. Uh so we yeah we started to experiment with um you know new models and and the one thing that we were always fixated about is this idea of the interconnectedness of open source. Like there's something really powerful um to um to um to open source. uh when you start a new project you know most of the times what you do is you import someone else's work and you know the world is like this everything you know we do from scratch right

yeah no to totally you never start from scratch right like and you can think of this you know the language we use now we didn't invent it you know it was given to us by someone else you know like you get sick you got someone else to fix you right so so uh but I think what's so special about code is that that you're doing this explicitly like you know you you know every time you're about to create a new project you say I want to import this person's work into my work and you know just build on it so we always thought that there's something really powerful in this relationship in this interdependence as your uh t-shirt says so in this yeah this interdependence we think that it's it's a beautiful thing it's a beautiful symbol of you know human collaboration and what is possible you know when humans can freely collaborate with each other anywhere in the world. So we started with a with an experiment of what if we could use this the same structure the same idea that every piece of code out there usually depends on on another piece of code and what what if we could use actually these relationships to actually flow money through them. Uh so so and this is where drips started. So originally drips was just a really simple uh crowdfunding platform uh where the way it works is that when you go to the drips app then you know you're about to claim your profile for your open source projects and when you do so you actually asked um to specify if you receive any capital upfront if you would like to redistribute a portion of that on a voluntary basis. you choose that and you can change that at any point in time.

But if you would like to do this with any of the projects that make your work possible and um you know we didn't know if this thing will stick but uh we started noticing that a lot of you know um influential developers actually start to do that and you know there's a there's a funny story that like early on a lot of projects that started to use drips they were doing the 6040 allocation so 60% of whatever Yeah. which is massive, right?

A lot a lot. I didn't I wouldn't expect that.

No, no, absolutely. Me, me neither. So, and you know, we didn't have a default. Um, and I remember like we were actually on boarding Rickmu, who is one of the maintainers behind Ether.js and you know, we showed him the thing.

He was like, "Oh, this is really really cool." He was like, "But defaults are very important. Have you guys thought about you recommending a percentage to be uh to be shared with dependents?" were like no and then he was like hm okay and then you know he was the first person that actually like said like you know what I want to keep 60% and give 40 to to my dependencies he specified his dependencies he started receiving capital from some of his funders and then we started noticing that a lot of people were copying him you know they were looking at him oh look Ricku is successful whatever he does we can do the same so early on a lot of people basically started to have 6040 today this varise you know there are a lot of projects that um do share something. There are many projects that don't share.

Majority still shares something with their dependencies. But that was the original idea. Can we actually break this idea that there's a funer and then there's a recipient. Every other platform out there try to make you feel that this relationship works in isolation from the world. And our thinking was that we actually want to put this together and see what people will do with it.

And um and we started there you know we started going around and uh basically recommending to funders to play that game. Uh and early on we managed to uh convince a number of communities to do that. One of the early ones was Octant actually. So we work with Octant. They funded four of their uh core dependencies and simply by playing that game I think we had 40 projects actually receive capital you know from this first uh four starting points from Octant.

Um and then you know then we had more projects doing this. We started working with ENS

and then um over time what we started doing is we started adding things around the protocol. So uh there's a truly you know um decentralized protocol that enables type of redistribution logic and programming of funding that comes in. But recently we also have started to add uh models that do work for funders at the top you know because you always need capital to come in from somewhere

right and luckily within crypto there is appetite for um different um uh protocols to distribute back to to public goods. Uh recently for instance we announced that uh you can run a whole retropgf round within drips. you can use the drips toolkit operate your like you know retropgf round in a really really nice UI and when capital hits the projects you still get this amplification logic the redistribution logic so even if you have a 100 projects that are to be rewarded then maybe you know another 100 will receive capital because of that so we started doing more and more of those things uh yeah and since 2022 we have allocated around $5 million you know to open source uh with uh this tooling Uh we've been working with the Ethereum Foundation, with Protocol Labs, ENS, Scroll, um yeah, all sorts of like, you know, interesting experiments.

