Lex Fridman Podcast - #168 – Silvio Micali: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Algorand, Bitcoin, and Ethereum

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Sylvia McColley, a computer scientist at MIT, winner of the Toring Award, and one of the leading minds in the fields of cryptography, information security, game theory, and most recently, cryptocurrency and the theoretical foundations of a fully decentralized, secure, and scalable blockchain and Algorand, a company of cryptographers, engineers, and mathematicians that he founded in 2017. Quick mention of our sponsors, Athletic Greens Nutrition Drink, the Information In-Depth Tech Journalism website, Forcigmatic Motion Coffee, and Better Help Online Therapy.

Starting point is 00:00:42 Click the sponsor links to get a discount at the support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I will be having many conversations this year on the topic of cryptocurrency. I'm reading and thinking a lot on this topic. I just recently finished reading the Bitcoin standard, a book I highly recommend. As always, with this podcast, I'm approaching it with an open mind, with compassion, with as little ego as possible, and yes, with love. I hope you go along with me and this journey, and don't judge me too harshly on any likely missteps. As usual, I will play

Starting point is 00:01:19 devil's advocate, I will, on purpose, sometimes, ask simple, even dumb questions, all to try and explore the space of ideas here with as much grace as I can muster. I have no financial interests here, I only have a simple curiosity and a love for knowledge, especially about a set of technologies that may very well transform the fabric of human civilization. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it and have a podcast, follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, at Lex Friedman. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now. There's time stamps, so you can skip, but if you skip, please do still check out the

Starting point is 00:02:01 sponsors, click the links by the stuff, whatever you have to do. It really is the best way to support this podcast. This show is sponsored by Athletic Greens, the only one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It replaced the multivitamin for me and went far beyond that with 75 vitamins and minerals. It's the first thing I drink every day. It's funny I had a conversation with Jonathan from MIT, a friend of mine, who I just discovered was an ultramarathon runner. And he talked about one of the mistakes he made is he really didn't ramp up slowly enough, so he had to pay for the cost there. And I made this comment that, you know, life involves taking risks like that, you know, when you're not actually fully prepared, but taken on the task anyway. And sometimes

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Starting point is 00:08:25 available worldwide. Check them out at betterhelp.com slash flex. That's betterhelp.com slash flex. And now, here's my conversation with Silvio McColley. Let's start with the big and the basic question. What is a blockchain and why is it interesting, why is it fascinating, why is it interesting why is it fascinating why is it powerful all right so a blockchain think of it is is really a common database distributed think about is a ledger and which everybody can write an entry in a page you can write I can write and everybody can read and you have a guarantee that everybody has the same copy of the ledger that is in front of you so if and you have a guarantee that everybody has the same copy of the

Starting point is 00:09:25 lecture that is in front of you. So whatever you see on page seven, anyone else sees on page seven. So what is extraordinary about this is this common knowledge thing that I think is a really a first for humanity. I mean, if you look at communication, like right now, you can communicate a very quickly images, a photo, a photo, but do you ever weigh certainty, whatever you have received has been received by everybody else? Not really. And so this is a common knowledge on knowledge and the certainty that everybody can write. Nobody has been prevented for having whatever they want. Nobody can erase. Nobody can tear a page of a ledger. Nobody can swap page. Nobody can change anything. And that is a immutable comma record is extremely

Starting point is 00:10:19 powerful. And there's something fundamental that is decentralized by the so at least in spirit some degree against maybe a resistance of centralization. Absolutely, if it is not decentralized, how can it be common knowledge? If only one person or a few people a valager, only you don't have a major, you have to ask, you know, what is on page seven? And how do you know that whatever they tell you is on page seven, they tell the same thing to everybody else. And so this command under is extremely powerful, just to give you an example, assume a beta, you do an auction, okay? You have a work very hard, you build a building, and now you want to auction off. Makes sense because you want to auction worldwide, the better yet you want to tokenize the building

Starting point is 00:11:13 and sell it in all the parcels. Now everybody sees the bids, and you know that everybody sees the bids, you and I see the same bids and so does everybody else. So you know that a sees the bids, you and I see the same bids and so does the everybody else. So you know that the fair prices reached and you know, Uon's Wharton was paid so much. And if you do it instead of a guise in a centralized system, I put a bid, say, oh, congratulations Alex, you won and your price is $12,570. I don't know. Right? So if instead of it's that,

Starting point is 00:11:46 common knowledge is a very powerful tool for your Monday. So we return to it from a bunch of different perspectives, including like a technical perspective, but you often talk about blockchain and some of these concepts of decentralization, scalability, security, all those kinds of things. But one of the most maybe impactful, exciting things that leverage the blockchain, this kind of led your idea of common knowledge is cryptocurrency, so the financial space. criminologist cryptocurrency in the financial space. So is there, can you say, in the same kind of basic way, what is

Starting point is 00:12:28 cryptocurrency in the context of this common knowledge and context of the blockchain? Great. Cryptocurrency is a currency that is on such a larger. So imagine with the own the larger, right? Initially, you know that somehow, say, you and I are the only owner each one. Let's give it our ourselves, a billion each, whatever, let's use it. Then I start

Starting point is 00:12:54 writing on the ledger, I give 100 with units to my sister, you give my, I give a much to my end. And then, and then now, because it's written on the label, and everybody can see, my sister can give 57 of these units. It should receive from me to somebody else. And so, and that is money. And that is money because you can see that somebody who tenders your payment has really the money there. You don't have any more of a doubt when you want to sell an item.

Starting point is 00:13:26 If I had your check, is the check covered? If I had, or do I have the money at the moment of a transaction? You really see because the ledger is always updated. What you see is what I see. The merchant sees, you know that the money. So it's the most powerful money system Money system varies because it is totally transparent and so you know that you have been paid and And you know that the money is there you have not to second-guess anything else so the common knowledge applied there is You're basically mimicking the same kind of thing you will get in the physical space which is

Starting point is 00:14:03 If you give a hundred bucks or a hundred of that thing, whatever, of that cryptocurrency to your sister, the actual transfer is as real as you giving like a basket of apples to your sister because that, so in the case in the physical space, the common knowledge is in the physics, right to all the atoms. And then it's digital space, the common knowledge is in this ledger. And so that transfer holds the same kind of power, but now it's operating in that digital space.

Starting point is 00:14:41 Go ahead. Again, I apologize for a set of ridiculous questions, but you mentioned cryptocurrencies and money. What is money? Why do we have money? Do you think about this kind of from this high philosophical level at times of this tool, this idea that we few months have all kind of came up with and seem to be using effectively to do stuff.

Starting point is 00:15:12 Money is a social construct, okay, in my opinion. And this has been somehow, people always felt that somehow money is a way to allow us to transact even though we want to different things. So I have two ships and then you have one cow and I wanted a cow but you are looking for blankets instead. So to have money is really simplifies this. But at the end of it, that's why I was invented. And you start with gold, you start with cognage, then you start with check. But at the end of it, that's why Abit was invented. And you start with gold, you start with cognizant, then you start with check. But at the end of the day, money is essentially a social construct because you know what you receive, you can actually spend with somebody else. And so there is a kind of a social impact and social belief that you have. At the end of the day, even a

Starting point is 00:16:06 barter is of requires and this believes that other people are going to accept the quote unquote currency you offer them because if I'm amazing and you ask me to build a wall in your field and I I did. And you in exchange, you give me a fathom ship. What am I going to do? Eat them all now. I have to feed them. And if I don't feed them the diet and I my value is zero. So in receiving this livestock, I must believe that somebody else will accept them in return for something else. So, money is based on social belief, social shared belief system, that makes people transact. That's fascinating. I didn't even think about that. You have a deep network of beliefs about how society operates. So, the value is assigned even to sheep based on that

Starting point is 00:17:06 everyone will continue operating because they were previously operating. Somebody will feed the sheep. I didn't even think about that. That's fascinating. So that directly transfers to the space of money and then to the space of digital money cryptocurrency. Okay. Does it bother you sort of intellectually when this money that is a social construct is not directly tied to physical goods like gold, for example? Not at all, because after all, gold has some industrial value, nobody realize it is a it's a metal. It doesn't oxidate. He has some good things about it but Does this industrial value really represent the value to which is now is trade? No So gold is another way to express our belief I give you announced gold

Starting point is 00:18:00 You treat it like or somebody else will want to this for doing gold you treat it like or somebody else will want to invest for doing something else. So it is really this notion of this. Money is a mental construct is really and is shared is a social construct, I really believe. And so some people feel that it's physical, so very for gold exist. But then as you know we, countries, most of us, they get a country, and now they print their own money and you believe that they are not going to exaggerate it with inflation, not everybody believes it, but I'm not saying it. There is at least not, they are not going to exaggerate it blood-on-tlee. And therefore, you receive it because you know that somebody else will

Starting point is 00:18:46 accept it, will have faith in the currency and so on and so forth. But the weather is gold, the weather is livestock, whatever it is, money is really a shared belief. So there is something, you the scarcity of a particular resource like Bitcoin has a limited amount in its tied to physical to proof of work. So it's tied to physical reality in terms of how much you can mind effectively and so on. That that's an important feature of money. Do you think that's an important feature to be a part of what are the money?

