GRTiQ Podcast: 67 Connor Dunham

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Connor Dunham (00:19):

So yeah, a future where a lot of the data is being managed by subgraphs, and you have a decentralized marketplace where people can access their data if they pay a very small E and GRT. I think that’s a world worth striving for. I think it’s a better internet.

Nick (01:07):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Connor Dunham, co-founder at Soulbound Labs, a web3.0 Technology solution that refers to itself as the ambassador of on-chain reputation and merit-based governance. You may have already heard of Soulbound Labs, as they’re very active within The Graph community, and are also recipients of a graph grant from The Graph Foundation.

(01:30):

During our discussion, Connor shares his ideas about DAOs and smart contracts, the importance of reputation management in web3.0, the experience they had as a graph grantee, and how Soulbound Labs relies upon The Graph as key infrastructure for its dapp. We began the conversation by talking about Connor’s background in computer science.

Connor Dunham (01:52):

So, my dad first introduced me to computers with Jazz Jackrabbit on his Windows 95 laptop. I was probably four or five years old. And, I had a blast with that. And, the idea of creating video games for other people to enjoy was always something that was appealing to me. When I learned more about video game development in high school, when I was trying to decide what I want to do for a career, I was turned off by the long hours and the crazy sprints. So, I decided to go with computer science, a more generalized area of study, thinking that maybe I could move to game design eventually. I was fortunate enough to have a computer science class in my high school, so I actually got to learn some Java as a junior in high school. And, yeah, I decided to go to community college, because I was terrified of student loans. And, college is extremely expensive here in the U.S. By the way, I grew up in California.

(02:52):

I went to a community college in Folsom for two years and worked a lot as a photo technician at Walgreens. And, I was also a volleyball official for youth sports. After those two years, I transferred to UC Santa Cruz to study computer science. And, I was all about just trying to get in and out as quickly as possible, because I did not want to take out a lot of student loans. So, I was really focused on studies while I was there. And, I ended up graduating in only four quarters. The summer before my last quarter, I had a really awesome internship at a company called Full Power Technologies. They were developing fitness tracking devices, akin to Fitbit. And this is before the Apple Watch was released. This was a really awesome internship, because it was quality assurance, and I just got to run around the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains testing their devices and just get exercise on the job. So, it was really awesome.

(03:50):

After graduating, I ended up working at Full Power for about three years as a software engineer. I was making iOS apps. And, towards the end, I started working on some scholar [inaudible 00:04:04] that would process fitness data, and sleep data, and process it into nice little summaries that people could see on their iPhone and know how they’ve been sleeping and how they’ve been exercising. Then in about 2018, I started feeling really burnt out with that job. And, I think part of it was, I only had two weeks of vacation a year. And, since high school, I was just going for it. I was trying to graduate college as quickly as possible. So, I also had a lot of interest in the cryptocurrency space, and I was constantly trying to get my employer to spend some resources in that area hoping that I could be a researcher. But they weren’t having it. I think it was a little bit too early.

(04:45):

So I ended up quitting to become a smart contract developer. I wanted to study it myself. There wasn’t a lot of material at the time. It’s not like there was a class you could take. So I wanted to study it myself. I wanted to travel a little bit. And, start coaching some volleyball teams, because that was something I always wanted to do, but I couldn’t while I was at this nine to five job. And yeah, that’s most of my professional background, all the way up until Soulbound Labs.

Nick (05:12):

So when did you first become aware of crypto? And what was it that drew your attention? Because, you’re trained in traditional computer science, you were working in a traditional environment as software engineer, but what was it about crypto that drew your attention?

Connor Dunham (05:28):

Well, I first discovered it in college. So this was around 2014, 2015. I had just transferred to UC Santa Cruz, and I was living in the student dorms. And, Bitcoin was a huge hot topic at that time. I think, yeah, it was the time when it was peaking at about a thousand dollars and everyone was talking about it. Some people were even mining Bitcoin in the dorms using the university wifi. And yeah, it was just a really interesting topic that many computer science, economics, philosophy, political science, just across all different majors, people were talking about it. And yeah, my roommate at the time was just completely obsessed. He was one of those Bitcoin people that are just always talking about Bitcoin. And this is before it became a little bit more mainstream. So everyone just thought he was crazy.

