GRTiQ Podcast: 193 Julian Zawistowski

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Julian Zawistowski (00:18):

… but for tech, I understood as much as I need. And what I know about The Graph is that my team members who are more technical are very enthusiastic and it is part of our stack.

Nick (01:00):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Julian Zawistowski, director at Golem Foundation. Julian is co-founder and longtime leader at Golem, a project that has evolved and transformed since the early days, and Julian is here to take us inside the transformation and what Golem is working on now.

(01:19):

Since entering the blockchain space in 2013, Julian has applied his economics and policy background to drive innovation and create decentralized infrastructure for public good. Growing up in Poland, Julian witnessed the country’s historic transformation away from communism, a pivotal experience that sparked his fascination with economics while shaping his mission to drive decentralization and working in web3.

(01:45):

During this interview, Julian discusses his journey from Golem Factory to the Golem Foundation, exploring the evolution of decentralized computing, the importance of public goods funding, and the future of web3. Julian also shares his insights on Ethereum staking, the challenges of decentralized coordination, and his team’s use of The Graph. I started the conversation by asking Julian about his background.

Julian Zawistowski (02:13):

Hello, Nick. Thank you for having me. That’s a great pleasure. So I’m Polish. I was born and raised in Poland, where I still live, despite of being a part of the global movement.

Nick (02:26):

And as a young person, were you interested in tech? What types of things were you, sort of hobbies or interests you had?

Julian Zawistowski (02:31):

That’s kind of a complex question. If you want to learn about the shaping experience, I think for my generation, like a side note, I’m 45, so I was born in 1979, so I was 10 in 1989 where a communism ended in Poland and we abruptly transferred into a capitalistic system or kind of capitalistic system because ’90s were like a wild east during Central Eastern Europe.

(03:00):

I think that’s the experience of my generation here. So, of course, technology is a significant part of it because we had the sudden inflow of technology. Before 1989, of course, we had some technology. I had the Atari computer for example, that I got in 1988, I think. And before that I had a Commodore Plus/4, which was even better than Atari, but we didn’t have that many games available for that platform. It was not that successful as Commodore 64, for example.

(03:38):

So yes, of course, the tech was always something that I was quite fascinated and quite into. I was never as much into it as software engineers or engineers in general. I was raised in the quite artistic family and only when I decided to study economics, I moved into a little bit more, let’s say like a mathematical world. Not really like a software development world, but a mathematical world.

Nick (04:09):

I know you were young when that evolution happened in ’89 from communism to capitalism, but I do want to ask you this question about do you see the introduction of crypto and blockchain as another similar type of step When you think about it from an economics perspective? I mean, is the move from something just capitalism to a global economy made possible by crypto a similar leap, do you think?

Julian Zawistowski (04:35):

I think that yes, but of course, you have to add many asterisks to that. So when communism ended in Poland, the capitalism or a liberal democracy, it fueled the vacuum that emerged often … the collapse of that, like a terrible corrupted system. Whatever you think about capitalism, it works so much better than communism. This is out of the question.

(05:04):

Despite all the hurdles and hardships of transformation, which were great, that also shaped my generation or shaped the Poland as it is or this part of Europe more broadly speaking. I think with crypto, it is much more difficult. So I believe that at least parts of a web3 movement, parts of technologies or even systems that we are designing, that we try to create may repair what is broken in capitalism or even replace that in many instances because the ’90s were at a time of the trial, of liberal capitalism, of democracy. Everyone at least in this part of the world was convinced that it really works, that this is great.

(05:52):

Now, fast-forward 35 years, we see that the system is breaking apart, so we need to move somewhere. And I think that web3 is one of the very real attempts to create something new, something that will advance us and move us forward. And of course, there is a lot of terrible things in our space as well, which does not help. But at the end of the day, it might be similar in a way that it may replace some institutions and some systems that do not work at the moment. It might be different because I firmly believe that this will be evolution and not revolution, as it happened in 1989 in this part of the world.

Nick (06:44):

Julian, when I have guests like you on the podcast that have a background in economics, I always like to ask this follow-up question, and it’s a common question. I always ask it, which is how do you think history will explain the emergence of blockchain and web3? Will they see it as a evolutionary step in tech? It just evolved Web1, web2, web3.