Starting point is 00:19:31 Vettis et alia, very useful part. So at some point in time, you know, assume of it and all money, something, all of a sudden we say, days is money, I have a currency. Then, you know, I offer you 10 days in payment of whatever goods and services you want to provide. But at the end of the day, if you know that you can cultivate and generate them at will, then perhaps, you should not accept my payment. Here is a bouquet of days. So you need some kind of a scarcity of inability to create a suddenly out of nothing is is is is an important and it's not that in transricant necessity, but it's much easier to accept once you know

Starting point is 00:20:21 that there is a fixed number of units or whatever currency varies and very for you can mentally Understand I'm getting gonna this much of this piece of overpie and very for I consider myself paid I understand what I'm receiving You described the goals of a blockchain you have a nice presentation on this as scalability security and decentralization and you challenge the blockchain trilema that claims you can only have two of the three. So let's talk about each. What is scalability in the context of blockchain and cryptocurrency?

Starting point is 00:20:58 What does scalability mean? So I remember if we said that the blockchain is a ledger and each page receives a get some transaction and everybody can write in this pages of a ledger, nobody can be stopped for writing and everybody can read them. Okay, scalability means how fast can you write? Just imagine that you can write an entry in this spatial shared ledger once every hour. Well, you know, what are you going to do? If you have an all one transaction per hour,

Starting point is 00:21:30 the world doesn't go around. So you need to have scalability means here that you can somehow write a lot of transaction and then you can read them and everybody can validate them. And that is the speed and the number of transactions per second. And the fact that they are shared, so you want to have this speed, not only in writing, but in sharing and inspection for validity. This is colorability.

Starting point is 00:22:02 The world is big. The world wants to interact with each other and you better be prepared to have a ledger in which you can write lots and lots and lots of transactions in this special way very, very, very quickly. So maybe from a more mathematical perspective or can we say something about how much scalability is needed for a world that is big. Well, really, it depends how many transactions you want, but remember, wait, and I think, you know, right now, yet to go into at least a thousand of transactions per second, even if you look at, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:40 credit cards, right? And we are going to go from another average of 1600 to peaks of 20,000 or 40,000, something like this. But remember, it's not only a question of a transaction per se, but the value is that the transaction is actually being shared and visible to everybody. And the certainty that that is the case. I can print on my own printer way more transactions, but nobody has the time to see or to inspect that that doesn't count.

Starting point is 00:23:14 So you want scalability at this common knowledge level. That is the challenge. I also meant from a perspective of like a complexity analysis. So, when you get more and more people involved, doesn't you just scale in some kind of way that... Do you like to see certain kind of properties in order to say something is scalable? Oh, absolutely. I took a little bit implicitly that the people transacting are actually very different. So if there is a two people who can do a fast and successful persecutive each other,

Starting point is 00:23:50 this is not so interesting. What we really need is to say there are billions of people at the nanny point in time, you know, fast and some fast and some of them want to transact with each other and you want to support that. So, Algrondgrande solves, so that's the company, the team of cryptographers and mathematicians, the engineers, so on, that challenged the blockchain dilemma. So let's break it down in terms of achieving scalability. How do we achieve scalability in the space of blockchain and space of cryptocurrency? Okay, scalability, security, remember, and decentralization. That's what they want. What's the best way to approach?

Starting point is 00:24:33 Can we break it down, start with scalability and think about how do we achieve it? Well, to achieve it at one at a time is perhaps easy, even security. If nobody transacts, nobody loses money. So, it's secure, but it's not scalable. So, let me tell you, I'm a photographer, so I try to fight the bad guys. And what you want is that the vasilager that we discussed before, cannot be tampered with.

Starting point is 00:25:03 So you must think of it as a special link that nobody can erase. Then as to be everybody should be able to read and not to alter the pages or the content of the pages. That's okay. But you know what? That is actually easy cryptographically. Easy cryptographical means you can use tools invented 50 years ago, which in cryptographic time is praistory, okay? We are cavemen, workin' around and solve a problem in cryptography lane. But there is a really a fundamental problem, which is really almost a social, seems a political problem is to say who the hell chooses or publishes the next page of a ledger. I mean that is really the challenge.

Starting point is 00:25:54 This ledger you can always add a page because more and more transaction to be written on there and somebody has to assemble with with transaction put them on a page and add the next page. Who is the somebody who chooses the page and adds it on? Who can be trusted to do it? Exactly. Assume it is me for what I'm being, not that I won't volunteer for the job, but then I would have more power than any absolute monarchy in history, because I would have tremendous power to say these are the transactions that the entire

Starting point is 00:26:26 world should see and whatever I don't write this transaction will never see the light of day. I mean no one had any such power in history so it's very important to do that and that is the quintessential problem in a blockchain and people have thought about it to say, it's not me, it's not you, but for instance, in a proof of work, what people say is, they say, okay, it's not me, it's not you, you know what it is? We make a very difficult, invent,

Starting point is 00:26:57 or a cryptographic puzzle very hard to solve. The first one to solve that, has the right to add one page to the ledger on behalf of everybody else. That's now seems okay because you know sometimes I solve a puzzle before you do sometimes you solve before I do or before somebody else solves it. It's okay. Presumably the effort you put in is somehow correlated with how much trust you should be given to add to the ledger. Yeah, so somehow you want to make sure of it and all you need to work because you want

Starting point is 00:27:34 to prevent, you want to make sure of it and all you get a one solution every 10 minutes to say like in particular example, a bit coin. So it is very rare but two pages are added at the same time, because if I solve a puzzle at the same time you do, you could happen that if it happens once or twice, we can survive this. But if it happens on every other page, you know, it's a double page, which the two is a very old page, it becomes a problem. So that's why in Bitcoin it is important to have substantial amount of work so that no many how many people try on earth to solve a puzzle, you have one solution. How many

Starting point is 00:28:17 people are trying every 10 minutes so that you have you distance see it with pages and you have the time to propagate for the network resolution and the page attached to it. And very far there is one page at a time that is added. And that is a, well, why don't we do it? We have a solution. Well, first of all, a page A very 10 minutes is not fast enough, it's a question of scalability.

Starting point is 00:28:44 And second of all, to ensure that no matter how many people try, you get one page every 10 minutes, one solution to the riddle every 10 minutes. This means that the riddle becomes very, very hard and to have a chance to solve it within 10 minutes. You must have such an expensive apparatus in terms of specialized computers, not to one, not to, but faster than faster than them. And we produce tons of heat, okay, we did dissipate heat, like maniac.

Starting point is 00:29:16 And you need to refrigerate them too. And so then now you have a conditioning galore to add to the thing. It becomes so expensive that fewer and fewer people can actually compete in order to add to the page. And the problem becomes so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, of a week you look at it, you are going to have two or three mining pools are really the ones capable of controlling the chain. So you're saying that's almost like least centralization. Right. It started being decentralized,

Starting point is 00:30:01 and but the expenses become higher and higher and higher when the cost higher and higher fewer and fewer people can afford them and then you know it becomes an all de facto centralized right. the proof of stake, which is also very easy to explain. Essentially, it boils down to, to say, well, look at these 21 people, say, okay, don't they look honest? Yes, they do. In fact, I believe that they're going to remain honest from the foreseeable future. So when do we do our a favor, let's entrust them to add the page on behalf of all of us to the ledger. Okay, but now we are going to say is this centralized or decentralized? Well, 21 is better than one, but to say it's very little. So if you look at when people have bailed to centralized power, I don't know, the French revolutions, okay, there was a monarch and the nobles, were there 21 nobles? No, there were thousands of them, what were millions and millions of disempowered citizens. So one is centralized, 21 is also centralized. So that's delegated proof of stake, delegated, kind of like representative democracy, I guess.

Starting point is 00:31:23 Yes, which is good working great right? It's working great. Well, it's better than a month. It's better than a month, right? And there's problems. There are problems. And so we were looking for a different We were looking for a different, when I think about Algon for a different approach. And so we have an approach in that, you know, is really, really decentralized because essentially, it works as follows. You have a bunch of tokens, right? These are the tokens that have equal power. And you have say 10 billions of tokens distributed to the entire world. And the owners each token has a chance to add the larger equal probability to everybody else. In fact, actually, if you want, here is how it works. So think about it all by some magic

Starting point is 00:32:26 or graphic process, which is not magic is mathematics, but think of it magic. Assume that you select a thousand tokens. And so sometimes a random, okay, and you have a guarantee that the random selected. And then this, the owners of this one 1000 tokens somehow agree on the next page, they all sign it, and that's the next page. Okay, so it is clear that nobody has the power, but once in a while, one of your tokens is selected and you are in charge of this committee to select the next page, but this goes around very quickly. So, and if you look at this, the equation really is not really centralized, and because for agreeing on the same page, it is important that the 1000 tokens that you randomly selected are in honest ends, the majority of them.