(06:23):

So, he introduced it to me. I knew people were using it on the dark web in college to get some fun goodies. I didn’t partake in that. But, it was interesting knowing that there’s already a use case that people were using this thing for. Yeah. I guess, I really fell down the rabbit hole when I was introduced to Ethereum. This was about a year later. So, around 2016. It was actually my former college roommate, the Bitcoin guy, told me I should buy Ether and hold, and look into smart contract development, and that was some really great advice. I always try to understand things before I invest. So, I dove really deep, and having a computer science background really helped. Having a little bit of understanding about Bitcoin really helped. So yeah, once I understood the potential of smart contract, I’d say, that’s when I felt like I was in it for the long haul. This was going to be something I wanted to pursue.

Nick (07:22):

Connor, I have a lot of non-technical listeners that tune into the podcast every week, and so I want to ask you a couple follow-up questions on some concepts you shared there, and get your perspective on how they should navigate or try to understand these things. The first one is, what is a degree in computer science? What does it mean to say, “I studied computer science”?

Connor Dunham (07:42):

Yeah, that’s actually a really good question. Even within my university, it means different things, because we had a Bachelor’s of Arts and a bachelor’s of Science in computer science. And, they’re very similar, but the Bachelor of Arts just required a little bit less math, pretty much the same theory, just a little bit less math. And I actually decided to take that route, because it allowed me to graduate faster. But yeah, studying computer science at a university in the U.S. typically is going to involve a lot of theory. And, there’s more and more direct applications coming into universities. Professors are recognizing that students need to actually create things that are useful, instead of just study the theory. But for the most part, it’s theory-based, and that’s how my studies were.

Nick (08:29):

During your studies in computer science, did anybody ever talk about blockchain, or crypto, or web3.0? Is this something that’s being taught in universities or does it fall outside of the subject?

Connor Dunham (08:39):

So I was in college 2016, 2017, and I never heard a professor mention blockchain technology. It was always students.

Nick (08:49):

And then, the second follow-up is related to smart contracts. So, I know it’s very complicated and can get very technical, but if you were talking to somebody who never heard of Ethereum, never heard of blockchain, how would you describe to them what a smart contract is?

Connor Dunham (09:04):

Depends how much time I have. I’d say, the conversation changes based on whether or not they already have an understanding of Bitcoin. And, if I have enough time, I like to try to explain Bitcoin before smart contracts, because I feel like Bitcoin is a good example of the most simple application of a blockchain. And then, smart contracts generalize it and allow you to run things like Bitcoin through smart contracts. So yeah, it depends on the person I’m talking to and how much time I have.

Nick (09:39):

And then, the last follow-up is Ethereum. You said something about Ethereum was an “aha” moment for you, and this is a very common theme on this podcast. A lot of people get their interest or first become aware of crypto and all these types of topics, because of Bitcoin, and because it’s always in the media. But Ethereum is typically the “aha” moment for people where they see the potential. So, how would you describe that aha moment for you?

Connor Dunham (10:07):

Well, I think, seeing a couple early dapps really helped, even if they were silly and not very useful, just knowing what was possible was really eye-opening. For example, an early project called Etheroll was essentially just like a lottery where you pick a number and if you guess a number that was above or below a certain number that was chosen later, then you win some Ether or you lose some Ether. But it was all facilitated by a smart contract. And, these were really early days, but just knowing that the gambling industry could be disrupted through smart contracts, that was enough right there. There’s so much money in that industry and corruption as well. And people are being taken advantage of. And it would be nice if we could have a system that was more transparent and always fair.

Nick (11:05):

So Connor, we’re primarily talking today because of Soulbound Labs, and the problem that Soulbound Labs is solving. So, let’s turn our attention now to that. What is Soulbound Labs?

