The Blockchain Socialist

The one and only Slavoj Zizek published a piece on Network States and of course I had to read it and share it with you all. It's normally behind a paywall on his Substack but was put on Fileverse by recent guest Naomi for all to read.Check out  the article on Fileverse here.I really want to know who is in Zizek's ear talking about crypto stuff so much that he knows what DAOs are...If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

In this episode, I talk with Adina Glickstein — Master’s student in Media Studies under Nathan Schneider at UC Boulder and editor-at-large at Spike Art Magazine — whose recent Compact Mag article, The Rise and Fall of Urbit finally gave me the excuse to talk about Urbit on the podcast and why its failing.We unpack what Urbit is trying to be (although many don't seem to agree), its creator Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug, philosopher of the alt-right), and how its governance structure mirrors his anti-democratic ideals. Adina shares her experience moving from enthusiasm to disillusionment — from Berlin meetups to Urbit Assembly, to witnessing the project lean into neo-colonial “exit” politics.We also get into the reactionary politics inside the Urbit community, the recent leadership coup pitting long-time developers against Yarvin and his backers, and how this drama unexpectedly created a demand for “voice” in a system designed entirely around “exit.” Links:User Error — Adina’s monthly tech column for Spike Art MagazineThe Rise and Fall of Urbit — Adina’s piece in Compact MagAdina on InstagramThis episode is sponsored by NYM, the world's most private VPN. Unlike traditional VPNs, Nym uses a decentralized mixnet to scramble your internet data — hiding who you're talking to, when, and how often. You can switch between full mixnet mode for maximum anonymity, or a faster VPN mode for everyday use.Use the code blockchainsocialist when signing up and get an extra month!If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreSend me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

About a month ago I spoke at Dappcon about Solidarity Primitives we've been building at Bread Cooperative. Before my talk, Naomi Oba gave her own wonderful presentation titled Crypto Culture and its Discontents that unknowingly set the stage quite well for mine so I had to ask her on the podcast. We discussed the issues with crypto culture including obsession with quantification and financialization, and how to feel emotions instead. Naomi also helped write the Sapphire Punk manifesto, an exploration of a post-cypherpunk politics that reject the extreme individualism rooted in the original cypherpunk movement."All that is solid turns into data points." - Engels probably if he was still aroundThis is also the first episode that is sponsored by NYM, the world's most private VPN. Unlike traditional VPNs, Nym uses a decentralized mixnet to scramble your internet data — hiding who you're talking to, when, and how often. You can switch between full mixnet mode for maximum anonymity, or a faster VPN mode for everyday use.Use the code blockchainsocialist when signing up and get an extra month!If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

They say on the internet no one knows you're a dog but this has created a digital space that is dominated by more bots than humans and crypto space that is easily sybil attacked. Worldcoin, a project led by Sam Altman, is purporting to tackle this issue as AI (ironic?) proliferates content by scanning our eyeballs into an orb that they totally aren't taking your data from! Personally I don't trust them.So I spoke to Shady El Damaty, co-founder and CEO of Holonym Foundation which is building human.tech, a suite of different identity solutions that protect user privacy using zero-knowledge proofs. We spoke about how it all works and the implications of people having control of their identities online.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Website: https://theblockchainsocialist.com/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3geORcile9E1EyPyFiAHhM?si=x7fjsFhURsSBlErXnihh9A  iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-blockchain-socialist/id1501607045  Podcast Addict: https://podplayer.net/?podId=2598359 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TBSocialist Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theblockchainsocialistReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptoleftists/Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

How can digital cash truly be “trustless”? What does it mean that blockchain offers a new paradigm of the “rule of code”? How are decisions made when a blockchain system faces an emergency, and who gets to make those decisions? I spoke to Wessel Reijers and Morshed Mannan, both great thinkers and recent authors of the book Blockchain Governance (by Primavera De Filippi, Wessel Reijers and Morshed Mannan). We discussed the history of the legal and philosophical implications that blockchains have brought with them. From the Tornado Cash ruling, North Korean mega hacks, and rethinking of property relations, there was a whole lot to talk about.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

How in the world is anyone meant to derive the "real" value of a crypto token? Especially in THIS market?? I spoke to Vasily Sumanov, founder of Valueverse and inventor of the Token Value Capture Mechanism Framework to share how he sees it. Valueverse is a utility-centric token tracker that helps you understand the demand-side pressures for token value. Part of the neoliberal ideological turn which has also continued into crypto token releases is an over-focus on supply side economics (problematic).  We discussed token engineering as a discipline in need of an improvement, the most common mistakes people make when designing tokens, and how the VCM framework helps cut through the noise. While I'm no crypto trader and I suspect some may be surprised by an episode like this from me, I do believe that the framework is incredibly useful.I was also very impressed by the page published by Valueverse of BREAD, the post-capitalist token for Breadchain Cooperative which I co-founded. The page is super useful for people to understand the tokenomics behind the project.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

I spoke to Thomas Heremans, CEO of the Obol Association. Obol is an ecosystem for trust minimized Ethereum staking that enables distributed validators (DVs) across a cluster of nodes in order to improve resilience as compared to running a validator on a single node. Previously I spoke to Osín Kyne, the CTO of Obol Network and they had plenty of updates since last time.Thomas gave us a refresher on what DVs are and what they can enable, some success stories of how communities have funded themselves with Obol DVs and what the future looks like for Obol. They also announced the Obol Incentives Program where you can earn OBOL tokens for staking on distributed validators.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

I spoke to Ferran Reyes and Pau Escrich, co-founders of Vocdoni, a blockchain based voting protocol used by several non-web3 organizations. They were born out of the Catalan independence movement in Spain from which they have designed Vocdoni to be censorship resistant and friendly to your average non-web3 user.During the episode we discussed some of the elections  where Vocdoni was used, the cryptographic primitives that make it all possible and the learnings they have had in their journey so far. We also discussed DAVINCI, their latest evolution of the Vocdoni voting protocol.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

I spoke with Paul Glavin, contributor to 1Hive and founder of Gardens v2, a platform for communities to manage assets democratically using conviction voting. 1Hive was one of the first projects in the crypto space to explore alternative governance mechanisms on Gnosis Chain which is the chain where we've build Breadchain Cooperative.We discussed what conviction voting is, how to better fund public goods in crypto with it and the learnings so far. I also wrote about conviction voting and 1Hive in my book Blockchain Radicals if you want to learn more about innovative voting mechanisms in crypto.Breadchain also has two ongoing conviction voting proposals in the 1Hive Gardens to increase BREAD adoption. If you have HNY we hope you'll consider delegating to our proposals! You can get HNY on any DEX with Gnosis Chain.BREAD x HNY Liquidity Pool Add BREAD to 1Hive TreasuryIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

Beth McCarthy, program director of Funding the Commons and co-author of the Katabasis crypto sci-fi series, shares her insights on building community in the crypto space. She discusses the significance of in-person events like DevCon 2024 and how they foster deeper connections. McCarthy emphasizes the role of experience design in creating engaging community experiences and the importance of shared narratives. They explore the power of memes in enhancing interpersonal dynamics, highlighting the contrasts between online and offline interactions.