Starting point is 00:33:28 So which, if the majority of the tokens are in honest ends, that is essentially true, because if the majority of the tokens are in honest ends, if you select, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm 90% of the tokens are in honest ends. So can you randomly select a thousand? In this thousand, you find the 501 tokens in bad ends, very, very improbable. So basically, when a large fraction of people are honest, you can use randomness as a powerful tool to get decentralization. Correct. use randomness as a powerful tool to get decentralization. So what is honesty mean? And now we're into the social side of things, which is, how do we know that like the fraction, the large fraction of

Starting point is 00:34:19 people or participating parties are honest? That's an excellent question. So by the way, first of all, we should realize that the same thing is for every other system. When you look at Pufo work, you rely that the majority of the mining power is in honest hands. When you look at a delegated Pufo stake, you rely that the majority of this 21 people are honest. What is the difference? The difference is that in these other systems, you sue to say the whole economy is secure. If the majority of this small piece of economy are honest, and that is a big question. But instead, what we're in our approach, we say, the whole economy is secure if the majority of

Starting point is 00:35:09 the economy is honest. In other words, who can subvert the economy? It's not a majority of a small group, but it's a majority of the token holders, I took conspire with each other in order to sink the very economy of which they own the majority of. But I think it is a bit harder to... Like a self-destructive majority, essentially. to sink the very economy of which they own the majority of. Yes. I think it is a bit harder to work with the destructive majority essentially. And you're also making me realize that basically every system that we have in the world today

Starting point is 00:35:36 assumes that the majority of participants is honest. Yes, the only difference is the majority of whom. And in some cases, the majority of a club, and in our cases, the majority of the whole system. The whole system. Okay, so that's that's that's so through that kind of random sampling, you can achieve decentralization, you can achieve so the scalability, I understand. And then the security that you're referring to, basically the security comes from the fact that the sample selected would likely include honest people. So it's very difficult to, so by the way, the security, as you

Starting point is 00:36:21 mentioned, that you're referring to is basically security against dishonesty by manipulation or whatever. Yes. Yes. So essentially, when you're going to do it, by following, say, well, let's see if you understood what you're saying, but somebody has to randomly select these tokens, when I believe you, so then who does this random selection? And in our ground, we do something a little bit an orthodox essentially is the token choose themselves at random. And you say, if you think about it, that seems to be a terrible idea. Because if you want to say, choose yourself at random and whoever chooses himself is a fast on people committee. You choose the page for the rest of us. And because if I'm a bad person, I'm going to select myself over and over again because I want to be part of

Starting point is 00:37:13 the committee every single time. But not so fast. So what do we do? In our grant, what does it mean that I select myself with each one of us in the privacy of our own computer, actually a laptop? What do you do is that you execute your own individual lottery. And think about it, you pull a lever of a slot machine, you can only pull the lever once, not until you win, not until you win. And when you pull the lever, case one,

Starting point is 00:37:45 either you win in such a case you have a winning ticket or you lose, you don't get any winning ticket. So if you don't have a winning ticket, you can say anything you want about the next page in the legion, nobody pays attention. But if you ever win a ticket, people say, oh wow, this is one of the 1000 winning tickets. We better pay attention to what he or she says.

Starting point is 00:38:09 And that's how he works. And the lottery is a cryptographic lottery, which means that even if I am an entire nation, extremely powerful with incredible computing powers, I don't have the ability to improve even minimally my probability of one my talking winning the lottery. And that's how it happens. So everybody pulls the lever. The 1000 random winners say, oh, here is my winning ticket and here is my opinion up or down about the block. these are the ones that count. And if you think about it, why LVS is distributed because there is the case of Algon, there is 10 billion tokens and you select a far from them or distribute them in VES, you cannot

Starting point is 00:38:55 get. And then why is VES scalable? Because what do you have to do? Okay, you have to do the lottery. How long the lottery takes? It takes actually one microsecond. Whether you have one token or two tokens or a billion tokens is always one microsecond or computation, which is very fast. We don't hit the planet with a microsecond or computation. And finally, why is this secure? Because even if I wear a very evil and very, very powerful individual, I'm so powerful that I can corrupt anybody I want, instantaneously in the world, whom I want to corrupt the people

Starting point is 00:39:39 in the committee so that I can choose the page of the legend. But I do have a problem. I do not know whom I should corrupt. Should I corrupt this lady in Shanghai, this other guy in Paris? Because I don't know, the winners are random, so I don't know whom I should corrupt. But once the winner comes forward and say, here is my winning ticket and you propagate your winning ticket across the network. Together with your opinion about the block, now I know who they are. For sure,

Starting point is 00:40:10 I can corrupt all the fuss on them, given to my incredible powers. But so what? Whatever they said, they already said in their winning tickets and their opinions are very propagated across the network. And I do not have the power no more than the US government or any government as the power to put back in the bottle a message, very propagated by Wikileaks. So everything you just described is kind of, it's fascinating, a set of ideas. And you know, online I've been reading quite a bit and people are really excited about the set of ideas

Starting point is 00:40:47 nevertheless it is not the dominating technology today so Bitcoin in terms of cryptocurrency is the most popular cryptocurrency and then Ethereum and so on so it's useful to kind of comment We're already talking about proof of work a little bit, but what in your sense does Bitcoin get right? And where is it lacking? Okay, so the first thing that Bitcoin got right is to understand that there was the need

Starting point is 00:41:19 over cryptocurrency. And that might be enough for Trump, with the serve always success because they say the time is right for the idea. Yeah. Because very often is not enough to be right here to be right at the right time. And somebody got it right there. So heart off to Bitcoin for that. And and so what do they got to write is the make that is make it is hard to subvert and change the ledger to cancel a transaction. It's not impossible, that is very hard. What they

Starting point is 00:41:53 did not get right is somehow that is a great story of value, currency wise, but money is not only a question that you store it and you put under the mattress. Money wants to be transacted. And the transaction and bitcoins are very little. So if you want to store value, everybody needs a store value, matters well, use a bitcoin. I mean, it's the plant, but if you don't look at it for a moment, at least is a great store of value, and everybody needs a store of value. But most of the time we want to transact, we want to interact, we don't put the money on the managers, right? So we wanted to, and that they didn't get it right. That is to slow to transact,

Starting point is 00:42:38 to few transactions. Just scalability. Biscayla-Bedded issue. Is it possible to build stuff on top of Bitcoin that sort of fixes the scalability? I mean, this is the thing, you look at, there's a bunch of technologies that kind of hit the right need at the right time and they have flaws, but we kind of build infrastructures on top of them over time to fix it As opposed to getting it right from the beginning Or is it difficult to do?

Starting point is 00:43:18 Well, that is difficult to do so you are talking to somebody that when I decided to form a heart in Vierina And I decided first of all like as I said before I much admire my predecessor I. My predecessor, I mean, they go to write a lot of things and I really am at the moment. But, you know, I choice to make. Either I patch something that holds all over the place or starts from scratch. I just start from scratch because sometimes it's a bit of a way. So what about Ethereum, which looks at proof of stake and a lot of different innovative ideas that kind of improve or seek to improve on some of the flaws a bit, coin? Ethereum made another great idea.

Starting point is 00:43:53 So they figured it out. It was that money and payments are important as they are. They are only the first level, the first stepping stone. The next level are smart contracts. And they were at the vision to say, the people will need smart contracts, which allow me and you to somehow to transact securely, without being shopper owned by a trusted third party,

Starting point is 00:44:19 by a mediator. By the way, because mediators are hard to find. And in fact, maybe even impossible to find if you live in Thailand and I live in New Zealand, maybe we don't have a common person that we know and trust. And even if we find them, guess what, they want to be paid. So much so right that 6% of the world GDP goes into financial friction, which is essentially third party. So the headed right to the world needed that, but again, the scalability is not there.

Starting point is 00:44:55 And the system is, as Matt Contas in Ethereum is slow and expensive. And I believe is not enough to satisfy the appetite and the need of we have for a smart contracts. Well, what do you make of just as a small sort of aside in human history, perhaps it's a big one, is the NFT the non-fungible tokens? Do you find those interesting technically, or is it more interesting on the social side of things?

Starting point is 00:45:24 Well, both, I think it's NF on the social side of things? Well, both. I think, you know, I think it's an FTs are actually great, right? So you have a, you're an artist to create a song or you could be a piece of art. As many unique representation right of a unique unique piece where there is an artifact of something dreamnapa by you and as unique representation that now you can trade and allow important part is that now you have a tease themselves of a ability to trade them quickly, fast, securely, knowing that who owns which rights and that gives a totally new opportunity for content creators to be remunerated for what they do. But ultimately, you still have to have that scalability, security, and decentralization to make it, you know, to make it work for bigger and bigger applications.

Starting point is 00:46:29 Correct. Yeah. I still wonder what kind of applications are yet to be like enabled by it because so much, the interesting thing about NFTs, you know, if you look outside of art is just like money, you can start playing with different social constructs. You can start playing with ideas. You can start playing with even like investing. Somebody was talking about almost creating an economy out of creative people

Starting point is 00:47:07 or influencers. If you start a YouTube channel or something like that, you can invest in that person and you can start trading their creations. Almost I create a market out of people's ideas, out of people's creations, out of the people themselves that generate those creations. And there's a lot of interesting possibilities of what you can do with that. I mean, it seems ridiculous, but you're basically creating hierarchy of value, maybe artificial in the digital world, and are trading that. But in so doing, are inspiring people to create. So maybe as

Starting point is 00:47:49 a sort of our economy gets better and better and better, where actual work in the physical space becomes less and less in terms of its importance, maybe we'll completely be operating in a digital space where these kinds of economies have more and more power. And then you have to have this kind of blockchains to the scalability, security, and decentralization. And decentralization is, of course, the tricky one because people and powers start to get nervous. Absolutely. Once in power, you always never be supplanted by somebody else, but this is your job. So you can do

Starting point is 00:48:30 relations, you know, but job at all for job. And now everybody wants it. Well, what is your sense about our time and the future hope about the decentralization of power? Do you think that's something that we can actually achieve? Given that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and it's so wonderful to be absolutely powerful? Well good question. So first of all, I believe that by the way, it's a complex question, believe, by the way, there is a complex equations, like all the rest of your equations. So, but I'm so very sorry.