Connor Dunham (11:15):

So, Soulbound Labs is a team, we have about 11 people working on this now. We got started about a year ago through a grant from The Graph Foundation, very thankful for that grant. It’s been really important for our development. We had this idea that it could be cool to reward people for interacting with the blockchain in ways that benefit the larger community. So, this was actually a joke that we had at first and we thought, “Oh, it could be funny to give NFTs to people that just held Ether during a bear market.” Or maybe provided liquidity during a prolonged bear market, because the native asset of a blockchain arguably represents the values of the users for that blockchain. And so, if you’re holding the native asset while it’s tanking over time, you’re essentially going down with the ship and you’re holding onto your values.

(12:14):

So, it seems like something worth rewarding some reputation signal for. And yeah, that’s how the whole idea got started. I had some experience with The Graph at the time, so we ended up deciding to use subgraphs to achieve this. But yeah, at first, we thought, “Oh, it would be cool to have a community art competition for The Graph, so that the NFTs that we’re awarding for interacting with The Graph protocol could be actually designed by the community and chosen by the community.” So we set up a snapshot art competition where people submitted art for these NFT badges that we were going to award in the future. And it was a really interesting, fun experience. Unfortunately, the art that we got was not white ready. It wasn’t matched well. It just didn’t feel like a good set of badges. It was a bunch of individual pieces of art. And they were all very cool on their own. But it didn’t feel like a set. So, we took a step back and explored other ways of creating art, these badges.

Nick (14:36):

So you mentioned The Graph Foundation and your grant being really instrumental. When did you first become aware of the Grant Foundation’s grant program and what were you already doing within the ecosystem at that time?

Connor Dunham (14:48):

I think we became aware of the grant program early last year, probably just a couple months before we applied for a grant. My experience with subgraphs at that time, kind of interesting. So, I was a somewhat frequent user during the DeFI summer of 2020, and there was a very obscure DeFI protocol called Kitten Finance, and it had an anonymous developer. And, it was really low market cap, very experimental stuff, but he or she wrote some really interesting medium articles about the future of DeFI. And, one of them was even basically lining out Uniswap V3 a year before it came out, which, I mean, it blew my mind. I was just constantly thinking about this stuff.

(15:41):

But anyways, this project, Kitten Finance, they launched a new token called LIQUID, which, it was just a bonding curve offering where there was also fees whenever you sold the token. I just thought it was interesting and I wanted to know what people, what accounts were buying into this thing, because the first day it launched, it had a ton of volume, and it was obvious that it was probably chilled on some YouTube channels or something by some influencers. And I was just curious about where that volume was coming from. And, I had heard of The Graph, I knew that it was powering the uniswap.info dashboard. And, I felt like, “Oh, this is something I should probably learn about a little bit. Why not write a subgraph for this LIQUID token, and both learn the subgraph element, and learn about what accounts, and what activity’s happening behind this token.

(16:37):

So, that process of writing a subgraph for the LIQUID token, just for my own sake, because I just wanted to know more about it, it was so valuable. It felt like I was in a new playground of dapp development that I had never been in before, where so much more was possible, because you didn’t have to worry about gas fees. You could do so much. You could even have a token that exists just within the subgraph. And, that’s what I did. I created a metric that just tracked how long a user has held this token over time, so you can distinguish between people that are just holding a small amount for a year, versus people that bought a lot and then they sold it right away. So you can distinguish between the whales and the long-term holders. I thought that was really powerful.

Nick (17:27):

Well, that’s a great take Connor, on the utility of subgraphs and it’s another theme that comes up all the time on the podcast. I want to go back to the nature of the problem that Soulbound Labs is trying to address presently. So, what is the problem you’re trying to solve?

Connor Dunham (17:41):

So, the general problem we’re trying to solve is that we want to humanize the blockchain through research and development in the decentralized reputation space. So, the two primary problems we’re addressing, the first one is, token voting often leads to plutocracies, because governance tokens can be bought up by whales in order to swing proposals in their favor. And this is something that has been talked about in the community for a long time. Vitalik has written many blog posts about this. I think a week or two ago, Beanstalk’s token-based governance was hacked for 181 million via a flash loan. And so, yeah, that’s the first problem we’re addressing is governance systems that are just based solely on token voting are flawed. It’s not like it’s a terrible idea to have a token-based voting system, but it needs checks and balances, in most cases. Every DAO is different. Every DAO is going to have a different governance ideal for them. But, in general, checks and balances are very valuable.