(07:07):

Will they explain it as a revolution against web2, a bunch of people are angry? Or will it be sort of an economic type of explanation where it was just a new system to replace old systems? So I mean, a broad question and it could be something else, but how do you think they’ll explain it?

Julian Zawistowski (07:22):

I think that in reality what we see and how it will be described in the future is a struggle. Is a struggle to change the system through the change of attitudes. Let’s take a step back and think why a Web1 becomes like a web2 and then it evolves into something that we don’t really like that much anymore. Well, of course, the web is great. Technology is great. We do amazing things that we wouldn’t imagine few years back and that wouldn’t dream about two decades ago.

(08:00):

But then the same tech allows you to do great things and bad things. At the end of the day, I think this is how you apply technology to those things. So even with the technology revolution and technology, the changes, in a revolutionary way, it is up to us how we use it. And even in web3 you can see the struggle between people who are very much oriented into advancing new systems, attracting people to doing things that are great for freedom for a humankind. Also, there are projects in our space that try to replicate the same set all over again, using new tech in a different way, sometimes perhaps a better way, sometimes worse way.

(08:51):

I think this is a struggle to change the attitude. So you do not only need tech, you also need people to believe that change is needed. And I think this is especially true for web3 because let’s admit that. I hate to say that, but web3 has a usability problem. And I think it will always have because with [inaudible 00:09:19], the easiest way, the most convenient way is to give away your freedom.

(09:24):

The most basic example with a private keys and a seat phrase and so on. In a way, of course, this is great, you are like the custodian of yourself in a way that might be not only your money but your identity, your everything. But for many people, it is just too hard. They don’t want that kind of freedom. And on the one way, we have to build with things that makes things easier, I don’t know, like account abstraction, all these social proofs and so on to make that something at least usable for a regular guy. But on the other hand, we have to convince people, we have to make people believe that this change is needed. And we are perhaps coming closer and closer to that point. So people do understand more and more often that the system we have at the moment, and I’m not broadly speaking about the economy or politics, but I think technology is broken in so many ways.

Nick (10:29):

So if we return then to your personal story, you grew up in Poland, you ended up going to university and studying economics. What motivated you at that point in your life to sort of pursue a degree in economics and what were you sort of envisioning as a career path?

Julian Zawistowski (10:49):

Yeah, we are coming back to this transformation period, early capitalism because I started my status in 1998. We were only nine years in into that transformation. For people of my generation, on the one hand, all the changes were fascinating and this rapid economic development was amazing. But on the other hand, people realized that you’re on your own now. You have to earn money, you have to provide. And then the practical choices of occupations were predominant. So basically, I chose economics because I thought this is the good career path. I hate my young self for being so practical and down to earth, but this is how it is. This is how it was.

(11:41):

So I was kind of quite skilled but not genius in quite everything. I could do pretty much anything I wanted after high school. And I picked Warsaw School of Economics because back then it was considered one of the best universities in Poland, a place to study, to work for great multinational corporations for a huge pay. That was what I thought was a practical choice. Funnily enough, I never worked for any corporation or even not for any private business per se.

Nick (12:20):

If we applied that personal experience you and your family and so many others had in ’89 moving from communism to capitalism and then you went and studied economics. So now you have sort of an academic understanding of the different mechanisms at play there. If you were hired as a consultant to a country or somebody, something that was moving a system like that, moving away from one system into the other, what would be the one insight, the one thing that you sort of learned firsthand that you would say, Hey, make sure you watch out for this? What would it be?

Julian Zawistowski (12:57):

Transformation in Poland was so kind like a shock transformation. So everything they changed like that in a day literally. That came at a huge social cost. And we have a never-ending dispute if that was necessary, if that social costs could be lower. I believe that what we can see in the society right now is that they were probably so massive that society is maybe not permanently, but for a long time they could divide it into groups that benefited from the transformation, did not benefit from the transformation. And of course, it is getting a better and better now, but you can still see this rift and especially now in the times of a political pluralization in the times of people not being really able to cooperate anymore but rather entrenching in different camps, different tribes. I think that processes that take back to 1989 makes that problem much greater in Poland right now.

(14:11):

My advice would be that even if you are a very liberal economist, you should really consider a social cost of the chain. This also comes from studying economics that on paper, everything looks great, you’ve got only numbers. And at the end of the day, a perfect model never exists in your reality and you always have people who are left behind because they are not able to move from one city to another that are not able to retrain in a month to get new jobs because the capital comes to the different places than a top creation happens in the different places and the top destruction and so on and so on. I could really dig into that, but I actually worked as a consultant in economics for many years.