Starting point is 00:49:11 It's okay, I'm enjoying it. So, there are two things. First of all, power has been centralized for a variety of reasons. When you want to get it, it's easier for somebody, even a single person to grab power. But there is also some kind of a technology, lack very often, that justified having power, because in a way, in a society in which even communication, never mind blockchain, which is common knowledge, but even simple unilateral communication is hard. It is much easier to say, you do as I say, because the alternative is there. But as, so there is a little bit of a technology barrier, but I think that, and now to get to

Starting point is 00:49:58 this common knowledge, that is a totally different story, now we have finally the technology for doing this. So that is one part. But I really believe that you know not by having a distributed system, not only you don't have a you have actually much more stable and doable system because not only for corruption, but even for things that go astray. And you give it a long enough time by and he give it a long enough time by strange version of Murphy's law, whatever goes wrong, goes wrong. And so, the power is diffused. You actually have much more stable.

Starting point is 00:50:34 If you look at any, any living, complex living being is distributed. I mean, I'm, I don't have somebody, he's like, okay, tell tell Silvia now it's time to eat. You have millions of cells in your body, you have billions of bacteria. Exactly. Help me in the guts. I think you know we are in a soup of it somehow. It keeps us alive. It's strange enough. However, when we design systems, we design them centralized. We ourselves are distributed beings. And when we plan, say, okay, I won't look at an architecture. How about I make a pyramid, I put the top and the power flows down. And so again, it's a little bit perhaps of a technology problem. But now the technology is there,

Starting point is 00:51:25 so it is a big challenge to rethink how we want to organize power in very large system. And distribute the system in my opinion, a much more resilient. Let's put this way. There was a mine of my Italian compatriots, right? And Macchiavale, who looked at the time, there was a big, there was a bunch of small state democratic republic of Florence, of the Nism, and the other thing, and there was the Ottoman Empire, but at the time was an empire, and the southern was very centralized. And he made a political observation that goes roughly to say, whenever you have such a centralised thing, it's very hard to overtake that formal government is centralised. But if you get it, it's so easy to keep population. One, instead, with other things, a much more resilient

Starting point is 00:52:21 time, when the power is distributed, it's much more, it's going to be lasting for much a longer time. And ultimately, maybe the human spirit wants that kind of resilience, wants that kind of the truth. It's just that we didn't have technology throughout history. Macchi Valley didn't have the computer, the internet, and especially partly over the reason. Yes. You've written an interesting blog post if we take a step out of the realm of bits and into the realm of governance. You wrote a blog post about making algorithm governance decentralized. Can you explain what that means, the philosophy behind that, how you decentralized basically all aspects of this kind of system.

Starting point is 00:53:06 Well, the philosophy and the how, let's start with the philosophy. So I really believe that nothing fixed last very long. And so I really believe that life is about an intelligent adaptation. Things change and we have to be nimble and adjust to change. And when I see a lot of crypto projects, actually very proud to say it's fixed in stone, right, you know, code is low, law is code I very often call, they will never change. They go, wow, when I'm saying this is a recipe to me of disaster, not immediately. But soon, just imagine you take a national liner and you want to go, I don't know, from

Starting point is 00:53:56 Lisbon to New York and you set a course, iceberg, no iceberg, time, past, not time, past, and all that. It doesn't matter. But it's not the way. You need a till. You need to correct. You need to adjust. And, and so, by the way, we would design an algorithm with the idea that the code was evolving as the needs. And of course, a waiver is a system in which, every time there is an adjustment, you must have essentially a vote

Starting point is 00:54:31 that right now is, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or or, or or or, or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or up a version. So we are able to evolve without losing too many components left on right. But I think we thought evolving any system essentially become asphetic and is going to shrivel and die sooner or later. And so that is needed. And what you want to do on the blockchain, you have a perfect platform in which you can log your wishes, your votes, your things so that you have a guarantee that whatever vote you express is actually seen by everybody else. So everybody sees really the outcome, call it a referendum or a change and that is in my opinion, a system that wants to live long as to adapt.

Starting point is 00:55:27 There is an interesting question about leaders. I've talked to Vitalik Bureurin. I'll probably talk to him again soon. He's one of the leaders, maybe one of the faces of the Ethereum project. And it's interesting. You have a Satoshi Nakamoto who's the face of Bitcoin, I guess, but he's faceless. He, she, they, it does seem like in our, whatever it is, maybe it's 20th century, maybe it's a mechael valiant thinking, but we seek leaders. Leaders have value. Linus Torvold, the leader of Linux, the open source development a lot. I mean, there's no, it's not that the leadership is sort of dogmatic, but it's inspiring.

Starting point is 00:56:14 And it's also powerful in that through leaders, we propagate the vision. Like the vision of the project is more stable. Maybe not the details, but the vision. And so do you think there's value to, because there's a tension between decentralization and leadership, like, and visionary? Yes. What do you make of that tension? OK, so I really believe that if it's a,

Starting point is 00:56:40 I never get question. I think of it, and all, I really believe in the power of emotions. I think the emotion are of a creative impulse of everybody else. And very, very far is very easy for a leader to be a physical person, a real being, and that interprets our emotions. And by the way, this emotion has to resonate

Starting point is 00:57:03 and what is good is that the more intimate our emotions are, the more universal they are paradoxically. More personal, the more everybody else somehow magically agrees and feels a bit of the same. And so, and it's very important to have a leader in the initial phase that generates out on nothing something. That is important leadership. But then the true tested leadership is to disappear after you led the community. So in my opinion, the quintessential leader, according to my vision, is a George Washington.

Starting point is 00:57:42 It's for one term, it's for another term, and then all of a sudden Irritate became a power citizen and 200 and change years later we still are, we sound effects, but we have done a lot of things right and we have been able to vote. That to me is a success in leadership. Well, instead you contrast our experiment with a a lot of experiments. I've done so much so well that I won't another four years. And why shouldn't I be only a four? And I have another eight. Why should be another eight? Give me 16 and we'll fix all your problems. And then is the type in my opinion of failed leadership leadership to be really lead, ignite, and disappear. And if you don't disappear, the system is going to die with you. And there's no good idea for everybody else.

Starting point is 00:58:32 Is there, so we've been talking a little bit about cryptocurrency, but is there spaces where this kind of blockchain ideas that you're describing, which I find fascinating, do you think they can revolutionize some other aspects of our world? That's not just money. A lot of things are going to be revolutionizes is independent of finance. By the way, I really believe that finance is an incredible form of freedom. If I'm free to do anything I I want but I don't even mean to do anything that's a bad idea. So I feel like the financial freedom is very very important. But you know, but you just can say that you know against you know censorship,

Starting point is 00:59:16 you write something of the chain and now nobody can take it out. That is a very important way to express in our view. And then the transparency that you give, because everybody can see what's happening on the blockchain. So transparency is not money, but I believe that transparency actually is a very important ingredient also of finance. actually is a very important ingredient also of finance. Let's put this away. As much as I'm enthusiastic about blockchain and decentralized finance and we have actually our expression, we're creating this future five. As much as we want to do, we must agree that the first guarantee of financial growth and prosperity are really the legal system, the courts. Because we may not think about them and say, oh, the courts are kind of bunch of boring lawyers, but we've had them, I'm saying, there is no certainty, there is no notion of equality,

Starting point is 01:00:22 there is no notion that you can resolve your disputes. Think that's what thrives the commerce and things. And so what I really believe that the blockchain actually makes a lot of the stress essentially automatic by making it impossible to cheat in very way. You don't even need to go to court if nobody can change a ledger. So essentially, there's a way of, you cannot solve a legal system that reduces to a blockchain, but what I'm saying, a big chunk of it can actually be guaranteed. And there is no reason why technology should be antagonistic to legal scholarship.

Starting point is 01:01:01 It could be actually existing. And one should start to do the interest things that the connollulge alone cannot do, and then you go from there. But I think that essentially blockchain can affect all kinds of our behavior. So in some sense, the transparency, the required transparency ensures honesty prevents corruption. So there's a lot of system that could use that and the legal system is one of them. There's a little bit of attention that I wonder if you can speak to where this kind of transparency, there's attention with privacy.

Starting point is 01:01:41 Is it possible to achieve privacy if wanted on blockchain? Do you have ideas about different technologies that can do that? People have been playing with different ideas. So absolutely. The answer is yes. And by way, I'm a cryptographer. So I really believe in privacy and I believe in, and I have a devoted and all my big chunk of my life to guarantee privacy even when it seems almost impossible to have it. And it is possible to have it in also in the blockchain too. And however, I believe in timing as well. And I believe that the people have the right to understand their system, believe in. And right now, people can understand the blockchain

Starting point is 01:02:38 to be something that cannot be altered and is transparent. And that is good enough. And right now, anyway, and there is a pseudo privacy for the fact that who knows if the skis belong, public key belongs to me or to you, right? And I can, when I want to change my money from one public key, I split it to our public keys, going to figure out which one is Silvio, all of them are Sil are silver, only one of silver, who knows. So you get some vanilla privacy, not the one I could talk. And I think it's good enough because it's important for now that we absorb a best stage. Because in the next stage, we must understand the privacy tool,

Starting point is 01:03:20 how they're taking on faith. When the public starts saying, I believe in the scientist and whatever they say, I swear by them, I'm very sorry, the term is private is private and nobody understands it very well. We need much more educated about the tools we are using. And so I look forward to deploying more and more privacy on the blockchain, but we are not, I will not rush to it until the people understand and are behind whatever we have right now. So you build privacy on top of the power of the blockchain, you have to first understand the power of the blockchain. Yes.