(18:45):

And then, the second problem we are addressing is that for the mainstream, transacting with blockchains is extremely scary and it’s the Wild West. So, the few brave souls that are willing to venture into crypto typically just hang out on centralized exchanges, buy some coins, maybe trade a little bit, but they never actually touch the blockchain. And so, we want to guide these people to the more established time-tested protocols, where they can earn Soulbound badges for completing on-chain actions. Get the users off Coinbase and onto the blockchain.

Nick (19:21):

Connor, as I understand it then, this idea of the badges and creating some form of reputation management is a problem you’re working on at Soulbound Labs. And it’s interesting to me, because so much of web3.0 is people keeping their identity private, and there’s this heightened sensitivity about personal data. So how do you think through this relationship between creating reputation management and the trust that comes with that, along with this web3.0 ethos of staying private and keeping your personal data hidden if you want?

Connor Dunham (19:58):

Yeah, that’s a great question. One interesting thing about the technology we are developing is that it only awards reputation for actions that already happened on a public blockchain. So, no matter what, we’re always using subgraphs to identify the behavior that is badge worthy. Right? So, in other words, any information that we publish about accounts was directly derived from the blockchain. So, in our eyes, we don’t think this is a privacy concern, because we’re only using subgraphs as a Oracle computation, almost like a Layer 2 in a way to determine who’s done what on-chain, and we’re not introducing any new information.

(20:43):

But with that said, it is something that we like to ask people about, because it is a new paradigm. And, if that is a concern, and people don’t want their reputation just automatically published on-chain by a DAO or something like that, there are absolutely alternatives where the user can mint their own badges and the user claims badges from a set, and it’s only public if they mint it. Of course, our subgraph could always respond to queries about those accounts. So, if someone’s willing to pay the GRT, they can always find out what’s been going on within these smart contracts that we’re tracking.

Nick (21:23):

Well, that’s a great answer. And, I’m intrigued about reputation management. But I’m curious to get your thoughts about how necessary something like reputation management is for web3.0 and DAOs. Is it a necessary component?

Connor Dunham (21:40):

So I think it’s a necessary component for a lot of DAOs. And, DAOs that have a lot of users that are coordinating with each other on Discord or whatever it is, reputation is more important for DAOs like that, because you have people that are actually communicating with each other. And so, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s required for all DAOs or that all of web3.0 needs this. But, there are definitely DAOs that could use this reputation to have better conversations.

(22:15):

For example, Discord servers right now are littered with spam. As soon as you join a Discord server for a DAO, you’re probably going to get some messages from people pretending to be from the team. And, who knows what they’re trying to get you to do. But, the bottom line is, we have the capability to filter channels on Discord, and this is one thing we’re developing called Robot. It’s a Discord bot that allows you to have access control for discord servers and channels, and it will display badges that you’ve earned alongside your username. So, it seems to me like if one’s mission is to help DAOs achieve their full potential, cleaning up the communication in Discord, and creating a more trustworthy environment is some great low hanging fruit.

Nick (23:04):

Are DAOs the primary target market for a solution that you’ve created at Soulbound Labs? Are there other use cases? How have you thought through that target user?

Connor Dunham (23:15):

DAOs Are what we’re targeting right now, because it seems to be the most immediate concern. But we imagine this being something that doesn’t need to only be used by DAOs. Something like Robot is obviously geared towards DAOs, because it’s a Discord bot. But theoretically, anyone can define badge worthy behavior. And then, a subgraph can identify which accounts have achieved that behavior. And then, you can permissionlessly mint those things on-chain if you’re willing to trust the attestations made by Indexers. So, that’s another side of the engineering problem we’re working on right now is getting the badges that the subgraph picks up and minting them on-chain.

Nick (24:03):

What do you make of the current interest in DAOs, they’re in vogue right now. Everybody’s starting one, everyone belongs to one. DAO is the new hot thing, so to speak, within the web3.0 crypto space;. And I know they’re not new, but they seem to be a constant topic of discussion. From your perspective, what are you seeing? What are some of the DAOs that are shining examples of what DAOs are capable of doing? And what are they doing differently from others?