Nick (15:02):

Well, let’s talk about that. So after graduating from the School of Economics, how did you get started professionally? What was sort of that early career period for you and what were you doing?

Julian Zawistowski (15:13):

I actually started working before graduating because that was the way of doing things back then. And my first job was a pretty fascinating one because I worked for the National Bank of Poland and I was in a group of assistants to Professor Leszek Balcerowicz who back then was the president of National Bank of Poland. At the end of the ’80s and in the beginning of the ’90s he was the most prominent government person responsible for economic transformation.

(15:44):

So some of the things I am telling you about that period maybe are not like a first hand, but from the group of people who really can watch that happening. Of course, I was 10 back then so I was not part of it. I became in this group of assistants only 2004.

Nick (16:04):

And what did you do after that? I mean did you kind of stay within that traditional finance sector or did you-

Julian Zawistowski (16:11):

Well, that was not really a financial sector because that was a National Bank of Poland, so that was like a central bank. I worked on the analytical position there. And I decided that I really love understanding the system from within, I decided that the economic policy is my career path. So I transferred to a ministry. Back then it was called Ministry of Economy, Labor, and Social Affairs. So that was a huge, huge institution and I lead the unit for a labor market analysis back then. And then after a couple of years I left the government sector and I co-founded with a couple of friends, Institute for Structural Research, which still is, I’m not active within Institute anymore, but it is one of the leading think tanks in economics in Poland.

Nick (17:10):

What led you to co-found that, I mean that’s sort of an entrepreneurial jump. Clearly, you had some background here, you’d done some very cool things related to economic policy. You got an inside look at central banking. So where did the idea and sort of the interest come for launching something like the Institute for Structural Research?

Julian Zawistowski (17:28):

Well, back then, we were 20-something. When you are 20-something, you are absolutely sure that you know how things should be organized around you. And when you are at the bigger government of the institution, you are not necessarily listened to. So you are telling them what’s the proper thing to do and they don’t want to listen to you. If you cannot stand that, the logical move is just to create your own thing and start telling them what to do from outside or let them hire you as a consultant to tell them what to do. So that was the reason, that was the plan. To some extent, it worked because we created an institution that sustained, is successful, is reputable, and in some areas, it didn’t work that well because they still didn’t listen to us.

Nick (19:26):

So that kind of takes us to sort of the mid-two thousands. We’re in the 2006/2007 era here. When and at what point do you become aware of blockchain and crypto and what was sort of the first impression when you came across it?

Julian Zawistowski (19:42):

I’ve heard from some glimpses of articles in newspapers. I got really interested in, I think 2013, late 2013, that was about the time when the Vitalik’s paper on Ethereum was published. So that was in fact my first interaction when I heard about that. Well, my first impression of crypto was that it is a Ponzi scheme. And I think this is the same for many people with the background in economics. What changed my mind was learning more about how Ethereum was back then planned to work all the smart contracts, functionalities. And we had a lot of discussions about potential use cases for Ethereum very early on. And my favorite back then and my favorite still is everything governance-related or more specifically everything related to coordination of how groups of people take decisions, how they allocate resources, what mechanism you can design for that system to work and for that agents to behave in a certain way. And that’s what convinced me that this is a real thing.

Nick (21:07):

If you think back then to that period of time in 2013, those were early, early days and you fast-forward to where we are today over a decade later and you think about how you were thinking about governance and coordinating agents and how that’s all made possible through something like Ethereum, do you think we’re on track, did we sort of fulfill that early vision you had or is there still some gaps or room to improve? What are your thoughts?

Julian Zawistowski (21:32):

There is always room to improve, but I think we are finally on track. So because 10 years ago, we didn’t have technology to do anything. Honest. In theory, functionality was there to do cool stuff. We had smart contracts, we had the basic Ethereum. That’s for it. But because of all the limitations in terms of usability and capacity and all the building blocks that were not there, it was impossible to use in any meaningful way. And I think that finally, we are getting there the correct now. My first impression that we are a really getting there was when L2s started taking you off and when we finally see that you can build applications, you can build use cases where Gascon is not a dramatic … a blocker of pretty much everything. I could also dig into that, but I think that’s it.