Starting point is 01:03:59 Yes. So, Algorand is like one of the most exciting technically at least from my perspective Technologies ideas in this whole space. What's the future of Algrant look like? Is it possible for it to dominate the world? Let's put the best way I certainly Working very hard with a great team to give the best blockchains Veta one team to give the best blockchain, one can demand and enjoy. And they said, I really believe that there is going to be, it's not a winner text from all. So it's going to be a few block

Starting point is 01:04:35 chains. And each one is going to have its own brand and it's going to be greater something. Sometimes it's a scalability, sometimes it's easier to use, sometimes it's a thing. And it's important to have a dialogue between these things. And I'm sure, and I'm working very hard to make sure that I got this one of them. But I don't believe that, you know, is even desirable to have a winner and takes all because we need to express different things, but the important thing is going to have enough interoperability of our systems so that you can transfer your assets where you have the best tool to service them, whatever your needs are at the time. So there's an idea, I don't know, that calls themselves Bitcoin maximalists, which is essentially the bet that the philosophy that Bitcoin will eat the world.

Starting point is 01:05:36 So you're talking about it is good to have variety. Their claim is it's good to have the best technology, dominate the medium of exchange, the medium of store value, the money, the digital currency space. What's your sense of the positives and the negatives of that? So I feel people are smart and it's going to be very hard for anybody and to win. A twin, because people want more and more things. There is an Italian saying that it translates well, I think. It goes up and tight, grows while eating.

Starting point is 01:06:20 I think you understand what I mean. So I say, I'm not thinking, oh, it's okay. Food. Let me try. So we want more and more and more. And when you find something like a Bitcoin, which I already had very good things to say, but it does something very well, but it's a static. I mean, store of value. Yes.

Starting point is 01:06:41 I think it's a great, like the rest, you know, it would be a sad world if the world in which we are so anchoring down some and defensive that we want to store value and hide it and the matters. I long for a world in which it is open. People want to transact and interact with which way. And very far when you want to store value, perhaps one chain, you want to have to transact, maybe is another. I'm not saying that one chain cannot be store of value or other thing, but I really believe in the ingenuity of people and in the innovation that is intrinsic to the human nature.

Starting point is 01:07:21 We want always different things. So how can it be something invented? Whatever it is that decades ago is going to fulfill the needs of our future generations. I know if it's just fulfill my needs, I don't know, my kids, or their kids, I use their, we are going to have a different world

Starting point is 01:07:40 and things will evolve. So you believe, yeah. So you believe that life, so you believe that life, intelligent life is ultimately about adaptability and evolving. So static is, static loses in the end. Yes. Let me ask the, well, first, the ridiculous question, do you have any clue whose Satoshi Nakamoto is? Is that even an interesting question? Well, like your question. By the way, I'm very interesting.

Starting point is 01:08:12 So, and I think, I, so I would say, first of all, it's not me, and I can prove it because, you know, if I were Satoshi Nakamoto, I would have not found an algorithm, which also takes totally different principles to approach to the system. But the other thing, who is Satoshi Nakamoto? You know what the right answer is? It's not him or her or them. Satoshi Nakamoto is Bitcoin, because to me, it's such a career and proof of work, but at the end they create and they create

Starting point is 01:08:46 an identify themselves. So he says, okay, understand Michelangelo, okay, it is the assistant chapel fine, it is the way some Peter's dome fine, it is the most of the Pietro statue fine, but besides this, who was Michelangelo? It's a very long question, it is his own work, that was Michelangelo? What's his biggest question? Is his own work? That is Michelangelo. So I think that when you look at the Bitcoin, is a piece of work that has it defects, yes, like anything human,

Starting point is 01:09:16 but it was captivated the imaginations on millions of people as a subverted vestado school. And I'm saying, you know, whoever this person of people as a subverted vestado school. And I'm saying, you know, whoever this person of people are, he's leaving in this piece of work. I mean, it is Bitcoin. The idea of the work is bigger. We forget that sometimes. It's something about our biology once likes to see a face and attach a face to the idea, when really the idea is the thing we love, the idea is the thing that impact the idea is the thing that ultimately we, you know, Steve Jobs or something like that, we associate with

Starting point is 01:09:54 the Mac with the iPhone with just everything he did at Apple, Apple actually, the company is Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, the man is, is, is a, is a Pales in comparison to the creation of the man. And the sense of aesthetics that are brought to the daily lives. And very often aesthetic wins in the long, in the long, in the long game. And these are very elegant design product. And when you say, Oh, elegant, so very few people care about it, apparently, millions, a millions, a millions millions and millions of people do because we are attacked by beauty. And

Starting point is 01:10:31 these are beautifully designed products. And, and, and, and, you know, and they've, in addition to ever the technological aspect of the other thing. And I think, yes, it is. Yeah, as the Staski said, beauty will save the world. So I'm with you on that one. Great. It currently seems like cryptocurrency, all these different technologies are gathering a lot of excitement, not just in our discourse, but in their scale financial impact. A lot of excitement, not just in our discourse, but in their scale financial impact. A lot of companies are starting to invest in Bitcoin. Do you think that the main method of store value and exchange of value basically money will soon or at some point in the century will become cryptocurrency?

Starting point is 01:11:25 Yes. So mind you, as I said, the Vietnamese or cryptocurrency, like any other fundamental human notion as to evolve, but yes. So I think that he has a lot of momentum behind it is not only static as a programable money, as a small contract. It allows a peer-to-peer interaction among people who don't even know each other, right? And they don't even very fore can not even trust each other just because they never saw each other. So I think it's so powerful that is going to do. They said, again, a particular cryptocurrency should develop and cryptocurrency will all develop, but the way on series, yes, we are going towards a much more, unless we have a society a sudden crisis for the fun reasons we share.

Starting point is 01:12:25 Well, there's no body hopes. There's always an asteroid. There's always something. Nuclear war and all the existential crisis that we kind of think about, including artificial intelligence. OK, it's funny you mentioned that Michelangelo and Steve Jobs, set of ideas represents the person's work. We talked about Algrang, which is a super interesting set of technologies, but you did also win

Starting point is 01:12:54 the Touring Award. You have a bunch of ideas that are seminal ideas So can we talk about cryptography for a little bit? What is the most beautiful idea in cryptography or computer science or mathematics in general, asking somebody who has explored the depths of all? Well, Vraga, a few contenders. Well, there are a few contenders. And either your work or other work. Let's leave my work aside.

Starting point is 01:13:45 But one powerful idea and it's both a null idea in some sense and a very, very modern one. And it might be in this best idea of a one-way function. So a function that is easy to evaluate. So given x, you can compute f of x easily. But given f of x is very hard to go back to x. Okay? Think like breaking a glass easy, reconstructive glass hard. Frying an egg easy, high-deg to go back to your original egg hard. If you want to be extreme killings and living being, unfortunately easy, they are everywhere around very hard. And so the fact that the notion

Starting point is 01:14:27 of a function, which you have a recipe that is in front of your eyes to transform an X into F of X and then from F of X, even though you see the recipe to transform it, you cannot go back to X that in my opinion is one of the most elegant and momentous notions that there are. And there is a computational notion because the difficulties in a computational sense and is a mathematical notion because we are talking about function. And it's so fruitful because that is actually the foundation of all the cryptography. And let me tell you is an old notion because very often in any mythology that we think of. The most powerful gods or goddesses

Starting point is 01:15:15 are the ones of X and the opposite of X, the gods of love and death. And when you take opposite, of love and death. And when you take opposite, they don't just erase one another, you create something way more powerful. And this one with function is extremely powerful because essentially becomes something that is easy for the good guys and bad for the hard for the bad guys. So for instance, in pseudo random number generation, the easy part of the function corresponds you want to generate bits very quickly. And hard is predicting what the next bit is. It says, it doesn't look the same.