Connor Dunham (24:30):

So, I’m really excited to be living through this time where humans are discovering this new technology that allows us to coordinate with each other in a new way, and not rely on the existing infrastructure. But at the same time, I know there’s a lot of hype. And I think that a lot of the DAOs that are popping up right now are mostly existing because people want to earn some token or make some financial gain off of it. But I think that in the long run, DAOs will eat the world. I mean, I think that most companies and a lot of organizations would just be run more efficiently if it were more decentralized.

(25:14):

And I do think that as time goes on, we’re going to see more and more of our normal economy getting eaten up by the blockchain. And the more human activity that gets recorded on the blockchain, things like, restaurant reviews, reviewing the plumber that just came to your house, and whatever it is, that’s reputation signaling right there. And I think that as we approach this world where more and more data gets put on the blockchain, DAOs become so much more valuable, because they’re native to the blockchain and they have access to all of those things.

Nick (25:49):

It sounds like you’re super bullish on the future of DAOs, is that right?

Connor Dunham (25:53):

I am, but it’s an odd thing to say for someone that is not participating in DAOs. I don’t really spend much time participating in DAOs. I just follow the space and I develop a lot with my head down.

Nick (26:06):

I want to go back to something you said earlier about one of the two problems Soulbound Labs is currently focusing on, and this goes back to this merit-based governance. So as you said, maybe the shelf solution that many DAOs and governance structures are using is this token-driven approach. In an ideal world, what do you think from your perspective governance ought look like?

Connor Dunham (26:30):

Well, I think it just depends on what the DAO is trying to accomplish. So, just like how you have different governance structures for different countries throughout the world, because people have different needs, you have different sizes, you have different geography. I think that the mission that the DAO is trying to accomplish should dictate the type of governance that is ideal for it. So for example, if there are things that permissioned DAO members are doing on-chain, things that could potentially harm the protocol if that member were erupt and trying to steal funds from the treasury or something, it would be cool if positions like that could be backed up by some reputation. So in order to become that permissioned member who has access to certain functions in a smart contract, you had to have done A, B, and C in the past, and then also maybe been delegated some tokens or something. It depends on the DAO, it really does.

Nick (27:31):

Well, inevitably, Connor, someone’s listening to this podcast and they’re either thinking about launching a DAO or they belong to a DAO, and maybe it’s not the experience they were hoping for. What would be your advice to people listening about how to create an MVP for an effective DAO, the things that you must have in place to ensure that your DAO really is structured appropriately and has the best chance of doing what it’s intended to do?

Connor Dunham (28:00):

I think the most important thing from the get-go is to have people operating within the DAO who truly care about the future of the DAO. So, that early core group, even if it’s small, it doesn’t have to be very decentralized. You don’t have to go out and airdrop tokens to thousands of people from the get-go. You can control a DAO from within a development team and then have plans to decentralize over time. So I’d say, that would be my advice. I don’t have experience with it myself, but that would be my advice.

Nick (28:34):

What can you share with us about the team at Soulbound Labs? And, I looked on the website there, are you currently hiring, you looking for people to join the team?

Connor Dunham (28:41):

Yeah, we are currently hiring for a full stack position. We have a team of about 11 people right now scattered throughout the world. Three of us, me and our co-founder, Jordan Ryan, as well as [inaudible 00:28:56], we all live in Santa Cruz, California. And we get to meet up in person every once in a while. We play an awesome sport called spikeball on the beach. It’s just an absolute blast and a great workout. Other than that, the team is scattered throughout the U.S. and various states, as well as Germany and South Africa. I believe, a couple weeks ago you had Mac on the podcast and he has expressed some interest in what we’re doing. He’s been really active in our Discord channel and he is based in South Africa.

Nick (29:28):

Connor, yesterday was obviously a very big day. It was graph day, which is a big day for The Graph community. But, Soulbound Labs also made a huge announcement and a huge step forward in terms of progress. What can you share with listeners about what happened yesterday?