Nick (22:43):

Yeah, there’s a lot of discussion to be had about L2s and we might get there as we progress along here. But I do want to return then to your personal story and your trajectory here. So you’re working at the Institute of Structural Research, it’s something that you co-founded, you’re putting out some great information and doing some consulting but finding that sometimes on the other end people aren’t implementing or exactly following. At some point, I guess this idea for launching something called Golem Factory comes to your mind. Can you talk to us about the origin story there? What were you thinking about? What was the problem you were contemplating and what are the origins behind this idea of Golem Factory?

Julian Zawistowski (23:25):

This is actually fun story. So I think it was an early 2014 and it was actually St. Valentine’s Day of … So 14th February. And we learned that Gavin Wood is in town. And back then, our plan was to spin up with the software development unit from Institute of Structural Research or for other company create based on that. So we were looking for people to work for in software development. And incidentally, Gavin wood came across through a common friends and asked, “We heard you have a couple of teams, let’s talk about cooperation.”

(24:15):

So I went with a two of my partners to meet him in a Pizzeria on the evening of St. Valentine’s Day, 2014. We had all those couples having dates around us and the three of us drinking beer. And guess what? Gavin Wood, he didn’t show up for whatever reasons. He was a jet lags or something. We met him after a couple of days, but then he didn’t show up. So we were quite annoyed about him spoiling our evening. And we started complaining how terrible this whole blockchain and Ethereum idea is because all the characters in the network do basically the same and how great it would be if they all could do something else, just communicating over the peer-to-peer network and solving some complex problems.

(25:05):

And then I remembered the short story by Stanislaw Lem who was the great Polish science fiction writer. And he had a short story called 137 Seconds that basically describes the idea so that you have the network of computers that communicate together and solve a complex problem. This is how it started.

Nick (25:32):

So the idea for the naming came from a popular sci-fi book from a well-known-

Julian Zawistowski (25:38):

137 Seconds, it’s not a great name for a project. So we borrowed from another book of Stanislaw Lem, which was like a Golem 14. Golem 14 is a supercomputer that becomes a superhuman artificial intelligence. And of course, that is a reference to a Jewish Golem from Prague fairy tale.

Nick (26:04):

So I want to ask you this question then about that move you’re making from a career perspective. You are working sort of in this economic policy and now you’re moving into software and peer-to-peer and you’re launching sort of a new thing. Take us inside your mind there a little bit. I mean, are you starting to feel the call of being an entrepreneur? Are you starting to feel some momentum like this is a real problem or is this all an experiment, something that you’re just trying moving into tech and seeing sort of what happens?

Julian Zawistowski (26:35):

What really happened was that I got fascinated by that idea of Golem we had and also about all the technology that I learned that was emerging back then that we call web3 right now, that we call that a blockchain space like Ethereum and so on. And that was a gradual move. So we still did everything before in economic policy analysis, but gradually we are devoting more and more our time to this new thing. And of course, the turning point was when we did the successful crowdfunding for Golem, then it was obvious that we have to move a full time that project. There is no room for distractors anymore.

Nick (27:24):

So what’s the move then from Golem Factory to Golem Foundation and Network? Can you describe just sort of how those three things evolved, one after another or maybe in parallel?

Julian Zawistowski (27:37):

Sure. So after having this initial Golem idea, we started working on that as early as 2014. So for two years that was kind of like hobby projects within the company. And then in 2016, we led the crowdfunding. So all of a sudden we had a massive funding, we could hire a lot of engineers, we could start doing that for real. But then in 2018, 2019, I started noticing holes in the initial idea. So I realized maybe it took me a little bit too long as non-software engineer, but I started realizing that this is a massive project with massive problems to be solved and chances that we are going to fail are incredibly high. And because of that, I decided that as this crowdfunding event created viability on us, maybe not legally speaking but a morally speaking in terms of the token that we issue.

(28:56):

So back then I had an idea of setting apart some of the funding in the firm of Golem Foundation to look for another use cases that would benefit the Elemica system basically. So would contribute to the token still being in lines with the original values of Golem and Ethereum and then web3. Of course, there is always the second buzzer of that story. The thing is that a part of the team was convenient that we have funding for doing the Golem network for next 100 years and this is how much it is going to take. And a part of the team that was still confused that this is a great idea to work on it and that they will succeed. And that was also one of the reasons that we created that split because I think the pivot is a very natural thing for every startup or every technology project.