Starting point is 01:15:57 One is XL for X, going from X to XR, but what does the predicting bits? By a magic of reductions in mathematical apparatus, this simple function morphs itself into pseudo-random regeneration. This is a simple function morphs itself in digital signature scheme, in which digital designing should be easy and forging should be hard. Again, a digital signature is not going from f-flex, but the magic and the richness of this notion is met, but it is so powerful with morphs in all kinds of incredible constructs. And in both these two opposites coexist, the isian the hard, and in my opinion, is very, very

Starting point is 01:16:43 elegant notion. So that simple notion ties together the cryptography, like you say, pseudo-rendom number generation, you have work on pseudo-rendom functions. What are those? What's the difference in those and the generators? You're't run a random number generators. Okay, let's go back to Sudokhanda number generation. Yes. First of all, people think that the Sudokhanda generation generates random number. Not true, because I don't believe that from nothing,

Starting point is 01:17:19 you can get something. So nothing from nothing. But randomness you cannot create out on nothing but what you could do is that you could it can be expanded. So in other words, if you give me somehow 300 random bits, truly random bits, then I can give you 300,000, 300 million, 300 trillion, 300 quadrillions. As many as you want, random bits. So, wait, even though I tell you the recipe by which I produce these bits, but I don't tell you the initial 300 random numbers I keep them secret. And you see all the bits I produce so far. If I, if you were to bet, given all the bits produced so far, if I, if you were to bet, given all the bits produced so far, what is the next

Starting point is 01:18:06 bit in my sequence? Better than 50 50. Of course, 50 50 anybody can guess, right? But to be inferring something, you have to be a bit better, then the effort to do this extra bit is so enormous that is the factor random. So that is a pseudo random generator or this expander of secret randomness, which it goes extremely fast. Okay, mess said, expanders of secret randomness, beautifully put, okay. So every time somebody who,

Starting point is 01:18:39 if your programmer is using a function that's not called pseudo random. It's called random usually. You know, these programming languages and it's generating different. That's essentially expanding the secret randomness. But they should. In the past, actually, most of the library, they used something pre-modern cryptography. Unfortunately, we would be better served to take a 300 real seed random number and then expand them appropriately as we know now. But it has been a very old idea. In fact, one of the best philosophers, and debated the way of the world was the

Starting point is 01:19:25 technistic or probabilistic. Very big questions, right? Does God play dice? Exactly. Einstein says it does. It doesn't. But in fact, now we have a language that even at the Alberta time was not around, but it was this complexity,

Starting point is 01:19:40 if you remember, a complexity-based cryptography. And now we know that, in universe has 300 random bits, wherever is random or probabilistic or deterministic, it doesn't matter. Because you can expand this initial seed of randomness forever in which all the experiments you can do, all the inferences you can do, all the things you can do, you are not able to distinguish them from truly random. So if you are not able to distinguish truly random from this super duper pseudo randomness, are really different things. So for things to be different, but I don't have in my lifetime, in my lifetime of a universe, any method to set them aside, well, I should be intellectually honest, say, well, pseudo-random

Starting point is 01:20:34 in the specific function is as good as random. Do you think true randomness is possible? What does that mean? So practically speaking, the exact as you said, if you're being honest, the pseudo-ranonymous approaches true randomness pretty quickly. But maybe this is a philosophical question. Is there such a thing as true randomness. Well, the answer is actually maybe, but if it exists, most probably is expensive to get. And in any case, if I give you one online random thing, you will never tell them apart. By not any other shape, no matter how much you work on it, so in some sense, if it exists or not, it really is a

Starting point is 01:21:27 quote philosophical sense in the colloquial way to save it, that we cannot somehow pin it down. Do you ever again just to stay on philosophical for a bit for a brief moment? Do you ever think about free will and whether that exists? Because ultimately free will is this experience that we have, like we're making choices, even though it appears that the world

Starting point is 01:21:57 is deterministic at the core. I mean, that's against the debate, but if it is, in fact, deterministic at the lowest possible level, at the physics level, if it is deterministic, how do you make sense of the difference between the experience of us feeling like we're making a choice and the whole thing being deterministic? So, first of all, I'm going me give you a gut reaction to the equation. And a gut reaction is that it is important that we believe that there exists free will. And second of all,

Starting point is 01:22:35 almost by weird logic, if we believe it exists, then it does exist. So it's very important for our social apparatus, for our sense of the air, for ourselves, that it exists. And the moment in which we so want to, we're almost to be conjured up in existence. But again, I really feel that if you look at some point, the space of free will seems to shrink. We realize how more and more, how much of our genetic apparatus dictates what we are, why we prefer certain things than others, right? And why we react to noises of music, we prefer poetry, or anything else. We may explain even always.

Starting point is 01:23:22 But at the end of the day, whether it exists in a philosophical sense or not, it's like randomness. If you can, if pseudo-random is as good as random, vis-a-vis lifetime of a universe, a warrior experience, then it doesn't really matter. So, you know, we're talking about randomness. I wonder if I can weave in quantum mechanics for a brief moment. There's a, you know, a lot of advancements on the quantum computing side. So leveraging quantum mechanics to perform

Starting point is 01:23:58 in you kind of computation. And there's concern of that being a threat to a lot of the basic assumptions that underlie cryptography. What do you think? Do you think quantum computing will challenge a lot of cryptography? Will cryptography be able to defend all those kinds of things? Okay, great.

Starting point is 01:24:19 So first of all, for the record, because I think it others, but it's important that the record, there are people who continue to contend that quantum mechanics exist, but that's nothing that we're computing, it's not going to accelerate it, at least in a very basic kind of art computation. That is a belief, you cannot take it out. I'm a little bit more agnostic about it, but I really believe going back to whatever I said about the one-way function. So one-way function, what is it? That's a cryptography. So does quantum computing challenge you? The one-way function. Essentially. You can boil it down to does one to computing for a one-way function what is one-way function easy in one direction are them the other okay but if quantum computing exists when you define what it is easy is not by a easy by a

Starting point is 01:25:15 classical computer and are the by a classical computer but easy for a quantum computer that's a bad idea but once easy means it should be easy for a quantum and hard for a quantum computer that's a bad idea. But once easy means, it should be easy for a quantum and hard for also quantum. Then you can see that you are, yes, is a challenge, but you have hope because you can absorb if one computing really realizes and becomes available and according to the promises, then you can use them also for the easy part.

Starting point is 01:25:45 And once you use it for the easy part, the choices that you have of one-way function, they multiply. So, okay, so the particular candidates of one-way function, they not be one-way anymore, but quantum one-way function may continue to exist. And so I really believe that for life to be meaningful is one-way function had to exist. Because just imagine that anything that becomes easy to do. I mean, what kind of life is it? I mean, so you need that, and if something is hard,

Starting point is 01:26:29 but it's so hard to generate, you'll never find something which is hard for you. You want that there is abundance, there is easy to produce, hard problem. That's why my opinion is why life is interesting because hard problem pop up. I'm not really relatively speed. So in some sense, I almost think that I do hope that existing vedon exist somehow

Starting point is 01:26:52 life is a way less interesting than it actually is. Yeah, it does, that's funny. It does seem like the one way function is fundamental to all of life, which is the emergence of the complexity that we see around us seem to require the one-way function. I don't know if you play with Celia or Tomara, that's just another formulation of... I know, but yeah, it's a very simple illustration of starting out with simple rules and one way being able to generate the incredible amounts of complexity, but then you ask the question, can I reverse that? And it's just surprising how difficult it is to reverse that. It's surprising, even

Starting point is 01:27:40 in constrained situations, it's very difficult to prove anything. That it almost, I mean, the sad thing about it, well, I don't know if it's sad, but it seems like we don't even have the mathematical tools to reverse engineer stuff. I don't know if they exist or not, but in the space of cellular tomat, where you start with something simple and you create something incredibly complex, can you take something a small picture of that complex and reverse engineer? That's kind of what we're doing as scientists. You're seeing the result of

Starting point is 01:28:16 the complexity and you're trying to come up with some universal law that generate all of this. What is the, you know, the theory of everything? What are the basic physics laws that generate this whole thing? And there's a hope that you should be able to do that, but it gets it's difficult. But there is also some poetry of the fact that it's difficult. Right. Because it gives us some mystery to life. We thought the weatress. How many nights not so fun like life? It'll be less fun. Can we talk about interactive proofs a little bit and zero knowledge proofs? What are those?

Starting point is 01:28:50 Okay, how do they work? So interactive proof actually is is is a modern realization and conceptualization of something that we knew was true, that it is easy to go to lecture. In fact, that's my motivation. We invented schools to go to lecture. I wouldn't say, oh, I have the Minister of Education, I published this book, you read it. This is book for this year.

Starting point is 01:29:17 This book for this year. We spend a lot of our treasury in educating our kids. And in person, educating, go to class, interact with each other on the blackboard and chalk on my time. Now we can have a whiteboard and presumably you're going to have actually with magic pens and a display instead. But the idea is that interactively you can convey truth much more efficiently. And we knew this psychologically.

Starting point is 01:29:49 It's better to hear a respination, but just to belabor some paper. Right? Same thing. So interactive proofs is a way to do a following. Rather than doing in some complicated, very long papers, and possibly infinitely long proofs, exponentially long proofs You say before like if the sphere is true. There is a game that is associated to the theorem and If the theorem is true this game I Have a winning strategy that I can win half of the of the time

Starting point is 01:30:20 No matter what you do, okay, so then you say, well, it's the theorem too. You believe me, or I should I believe you? So, okay, let's play. So, and if I prove that I have a strategy, and I win the first time, and I win the second time, then I lose the first time, but I win. If I say more than half of the time, or I win the say all the time, if the theorem is true,

Starting point is 01:30:43 and at least at most half of the time if the Firm is false, you statistically get convinced you can verify this quickly. And therefore, when the game typically is extremely fast, so you generate a miniature game in which the Firm is true. I win all the time in the F theorem is false. I can win at most a half of the time and if I win win win win win win win win win win win you can deduce either the theorem is true which most probably is not speak or I've been very very unlucky because it's like if I had a hundred contourses and I got a hundred heads very improbable. So that is a way. And so this transformation

Starting point is 01:31:28 from the formal statement of a proof into a game that can be quickly played and you can draw statistics on many times you win and you is one of a big conquests of modern complexity theory. And in fact, actually, as I highlighted, the notion of a proof has really given us a new insight of what to be true means and what trophies and what proofs are. So these are the generally proofs. So what kind of mysteries can allow us to unlock and prove? You said truth.