Connor Dunham (29:44):

Yesterday, we announced the first release of our Soulbound Studio. This is a GUI that people can use to create the criteria necessary to earn a badge. So, in other words, this is what really opens the door for reputation to be defined within web3.0 without the need to write subgraphs. So, the subgraph code is all getting generated on the backend, and people are looking at a user interface and dragging things around. We have a very nice interface for looking at smart contracts and picking up on events to award badges for, because a lot of the subgraphs that we’ve been writing… And we refer to these subgraphs as reputation subgraphs by the way. A lot of these reputation subgraphs have a standard schema that they go by. And, a lot of them could be generated automatically on the fly just by picking events out of a smart contract and saying how many of those events need to be omitted.

(30:44):

Of course there are much more complex things you can do if you actually write the subgraph yourself. But, the Soulbound Studio is a great starting place for people that aren’t interested in learning how to write subgraphs.

Nick (30:55):

Well, congratulations to you and the whole team. If listeners want to learn a little bit more about Soulbound Labs and this incredible studio launch, what’s the best way for them to do it?

Connor Dunham (31:05):

Go to soulbound.xyz. Soulbound Studio is live up on soulbound.xyz. You can check it out and rate some badges for your favorite protocols.

Nick (31:45):

Connor, I want to turn our attention now to a couple follow-up questions about The Graph. And you’ve mentioned The Graph a couple times. You’ve mentioned subgraphs. To get started, how would you describe for listeners the ways in which what Soulbound Labs is working on and the infrastructure that The Graph provides overlaps?

Connor Dunham (32:04):

Yeah, good question. So, The Graph is a prerequisite for Soulbound Labs. We wouldn’t exist without The Graph. That initial idea of awarding people for holding ether during a bear market, that was all that came about because I was interested in subgraph development and I knew that that was possible. So yeah, it overlaps quite a lot. We aren’t trying to solve the same problems. It’s more like, we are using The Graph infrastructure or the reputation system that we’re building, I think that’s a good way to frame it.

Nick (32:34):

When it comes to The Graph, how do you explain it to other people? How do you describe it?

Connor Dunham (32:40):

So, assuming I’m talking to someone that is outside the space, I would first make sure that they understand that storing data on blockchains is very expensive. And so, that’s why something like this has value. But once I’ve covered that and they understand that when you put something on the blockchain, it has to be stored by all of the nodes and it’s not very efficient. Then, I draw this comparison to a Google search, and I think this is also in The Graph documentation probably. I say that The Graph is an Indexer for blockchains in the same way that Google search is an Indexer for the internet. And the difference here is that all of the data being stored is already public.

(33:24):

And so, by using The Graph, someone is more empowered as a user, when you’re on a website, you’re actually getting data that wasn’t stored by a company or wasn’t fetched from some database that could go down at any point. Yeah, that’s how I try to explain The Graph. And if the person has some more knowledge in the crypto space, then it’s a lot easier. But, I think that it’s important to have that understanding of what it means to store data on the blockchain before you can dive into what it means to index data on the blockchain.

Nick (33:59):

In follow-up to that, and I’ve had a lot of users of The Graph on the podcast, but would love to get your perspective on why it’s easier to use The Graph than to do something else, do it on your own, or some other method that as a non-technical person, “I wouldn’t even know what it is.”? Why is it easier and better for somebody Soulbound Labs to use The Graph?

Connor Dunham (34:21):

Yeah. So, I have never created a custom Indexer myself. I’ve never put in the work to actually index the blockchain. But I’ve heard that it is a insanely complicated task. And, I just know that… Or when I started writing my first subgraph, it only took a day before I was querying it and finding out useful information. So, I think it just really makes it a lot easier for smart contract developers to have data that exists and might not be accessible by smart contracts, but at least exists in another environment and can still be used and displayed on websites.

Nick (35:02):

What’s your advice to potential or future users of The Graph that are trying to figure out the same thing? They’ve got an idea, it’s a dapp, they want to get it out into the world, and they don’t know where to get started or how to begin using The Graph. What do you say to them?