(29:53):

If you look at Gnosis, for example. So, Gnosis crowdfunding was a couple of months after us. And they pivoted like five times, six times on the way and they’re quite successful in some of their ventures that they haven’t even thought about them when they raised the funding. And that was my thinking back then that we have to iterate also with the new ideas and that’s how Golem Foundation was created. And this is why I moved to Golem Foundation. By the way, I still believe in a basic Golem Network idea. I think this is a fascinating project, that great project, but I had a feeling that I’m not able to run that product anymore because I didn’t believe it’ll succeed. If you don’t believe that somehow something will succeed, then it’s impossible to work.

Nick (30:49):

So you talk about the pivots and as you said, a very natural thing for startups, especially in tech to sort of do, and I’ve had a lot of founders and entrepreneurs on this podcast who have also pivoted. So if we go back then to the original idea and we sort of mark where you are today, how would you describe what the Golem Network, the Golem Foundation’s mission and vision is, and the things that it’s working on?

Julian Zawistowski (31:12):

That also evolved over time. So of course, we started very different things that we do right now. So in 2018, we started something that we called back then Wildland. And Wildland was also very ambitious project that was focused on data sovereignty. So we wanted to abstract something that we call a data container, kind of like a Docker container. But Docker container is for some kind of logic that execute some kind of a program. And we wanted to create something similar for test for data, like a data container that is totally abstracted from the infrastructure it is on.

(32:01):

And the rationale for that was coming from the two different directions. So one, we wanted to make that a hardware-agnostic, meaning that you could post your data pretty much everywhere and you would not be that much reliant on a huge cloud storage providers. So you could build your own thing. In that regard, it was a little bit similar to IPFS and TileCoin that rather in what we wanted to achieve and not how we wanted that to. We had a totally different approach technology-wise. And then on top was a layer of data management. So we wanted to toggle that with a pretty novel approach to how you navigate through your data on a file system level. Basically, we wanted to introduce something we call the multi paths allowing you to express on a file system level a lot of logic that is a database, allowing you to stir a lot of information in how your data is organized on the file system level.

(33:20):

Well, that project failed for a number of reasons. We finally infinitely suspended it about a year ago and at the same time, about two and a half years ago, so around the time when it was certain that the Ethereum staking will become a real thing. We had the ideas evolves later into Octant. So I believe that staking is quite important milestone for a reason that everyone understands. But I believe we tend to underestimate the importance of that change that with staking you are able to get reasonably risk-free interest on your capital within a web3 ecosystem. So of course, people are in many different ways, they are getting an enormous return on capital speculating or doing whatever DeFi they do.

(34:35):

That staking is a real yield that could be benchmarked as a reasonably risk-free. Of course, there is slashing, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, but compared to all the alternatives, this is a reasonable risk. That means that that opens the … Economically speaking, it opens the past doing things like in that traditional world like rich foundations do or other entities with these huge huge endowment that can be used to generate capital and then do fascinating things with capital. So I will be totally honest, our diagnosis was that it’s like we had a lot of cool ideas, of course, for a lot of cool projects that given the fact that we raised funding back in 2016, maybe it’s time to could give back something to people who funded us and to take a broader community rather than having funding with yet another like a startup project.

(35:41):

And because of that, we structured Octant in a way that we still have fun doing that. And we believe this is a great project that benefits everyone that on some levels, it cannot fail because you generate yield, you have that tokens, then you give that tokens to cool projects and you also reward your token holders for participating in the system. So of course, that can work better or worse, but in a way it cannot fail as long as you have the stream of funding coming from staking, which is kind of risk-free. So it is poised to succeed that way or not. And I think that that diagnosis was a pretty much correct. So token holders are happy with their rewards and of course, projects that get funding to build great things are also happy to get funding. Now our main focus is how to grow that thing and how to make this idea of regenerative public good funding and creating more and better coordination tools more and more widespread across the community.

Nick (37:04):

There’s a blog post out there, I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, but the author of the blog post sort of argues that in web3, the token is the product. When I hear your background trying different things, but also the success with the token and staking, where do you come in on that debate? I mean, is it the case that for a lot of web3 the token is the product or is it really about something else, it’s about the tech, it’s about the network?