Starting point is 01:32:11 So what does it allow us? What kind of truth does it allow us to arrive at? So it enlarges the real mobile, this provable, because in some sense, the classical way of proving things was extremely inefficient from the verifier point of view. And so very far, very so much proof that you can take. But in this way, you can actually very quickly, in minutes, verify something that is the correctness of assertion, but otherwise,

Starting point is 01:32:47 you're taking all the lifetime to belabor and check all the passages of a very, very long proof, and you better check all of them because if you don't check one line, an error can be in that line. And so you have to go linearly for all the stuff rather than bypass this. So you will allow to tremendous amount of the proof fees. And in addition, once you have the idea that essentially a proof system is something that allows me to convince you of a true statement, but does not allow me to convince you of a false statement. And beta advises evades of proof. Proof can be beautiful, should be elegant, but advises is true or false, as you want

Starting point is 01:33:35 to be able to differentiate. It is possible to prove the truth and it should be impossible or statistically extremely hard to prove something false. And if you do this, you can prove way, way more once you understand this. And on top of it, we got some insight like I can visit zero knowledge of proofs, that is something which you took for granted were the same, knowledge and verification, actually separate concepts. So you can verify that an assertion is correct, knowledge and verification, actually separate concepts.

Starting point is 01:34:05 So you can verify that an assertion is correct without having any idea why this is so. And so people felt to say, if you want to verify something, get to have the proof. Once you have the proof, you know why it's true, you have the proof itself. And so somehow you can totally differentiate knowledge and verification, validity. So totally, you can decide if something is true and still have no idea of it.

Starting point is 01:34:34 Is your good example in your mind? Oh, actually, you know, at the beginning we labor to find the first knowledge, zero knowledge proof. Then we find a second, then we find a third, and then a few years later, actually we proved a theorem, which essentially says every theorem, no matter what about, can be explained in a zero knowledge way. So it's not a class of theorem, but all theorems. And it's a very powerful thing. So we were really not a class of theorem, but all theorems and is a very powerful thing so we were really for thousands of years But this identity between knowledge and verification had to be hand in hand together and

Starting point is 01:35:16 For no reason at all. I mean we had to develop a wave of technology as you know I'm very big technology because he makes us more human and make us understand more things than before. And I think that is a good thing. So this interactive proof process, there's power in games. And you've recently gotten into, recently, I'm not sure you can correct me, mechanism designed. Yeah. It's so, I mean, first of all, maybe you can explain what mechanism design is and the fascinating space of playing with games and designing games. Mechanism design is that you want to, you want to set in behavior to arise, if you want to organize

Starting point is 01:36:07 a societal structure or something, you want to have some orderly behavior to arise, because it is important for your goals. But you know that people, they don't care what my goals are, make cares about maximizing their utility. So put it crassly, making money, the more money the better, so to speak, I'm exaggerating. Self-interest, self-interest. And whatever way they're... So what you want to do is, ideally, what you want to do is to design a game so that while people played, sought to maximize their self-interest, they achieve the social goal and behavior

Starting point is 01:36:53 that I want. That is really the best type of thing. And it is a very hard science and art to design these games. And it challenges us to actually come up with a solution concept for way to analyze the games that need to be broader. And I think the number of game theory has developed in a bunch of very compelling Weight to analyze the game that if the game has a best property You can have a pretty good guarantee that is going to be played in a given way

Starting point is 01:37:35 But as it turns out and not surprisingly These tools have a range of action like anything else all these So-called the technically solution concept the way to analyze the game like Domino's strategy will leave them with something comes to mind to be very meaningful But as a limited power in some sense the games that it can be Admit such a way to be analyzed is a very specific kind of games and the rules are set, the constraints are set, the utilities are all set. So if you want to reason, if there is a way, that you can analyze a restricted class of games this way, but most games don't fall into

Starting point is 01:38:20 the restricted class. Then what do I do? When you need to enlarge away what a rational player can do. So for instance, in my opinion, at least in some of my, I played with this for a few years, and I was doing some exotely things, I'm sure, in the space that were not exactly mainstream. And then I changed my interest and I blocked it. But when I think for a while, I was doing, so for instance, to me, is a way in which I design the game

Starting point is 01:38:56 and you don't have the best move for you. The best move is the move, it's best for you, no matter what other players are doing. Sometimes a game doesn't have that, okay, it's too much to ask. But I can design the game, such a bit, given the option in front of you say, oh, these are really stupid for me, take them aside. But these, these are not stupid. So if you design them the game, so that in any combination, or non-stupid things that the player could do. I achieve what I want. I'm done. I don't care to find the very unique equilibrium. I don't give a damn. I want to say, well, as long as you don't do stupid things and nobody else does stupid things, good social things, outcome, arise, things out camera eyes, I should be equally happy. And so I really believe that this type of

Starting point is 01:39:48 analysis and all is possible and as a bigger radius, so it reaches more games, more classes of games. And after that, we have to enlarge it again. And it's going to be, we're going to have fun because human behavior can be conceptualized in many ways. And it's a long game. Yeah, it's a long game. Do you have favorite games that you're looking at now? I mean, I suppose your work with blockchain and Algorand is a kind of game that you're basically

Starting point is 01:40:22 a mechanism designed, designed the game such that it's scalable, secure, and decentralized, right? Yes, yes. And very often you have to say, and you must also design so that the main centers are, are, and 10, 10, you have two for whatever little I learned for my venture in mechanism design is that incentives are very hard to design because people are very complex creatures.

Starting point is 01:40:53 Somehow, the way we design algorithms is a totally different way, essentially, with no incentives, essentially. eventually. But technically speaking, there is a notion that is actually believable, right? So, I have to say, people want to maximize the variability, yes, up to a point. Let me tell you, assume that if you are honest, you make 100 bucks. But if you are dishonest, no matter how dishonest you are, you can only make 100 bucks in one cent. What are you going to be? I'm saying, you know what? Technical speaking, even that one cent,

Starting point is 01:41:36 nobody bothers and say, how much am I going to make by your honest 100? If I am devious and if I'm a criminal, 100 bucks in one cent, you know, I'm not as well be honest criminal 100 bucks and one cent you know I'm others will be honest so that essentially scolding or epsilon utility equilibrium but I think it's good and that's what we design essentially means that there is an aving noise sentence is actually a good thing because prevent people from reasoning, I will say, I'm going to game the system.

Starting point is 01:42:08 But why can we achieve in all of going to have no incentives? And in Bitcoin instead, yet to pay the miners because they do tremendous amount of work because if you have to do a lot of work, then you demand to be paid accordingly. Because you, right, but if I're going say, you're to add 2 and 2 equal to 4, how much you want to be paid for this? If you don't give me, I don't add the 2 and 2. I say, you can add the 2 and 2 in your sleep. You don't need to be paid to add the 2 and 2. So, the idea is that if we make the system so efficient, so that generating the next block

Starting point is 01:42:43 is so damn simple, it doesn't hit the the universe, let alone my computer, let alone take some microsecondal computation. I'm at as well not being received in centers for doing that and try to incentivize some other part of the system, but not the main consensus which is a mechanism for generating and adding block to the chain. Since you're Italian, Sicilian, I also heard rumors that you are a connoisseur of food. What, you know, if I said today is the last day, you get to be alive. I'm Russian. You shouldn't have trusted me. You never know the Russian whether you're gonna make it out or not Well, if you had one last meal You can travel somewhere in the world. Yes either you make it or somebody else makes it. What's that gonna look like?

Starting point is 01:43:35 All right, this is one last meal. I must say you know in this era of COVID and I've not been able to see my mom and I have not been able to see my mom and my mom was a fantastic chef. And had this very traditional food. As you know, the very traditional food are great for a reason because they survived hundreds of years of culinary innovation. So in the very one very laborious thing, which is, and you have the name, which is, it's a Parmigiana, but to do it is a piece of art, quite so many hours, but only my mom could do it. If we have one last meal, I want to Parmigiana.

Starting point is 01:44:18 Okay. What is, what's the laborious process? Is that the ingredients? Is it the actual process? Is it the atmosphere and the humans involved? The ingredients are like in any other,. If you take, say, quintessential Italian recipe, very boninoss, spaghetti paste, okay? Paste is olive oil, very good extra virgin olive oil, and basil, pine nuts, pepper, a clove of garlic, not too much, otherwise you use the power everything. And then, to do either two schools of thought, parmesan or pecorino or a mix of a two. I mentioned six ingredients. That is typical Italian. I understand that there are other cuisines, for instance, a French cuisine, which is extremely sophisticated, and extremely combinatorial, or some Chinese cuisine, which has a lot of many more ingredients in this.