Connor Dunham (35:16):

I think that if you already know smart contract development, then it’s nice to just pick out some of your favorite protocols and write subgraphs for them, especially if they don’t have a subgraph yet. Or maybe if there is a subgraph, you can fork it and add some new features. The next step I would say is to just explore the capabilities of subgraphs, because the thing is, a lot of the subgraphs out there right now are indexing dapps that existed before The Graph launched. And, there are really interesting things you can do if you integrate a subgraph with the architecture of your dapp, not just for displaying data, but for organizing data that gets fed back into the app. And I think that there are a lot of things that, that unlocked, and people haven’t really woken up to that yet because subgraph development is so early. And, of course, the first use cases are going to be the protocols that already exist.

Nick (36:19):

Well, you mentioned subgraphs were early, and that’s a common refrain again on this podcast. When you project forward, however, 5, 10 years, and beyond, what’s your vision for a solution like The Graph and how important it is for web3.0?

Connor Dunham (36:35):

Well, I love this vision of having a decentralized marketplace for data. I want to do everything I can to help create that environment where we actually have many different dapps that are using The Graph’s decentralized network to index their data. I’m someone that cares quite a bit about data ownership and privacy. So, this really speaks to me quite a bit. I’m constantly trying to move away from services provided by Google and things like that. So, yeah, a future where a lot of the data is being managed by subgraphs and you have a decentralized marketplace where people can access their data if they pay a very small fee in GRT, I think that’s a world worth striving for. I think it’s a better internet.

Nick (37:29):

Connor, we’ve reached the point in the podcast where I’m going to now ask you the GRTiQ 10. These are 10 questions I ask each guest of the podcast every week to help listeners learn something new, try something different, or achieve more. So, Connor, are you ready for the GRTiQ 10?

Connor Dunham (37:44):

I am ready.

Nick (37:55):

What book or articles had the most impact on your life?

Connor Dunham (37:58):

I’d say, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.

Nick (38:04):

Is there a movie or a TV show that you think everybody should be required to watch?

Connor Dunham (38:08):

No, because they don’t like mandates.

Nick (38:10):

If you could only listen to one music album for the rest of your life, which one do you choose?

Connor Dunham (38:16):

This is really hard, and I’ll probably give you a different answer every day, but I’ll go with Selling England by the Pound by Genesis.

Nick (38:23):

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

Connor Dunham (38:26):

Find a specialization.

Nick (38:28):

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

Connor Dunham (38:33):

I’ve learned that Vipassana meditation is conducive to decentralized identity research.

Nick (38:40):

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

Connor Dunham (38:43):

I absolutely need exercise. And, if I’m in a bad mood, that’s usually what helps.

Nick (38:47):

Connor, based on your own life experiences and observation, what’s the one habit or characteristic that you think best explains people finding success in life?

Connor Dunham (38:57):

Confidence.

Nick (38:58):

And then, the final three are complete the sentence type questions. The first one is, complete the sentence. The thing that most excites me about web3.0 is…

Connor Dunham (39:07):

The potential to decrease polarization.

Nick (39:11):

The next one is, if you’re on Twitter, then you should be following…

Connor Dunham (39:14):

Vitalik. I’m not on Twitter very often at all, but I’ll just say Vitalik.

Nick (39:17):

And lastly, complete the sentence, I’m happiest when…

Connor Dunham (39:24):

I’m defeating bosses in Elden Ring.

Nick (39:34):

Connor, you’ve been very generous with your time. I appreciate you answering these questions. And again, congratulations to you and the team at Soulbound Labs, not only for being awarded a Graph Foundation grant, but also for the work that you’re doing and recently released. If people want to learn more about you and follow some of the work you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to stay in touch?

Connor Dunham (39:54):

So first of all, you can go to soulbound.xyz to play around with our Soulbound Studio emblemdao.com is a great place to explore what we’ve been working on for the last year. And we have some really great guides on there for crypto newbies with a lot of definitions for the crypto terms. We also have Twitter. We’re Soulbound Labs on Twitter. And you can also join our Discord server. From emblemdao.com. I think you’ll have access to our Discord link at the bottom there, as well as our GitHub.