Julian Zawistowski (37:35):

In web3, this is about what people believe in. So if you believe that token is a product, it is a product. As simple as that. And we may think it doesn’t make sense and in a way, it doesn’t make sense very often, but it is real that people very often just believe in something and it is real because they believe in that. I don’t know. Take Dogecoin, take so many other things that are around, they are around because people believe they are. And then there are so many real things that have great tech and could go to the moon, sorry for that expression. But people don’t know about that, and if they don’t know about that, they don’t believe in that. So those project literally do not exist. No one cares. To sum it up, I don’t like the attitude of token is the product. I think [inaudible 00:38:46] there should be something substantial behind it and at the end of the day, the products that have both believers and technology and great systems, they will survive and they will grow. But at the moment, it is what it is.

Nick (39:04):

So let’s talk then about funding public good and the ways that people sort of can participate. So let’s imagine that there’s a listener here that’s getting exposure to this for the first time they’re interested in participating, they want to understand how it works, what’s the best way to get active. So describe that. How should listeners approach and think about getting involved?

Julian Zawistowski (39:25):

So maybe I will first tell you how it works and then I will tell you how I believe it should evolve and why we should go with it. At the moment, the system is quite simple. So we generate yield on e-staking. We are staking 100,000 ETHs. So the generates 3.5 at the moment, thousand per year around 750 ETHs per quarter. And that pile of ETH is divided between DLM token holders who opt-in to participate in the system. They have to opt in to participate. It’s not enough to have the token, you have to have the token and lock it into the Octant locking contract. And by the way, we don’t do anything with your stuff, we don’t have any custody of them. You can unlock them at any moment. This is just your declaration that the token is locked to participate.

(40:30):

So part of the rewards goes to people locking their DLM. Another part goes to matching fund and is finally distributed to the project. And part of it stays with us to cover the customs. There are also some smaller pockets for different things, but we don’t need to go to the details right now. So if you participate in the system with your DLMs lock, then every three months, we have something called allocation window. At the beginning of allocation window, we attribute your individual reward to you, and its amount is based on how much DLM you have locked and you can use that DLM to donate to projects that are on the list in a given epoch or you can keep them.

(41:22):

And then we use quadratic funding formula to decide how the matching fund is distributed based on how people donated to the project. So if you allocate all of your individual rewards yourself, then you’ve got the money, but you do not participate in the decision how the matching fund is allocated. If you allocate the project, then you have a say. Of course, this is a kind of plutocracy because the more DLM you lock, the higher your reward and then the bigger your potential vote.

(41:55):

But with the quadratic funding, we equalize that, not fully equalize that, but the voting power of small players is pretty significant compared to the big players. This is a pretty much it that happens every three months and every three months, you take a decision whether to donate the projects or keep the reward for yourself or both. You can donate some, keep something for yourself. On top of that is the governance of what is the list of the project because at the end of the day, this is a quiet important … We try to keep that list like a reasonably short first to not create too much confusion for the users. And second, we want to make this matching fund significant for the project. So if it was a distribution of like a 300 or 3000 projects, then that would be peanuts for it. If this is a couple dozens, then there’s real funding that can make a difference.

(43:00):

And also community. Everyone who locks tokens take part in the decision which projects are listed epoch to epoch. So this is also community decision. Of course, it is curated by us. So we are still like a gatekeeper of who gets on the list. So this is how it is right now. If you want to participate in that, you can go to octant.app, see what kind of products we fund. If you think that you love the projects, you want to be part of it, then you can get some DLM, you can lock them and after some time you’ll accumulate enough rewards to make a difference during the allocation.

(43:44):

I believe that that approach is correct on how we could spot things and how we could coordinate decisions in web3. If you think about more distant future, so how we are going to build, I want to say a brave new world, but maybe that’s not the best connotation, how we are going to build the great new world. I don’t think we have the economic model for that right now. We don’t have the funding model for that. We have, of course, traditional venture crowdfunding. And we have some token sales and other methods this space experiments with. But if we are talking about creating technology or not only technology but other components that are not made for profit, we need some kind of public funding or funding from the public to achieve that goal. And of course, we do that. We’ve got a great huge projects that fund a lot of things within their ecosystem or even within the whole ecosystem.