Web3 privacy now,

web privacy now, of course. Absolutely. No, thank you for calling it out. We privacy now like yeah, lots of interesting organizations doing different things. Um yeah, and maybe I can I maybe we can zoom in in one two novel experiments in there, but yeah, this is how drips came to be.

Yeah. Yeah. Um that's yep that's super cool take. Uh we have not much time left. We have like 10 minutes.

So just for two questions. I mean I we will I already want to do another interview with you but probably at another conference.

Sure.

Um yeah but few few quick takes. So first one on privacy. So I wanted to hear your yeah opinion on like privacy in general instead of privacy

and uh why it's important.

Yeah. Or not.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean uh yeah, privacy is a fundamental condition for human flourishing in my opinion. Uh I mean the why I think it's I think I think you know the most honest way for me to explain this is that you know you connecting with other human beings goes through this process of you selectively revealing yourself. you know like having privacy allows me to be authentic with myself being honest with myself and actually slowly you know connecting with human beings while I still feel under control you know in in in some way so I think this is fundamental you know in in the there's this fundamental notion of privacy on the way we are you know without thinking about more practical applications of privacy but that's the one that I you know always you know um try to um outline first and then second I guess um yeah with the work that we do with radical why privacy is important well you know like as again as many open source projects actually challenge powers um what what's happening effectively you see developers being attacked you're seeing developers being discriminated simply because of where they live the color of their skin uh so you know uh so So we built radical with privacy in mind simply um because we want to um protect connectedness again um protect openness again you know it's a fundamental condition for that for us. Yeah, that's

great think. Okay. And um the last question will be in the futuristic. So imagine we are 30 years from now.

Yeah. Yeah. And uh we have this internet that you would like to see the ideal one which is like self-s sovereign distributed with lots of public goods, private whatever you imagine that.

Yeah. I mean how would it look like and how would life look like? Yeah. Uh it's a it's a it's a hard one and I heard you asking this question before by ask this question everyone because

I know I know it's an impactful call. Yeah. Yeah. Because uh we talk a lot about privacy. We talk a lot about the importance of public goods but

it's really hard to draw the line. Yeah. like okay we implement everything and then like how's the life to be because then it's easier and more practical like to see the difference between what we have now and how it could be.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think yeah I I will give you I will give you my answer. It might feel a bit high level but I'll tell you like my honest answer is you know if if we succeed or my hope if we succeed in in these things that we we're doing you know the outcome is more human flourishing you know like humans being living more fulfilled lives okay and if you contrast that with where the internet stands today like I look around me and I see addicted zombies everywhere you know I see this in myself again you know I see myself getting lost in technology I can feel that someone is actually exploiting my human nature you know via incentives and via you know the data that I'm producing uh for someone else's flourishing for someone else's advantage so so if we are successful you know uh in in in what we attempting I think we're going to see more fulfilled human beings you know more impactful connections uh more um yeah more um more fulfilled lives effectively for all of us and I have no idea how does that look like. If you had told me five years maybe would have been easier to speculate on you know the the state of the world but um yeah 30 years I I I hope that we see humans that actually are more connected with themselves with their own interests and yeah like they and and they more aware more um yeah more empathy for for what's happening around somehow. Yeah, that would been

sounds beautiful. And one last thing for the students of like web3 privacy academy just a piece of culture that you would recommend book, film, podcast, playlist, whatever that is kind of expanding your perspective on world in general.

That's a tricky one.

Can I recommend music? Of course. Of course. Yeah, you should check out uh Karina Barbieri, okay, Italian composer. I think that her first album, I think it's called Patterns of Consciousness.

It has been a really uh powerful work

towards me. Um yeah, it's a minimalist electronic piece, but it's it's quite special. Uh yeah, it has enriched my life, so I hope it will enrich yours.

Beautiful. Thank you for this recommendation and thanks for coming.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks.

Thank you for having

Ciao. Bow. [Music]