Starting point is 01:45:30 Yet the artist to put them together a lot of things. In Italy, it's really the striving for simplicity. Yet to find few ingredients, but the right ingredients to create something. So in part, my journey of the ingredients are our eggplants, our tomatoes, we have basil, but how to put them together and the process, is an act of love, okay? Labor and love is that you can spend the entire day,

Starting point is 01:46:01 when I'm graduating, but the entire morning for sure, to do it properly. Yeah, as the Japanese cuisine too, there's a mastery to the simplicity with the sushi. I don't know if you've seen georgeans of sushi, but there's a mastery to that that's propagated through the generations. It's fascinating. You know, people love it when I ask about books. I don't know if books, whether fiction, nonfiction, technical or completely non-technical had an impact in your life throughout, if there's anything you would recommend, or

Starting point is 01:46:32 even just mention as something they gave you an insight or moved you in some way. So, okay. So I don't know if I can recommend because in some sense you almost had to be Italian or to be such a scholar, but being Italian, one thing that really impressed me tremendously is the divine comedy. It is a medieval poem, a very long poem divided in three parts, hell, purgatory, empiadais, okay. And the vet is the non-trivial story of a middleman, man, gets into a crisis, personal crisis. And then, out of this crisis, purifies, makes a catastrophe, purifies himself more and more and more until it's become capable of actually meeting God. And this is actually a complex story. So yet to get some very sophisticated language,

Starting point is 01:47:35 maybe Latin alphabet point that we were talking about, 12 hundreds of Italy, right, and Florence. And this guy, instead, he chose his own dialect, not spoken outside his own immediate circle, right? And Florence and Dalette. And actually, he done to really made Italian. Well, and so I said, how can you express such a sophisticated things and so this? And then the point is that these words that nobody actually knew because I were essentially dialect and plus a bunch of very intricate rhymes in which I went to rhyme for things and turns out a bit by getting meaning from the things that you rhyme, you essentially

Starting point is 01:48:21 guess what the word means and you invent Italian and you communicate by almost as much as what you want. It's a miracle communication. In a dialect, a very poor language, very unsophisticated to express very sophisticated situation. I love it. People who love it and Italians and not Italian,

Starting point is 01:48:43 but what I got of it is that very often limitations are our strength. Because if you limit yourself at a very poor language, somehow you get out of it and you achieve even better form of communication with using a hypersophisticated literary language with lots of resonance from the prior books so that you can actually stentaneously quote, he couldn't quote anything because nothing was written in the title before him. So I really felt that limitations are our strength and I think that rather than complaining about limitations we should embrace them because if you embrace our limitation, limited as we are, we find a very creative solution so that people with less

Starting point is 01:49:31 limitation, we have, we would not even think about it. Oh, the limitation is a kind of super power. If you choose to see it that way. Is there, since you speak both languages, is there something that's lost in translation to you? Is there something that's lost in translation to you? Is there something you can express in Italian that you can't in English and vice versa maybe? Is there something you could say to the musicality of the language? I mean, I've been data-leafy times and I'm not sure if it's the actual words, but the people are certainly very...

Starting point is 01:50:08 but the people are certainly very... there's body language too, there's just the whole being is wrong. So I don't know if you miss some of that when you're speaking English in this country. Yes, in fact, actually, I, I, I miss it and somehow it was a sacrifice that I made consciously by the time I knew that this I was not going to express myself at a better level. And it was actual sacrifice because given to you also your mother tongue is Russian, so you know that you can be very expressive in your mother tongue and not very expressive in Newtang, in your language. And then what people think of you in the New language, because when the precise of expression of things, it generates, you know, it shows, you know, elegance, or it shows, you know, knowledge, or it shows as a census, or it shows as a caste, or education, whatever it is.

Starting point is 01:51:06 So all of a sudden I found myself on the bottom. So I had to fight all my way up back up. But I'm a thing. I go fast. The passing, right? The very limitations are actually our strength. In fact, it's a trick to limit yourself to exceed, right? And you know, there are examples in history if you think about an or Hernán Cortés, right? He goes to in Ved Mexico.

Starting point is 01:51:32 He has what? A few hundred people with him. And he has a hundred thousand people in arms on the other side. First thing he does, he limits himself. He sinks his own ship. There is no return. Okay.

Starting point is 01:51:47 And I'm very fond of the actual manager. That's really profound. I actually, first of all, this is inspiring to me. I feel like I have quite a few limitations, but more practically on the Russian side, I'm going to try to do a couple of really big and really tough interviews in Russian. Once COVID lifts a little bit, I'm traveling to Russia, and I'll keep your

Starting point is 01:52:13 advice in mind that the limitations is a kind of superpower. We should use it to our advantage, because you do feel less like you're not able to convey your wisdom in the Russian language because I moved here on as 13, so you don't, you know, the parts of life you live under certain language are the parts of life you're able to communicate, you know, I became, I became a thoughtful, deeply thoughtful human in English. But the pain from World War II, the music of the people that wasn't still with me in Russian. So I can carry both of those,

Starting point is 01:52:56 and there's limitations in both. I can't say philosophically profound stuff in Russian, but I can't in English express like that melancholy feeling of like the people. So combining those two I'll somehow. I'm beautifully said. That's for sure. That's great. Yes. I totally understand you. Yes. You've accomplished some incredible things in this space of science, in a space of technology, a space of theory and engineering. Do you have advice for somebody young, an undergraduate student, somebody in high school,

Starting point is 01:53:32 or anyone who just feels young about life or about career, about making their way in this world? So, I was telling me before that I believe in emotion and in my thing is to be true to your own emotion and that I think that if you do that you're doing well because there's a life well spent and you are going never tired because you want to solve all these emotional knots or whatever overest intrigued you from the beginning and I really believe

Starting point is 01:54:05 that to live meaningfully, creatively and yet to live your emotional life. So I really believe that whether you're a scientist or an artist even more, but a scientist, I think of a mass artist as well. If you are a human being, so you are really to leave fully your emotions and to extend the possible, sometimes emotions can be overbearing and my devices try to express them with more and more confidence. Sometimes it's hard, but you are going to be much more fulfilled than by suppressing them. What about love? One of the big ones. What role does that play? Yeah, it's a bigger part of emotions, it's a scary thing, right? It's a lot of vulnerability.

Starting point is 01:54:54 It comes with love, but there is also so much energy and power and loving all senses and in the traditional sense but also in the sense of a broader sense for humanity with feeling less and all compassion that makes us one with other people and the suffering of other people. I mean all of this is a very scary stuff, but it's a really very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very Stop and down and the down seems to come always with up But the apple only comes with the down. So yeah, let me ask you about the ultimate down which is Unfortunately, we humans are mortal Or appear to be for the most part. Do you think about your immortality? Do you do fear death? I hope so. And because I mean, we've had death for a reason alive. So at least there is no meaningful life.

Starting point is 01:56:14 A death is actually in some sense our ultimate motivator to live a beautiful and meaningful life. I myself have failed as a young man, a vet, unless I got something that I wanted to do, and I don't know why I got the idea of something to say. If I'm not able to say, I would suicide. So, maybe it was a way to motivate myself, but you don't need to motivate it because in some sense, fortunately, death is there. So, you better get up and do your thing. And because that is the best motivation to live fully. What do you think? What do you hope your legacy is? You should imagine you have two kids? Yes.

Starting point is 01:57:06 I really feel that there is, on one side, is my biological legacy. And that is my two kids, right? And their kids, hopefully. And that is one fine. And the other thing is this common enterprise, which is society, and I really feel that my legacy would be better by providing security and privacy. Actually for me, I met a four-year-old

Starting point is 01:57:41 to say I want to give you the ability to interact more and take more risks and reach out more for more people as difficult and dangerous as amazing. But my all-accentive work is about to guarantee privacy and give you the security of interaction. And not only in a transaction, I like it would be a blockchain transaction, but that is really one of the hard core of my emotional problems and I think of it and all these other problems I want to tackle. Yes, freedom is at the core of this, it's dangerous, just it's like the emotion. There was something, yeah. But ultimately that's how we create

Starting point is 01:58:28 all the beautiful things around us. Do you think there's meaning to it all? This life, except the urgency that death provides and us anxious beings create cool stuff along the way. Is there a deeper meaning? And if it is, what is it? Well, meaning of life. Actually, we have three meanings of life. Great. That's great. One, two seek. Two, two seek, and three, two seek. To seek what? You know, I really...

Starting point is 01:58:59 Or is there no answer to that? I was not answered to that. I really think that the journey is more and more important than the destination whatever it would be. And I think that is a journey and is in my opinion at the end of a day, I must admit to meaningfully in itself. And we must admit to it, maybe whatever your destination might be, I'd be hanging, you know, we may never didn't get there, but I, where hell was a great ride. Well, I don't think there's a better way to end this, Silvio. Thank you for, thank you for wasting your extremely valuable time with me today, joining on this journey of seeking something together, we found nothing, but it was very fun. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for talking.

Starting point is 01:59:51 Thank you, and next was a really special for me to be interviewed by you. Thank you for listening to this conversation with Sylvia McColley, and thank you to our sponsors. I'll fly to Greens, Neatrition Drink, the Information, In-Depth Tech Journalism website, Forcigmatic Martial Coffee, and Better Help Online Therapy. Click the sponsor links to get a discount and to support this podcast. And now, let me leave you with some words

Starting point is 02:00:19 from Henry David Thoreau. Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time. you

Lex Fridman Podcast - #168 – Silvio Micali: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Algorand, Bitcoin, and Ethereum

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