(44:56):

We have a retro funding, we have grants for Ethereum Foundation. We have so many other things that fund things in a non-for-profit way, but I still believe we are struggling to first make it sustainable. Second, build decent governance tools around that. And that’s basically what we are experimenting with, where we want to go further with it. So we envision right now the v2 Octant, which would allow pretty much anyone with capital to be part of it with their communities’ intent, with their ecosystems to use those that get coordination mechanism that we experiment with in the future.

(45:46):

I think a call to action right now is for the user that you can join Octant or if you don’t think that what we found at the moment is interesting, you can just think how your community, how your ecosystem built similar thing using the toolset that we are creating.

Nick (46:05):

And I’ll put links in the show notes for anybody that’s interested in learning more and clicking through some things. So be sure to visit the show notes if you want to learn more.

(46:13):

Julian, I just have a couple more questions for you and then I’m going to ask you the GRTiQ 10. These are 10 questions I ask each guest every week and it’s a lot of fun. The first question I have is about your optimism about the future of the industry. So you got activated early, you’ve been building in the space and thinking about solutions since that 2014. Why are you still optimistic about the future of the industry? It seems like there’s a lot of reasons out there to maybe not be optimistic and of course, I don’t hold these positions, but sometimes you hear that we have too much infra and not enough consumer-facing gaps. Sometimes we hear there’s too many L2s. We hear that maybe something like Solana is going to come along and disrupt Ethereum. I mean, there’s all these reasons for people to kind of get concerned, but you remain optimistic and you keep building. Why?

Julian Zawistowski (47:02):

I think the answer is identical to the answer why web3 is not upon scheme. So we are coming back to this very first question. And this is quite funny why it is not, but it is not because it has a mechanism built into it that makes it permanent. You cannot kill it, you cannot destroy it. If this is great blockchain with great tech. And the user base, it is essentially eternal, at least at the current state of tech and the current state of economy. And I think this is especially true for Ethereum and Ethereum ecosystem. It could get smaller. Crypto winter is a real thing. I think we’ll experience one very soon, but this is good.

(48:03):

For people who are long-term in the industry, you probably heard that already a so-called winter is usually the most productive and the most fun period. So I think that each cycle, we are becoming stronger. And I also think that we are past the point where we had a huge growth of the last 10 years, so the industry kind of stabilized. So I don’t expect such huge growth as we have in the past, but I also don’t expect the next winter will be as harsh as the previous. And through that selection mechanism, I think we’ll have less and less greed in this space and more and more people who are really after making a difference. So this is why.

Nick (49:01):

How important is this component of decentralization to the future of the industry? I mean you said it earlier, there’s a lot of projects building in the space that look and smell a lot like a web2 type of product or organization and some of it’s even worse tech than what we find in web2, but there is this element of decentralization that really delineates web3 tech from web2 tech. So how important is it in your mind to sort of the future of the industry?

Julian Zawistowski (49:33):

This is mission-critical, maybe not in a technical sense. So you don’t have to decentralize everything, but when you will come to the fun questions part, I will talk about that more. But what is really important is user agents. So the user is the one who decides about things and not someone else. Technically speaking, you do not have to decentralize everything, but you have to build power structures that ensure that this is the users, this is the community that is in charge.

Nick (50:12):

Julian, as you probably know, a lot of my listeners are enthusiastic about The Graph. And you talked a little bit about data in the beginning of your history sort of in web3 back in 2018 and some of the things you were thinking about. Are you aware of The Graph protocol? Do you sort of have an opinion or a perspective on what it’s doing?

Julian Zawistowski (50:31):

As not a software engineer, I don’t have a very strong opinion. I’m on this a mechanism design level and I download it, but for tech, I understand as much as I need. And what I know about The Graph is that my team members who are more technical are very enthusiastic and it is part of our stack. I think you do great job and I wish you continue it as a part of our common efforts to make big web3 great.

Nick (51:01):

And then Julian, the final question before I ask you the GRTiQ 10 is sort of a life lesson or insight question and it’s for any listener out there who wants to do what you did, right? You were working, you became an entrepreneur, you started building in web3, you must have learned a lot of lessons and insights along the way there. What’s one or two sort of entrepreneurs/building in web3 insights that you could share with anybody listening who wants to do something that you did? Maybe you’ll save them some heartache and some time from having to learn it themselves.

Julian Zawistowski (51:35):

My experience dates back 2014 as we said. This is when I entered the space. And sometimes I think it’s not relevant anymore because in a way everything was so much easier and so much harder about that. I think the most important lesson is just to focus on what you believe and what you think will be great because at the end of the day, the burning passion is the most important thing that will decide about the success or the lack of it. If you don’t have it, then everything will be forced. Maybe you’ll do some things, but you’ll not have as much fun as you could have. So I think this burning passion is the most important.

Nick (52:23):

I appreciate you sharing that. So as I said, I’m now going to ask you the GRTiQ 10. 10 questions I ask each week. I do it because I hope listeners will learn something new, try something different or achieve more in their own life. But I also enjoy it because it allows us to get to know you a little bit more on the personal side. So, Julian, are you ready for the GRTiQ 10?

Julian Zawistowski (52:41):

Yes. I will try to do my best.

Nick (52:54):

What book or article has had the most impact on your life?

Julian Zawistowski (52:59):

A lot. But for the purpose of that conversation, I would call Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. So I think this book was written in the ’80s, but I think it describes everything, all the failures of our public discourse and social media perfectly. So that guy basically why social media are terrible before social media will create. That’s amazing.

Nick (53:29):

Is there a movie or a TV show that you would recommend everybody should watch?

Julian Zawistowski (53:34):

For preparing for the interview, I thought about Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. This is a great movie. Like a director path. But actually, after that conversation, I think I would recommend you Taylor Monahan talk from Devcon Osaka 2018 about how web3 can compete with web2 projects without losing web3 values. It’s a great talk. And I know five years on in the space, but I think it’s still worth watching. Taylor Monahan, by the way is the co-founder of MyCrypto and MyEtherWallet by the way for people who don’t know.

Nick (54:15):

And Julian, if you could only listen to one music album for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?

Julian Zawistowski (54:21):

That changes of course, as people age, but at the moment that would be Röyksopp Profound Mystery Street. This is like a Norwegian electronic music.

Nick (54:31):

What’s the best advice someone’s ever given to you?

Julian Zawistowski (54:35):

I think this is like to do things instead of rationalizing why not to do things because people are great in rationalizing and you can always find excuses why not to do something.

Nick (54:47):

What’s one thing you’ve learned in your life that you don’t think most other people have learned or know quite yet?

Julian Zawistowski (54:52):

So everyone knows that phrase, I know that I know nothing, but I just think people rather remember about it.

Nick (55:00):

What’s the best life hack you’ve discovered for yourself?

Julian Zawistowski (55:05):

I’m obsessed with time, especially with timelines. So I think the best advice here is to try to estimate how much time you need for a task. And do not start that before you need to start it because Parkinson’s law is real. So if you start too early, you’ll spend all the time doing that.

Nick (55:27):

And then based on your own life experiences and observation, what’s the one habit or characteristic that you think best explains why or how people find success in life?

Julian Zawistowski (55:39):

People are very often too busy. They’re doing trivial things. And this is fine because life is combination of trivial things, but it is very easy to lose yourself in that. So you need brains encouraged to do something that is brave, that it’s not trivial, and then everything starts there.

Nick (56:01):

And then Julian, the final three are complete the sentence-type questions. The first one being, the thing that most excites me about the future of web3 is …

Julian Zawistowski (56:10):

Octant.

Nick (56:13):

And how about this? If you’re on Twitter, some people call it X, I still call it Twitter, then you should be following …

Julian Zawistowski (56:19):

You should quit Twitter.

Nick (56:21):

Not the first time a guest has suggested that. And then the last question, Julian, I’m happiest when …

Julian Zawistowski (56:27):

When I run.

Nick (56:36):

Julian, thank you so much for joining the GRTiQ Podcast. It was a lot of fun to get to know you and to hear your backstory. It’s super interesting. And as I said, for listeners that are interested in learning more, I’ll put links in the show notes if they want to click in and dive further on the things that you and your team are working on.

(56:52):

If anyone wants to stay in touch with you, follow the things that you’re working on, the things that you’re building, what’s the best way for them to stay in touch?

Julian Zawistowski (56:58):

I think the easiest way of communicating with us as a team, as a project is joining our Discord. There is a very active community there, and it’s like we are there all the time.