The Blockchain Socialist

This episode is the start of a subseries where I've partnered with my comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association and their initiative called the Commons Economy Roadmap (CER) where we will be interviewing some of the projects listed as part of the CER. In this first interview we've spoken to Christopher Goes, co-founder of Anoma , a framework for an ecosystem of blockchain...

I´m once again speaking with Nathan Schneider about his newly released book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life .  In Governable Spaces , Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls “implicit feudalism”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences of this arrangement matter far beyond online s...

We spoke to Sara Horowitz ( @Sara_Horowitz ), founder of the Freelancers Union and author of the book Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the ground Up . Sara was also one of our co-conspirators in Zuzalu in Montenegro last year who brought her extensive experience and wisdom from building and supporting worker-focused organizations. We spoke about the practical realities of building mutuali...

My friend and researcher of the politics of tech platforms, Gianmarco Cristofari recently had an extended in my apartment and so we thought it'd be a great opportunity to interview each other. He interviewed me here for the Institute for Network Cultures to talk about my book and the left's relationship with crypto. We spoke about how platforms are markets within markets, his book The Po...

For this episode I spoke to James Brennan ( @jt_bren ) who has been finishing up his Masters at the University of Colorado focused on crypto. As part of his research he took a dep dive into the infamous group behind the Miladys NFT collection, Remilia Corp. During the discussion we spoke about esoteric political ideologies professed by Remilia and those associated with it, their financialized tact...

I spoke to Oisín Kyne , co-founder and CTO of Obol Network ,  an ecosystem for trust minimized Ethereum staking that enables people to create, test, run and coordinate distributed validators. Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) enables the duties of an Ethereum validator to be performed across a cluster of nodes in order to improve resilience as compared to running a validator on a single node....

I spoke to Kat (katalunia.eth) who is behind a project called ETH Evacuations which is taking donations to pay for families to get out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing. Kat is a product manager and startup builder, most recently Head of Product at Zora and travelled to Gaza in June 2023 to be a mentor in product management for the community at Gaza Sky Geeks . She is accepting ether and other to...

I spoke to Mustafa Al-Bassam , co-founder and CEO of Celestia , a modular blockchain network that makes for others to securely launch their own blockchain. Mustafa was also a member of the black hat hacking group LulzSec under the name T-Flow known for hacking the CIA website, newspapaers owned by Rupert Murdoch, and other corporate and state organizations in 2011. During the discussion we spoke a...

If you've been surfing the tech sphere lately, you may have come across the term e/acc or effective accelerationism as if it was something new. But like most of these tech elite driven ideologies, it's largely a mutation of more naive and sometimes sinister trends. For this episode I spoke to Adam Jones, host of Acid Horizon and Zer0 Books and Repeater Media and author of Anti-Oculus . A...

The audiobook for my book Blockchain Radicals is officially out! This is a sample you can listen to if you want to know if it seems like something you'd want to pick up. You can find your audiobook copy in all of the major audiobook platforms including Audible,  Libro.fm and audiobooks,com . You can still find all the other places to find the physical book online here . Support the show ICYMI...

Tokens have increasingly more popular beyond just in the crypto world * gang gang mmm ice cream so good *. Tokens are not new, but how they have been  used and their proliferation have exploded with the rise of digital platforms. I spoke to Rachel O'Dwyer ,  writer and a lecturer in Digital Cultures in the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and author of Tokens: The Future of Money...

You can find the video version of the interview here where I've cut the interview with some film I took while at TDF. In this episode I spoke to Sam Delesque ( @samueldelesque ), founder of Traditional Dream Factory (TDF), a regenerative village based in Abela, Portugal that is blending crypto with permaculture and community. TDF is the first village part of OASA , a Swiss non-profit to help...

In this episode of OTNS, we spoke to Ali Breland , a journalist at Mother Jones who has written on crypto and politics, about his recent publication about the links between Praxis and far right figures . We spoke about his experience of going to a Praxis sponsored party in NYC, his interviews with ex-employees about the fascist sympathies of the founder Dryden Brown, and how they try to seduce &qu...

In this episode I spoke to Afra Wang , a Chinese diaspora journalist who has been in crypto now for a year and a half with Mask Network and organizer of the ZuConnect Decentralized Social Day in Istanbul where I moderated a panel on technology addiction in crypto. Given that usually crypto is often seen through and talked about from a western lens, Afra was a great guest to help bring a Chinese di...

In this episode I spoke with Trent Van Epps , who is part of the Ethereum Foundation and a key member of Protocol Guild (PG). PG is a collective of 152 Ethereum core protocol contributors who are curated to receive public good funding from ecosystem sponsors. In turn, this is meant to balance incentives for contributors to work on the Ethereum protocol and prevent high contributor turnover. During...

In this episode I spoke to my friend and scholar Tara Merk who is part of BlockchainGov and has been focusing her PhD thesis on Exit to Community (E2C). E2C is proposed as an alternative to IPOs or buyouts for founders of businesses to be able to be compensated for their work while giving ownership of their business to those that work on or use their product. During the discussion we talked about...

In this episode I spoke to Geert Lovink , a Dutch media theorist and founder of the Institute of Network Cultures who has been engaged with internet culture since at least the 80s. We were recently together in Cyprus for the latest installment of MoneyLab ,  which he also co-founded. Talking with him was a great way to gain more understanding and context of venture capital's control of the in...

In this episode I spoke with Brett Scott, an independent scholar, writer, and defender of physical cash from a left point of view. Brett was involved in the early Bitcioin communities and one of the first guests of the podcast back in 2020 so it was nice to be able to talk to him again after so many years and since his latest book Cloudmoney was published. During the interview we discussed how the...

In this episode we spoke to Wassim Alsindi , founder of MIT's blockchain journal and the 0xSalon   research collective based in Trust in Berlin. During the discussion we spoke about the concepts explored in his pieces Prophet Motives & Knightwork States and Necroprimitivism Rising . Wassim makes interesting connections between, the Crusades, the zero-sum mentality of network states, and c...

During this last Crypto Commons Gathering I had the pleasure to meet Zachary Marlow from the Moneyless Society Podcast . We had the idea of recording a joint podcast with Zachary leading to talk about post-capitalism, crypto, and money. The discussion was also recorded in video format  which you can find  here on the Moneyless Society Podcast YouTube channel which I can recommend checking out! ---...

In this episode we spoke to Monty Merlin Bryant , a co-founder of ReFi DAO and environmentalist to discuss the movement behind ReFi or Regenerative Finance. ICYMI, ReFi DAO had previously started to declare itself a network state but has since learning more about coordi-nations, have shifted course towards our conceptual framework instead. We discuss what that process has been like and how ReFi DA...

In this episode we spoke to co-founder of DAO Stack now working on Common , Matan Field who joined us at Zuzalu. During the discussion we talk about the need for scaling collective action, using fractal organization, and moving beyond economically based interdependence. Check out a previous episode to learn more about our framework for out network state alternative,  coordi-nations. JOIN THE BLOCK...

In this episode I spoke with Scott Moore , the co-founder of Gitcoin and Public Works . Scott was one of the pioneers in public goods funding through quadratic funding and DAOs. During the discussion we talk about the "everything is coordination" meme, his advice for starting a DAO, and open source development. We also talk about our differences in views on the role of venture capital in...

I spoke to Nick Srnicek, author of 'Platform Capitalism', 'Inventing the Future' and the ' MANIFESTO FOR AN ACCELERATIONIST POLITICS '. Together we dissect the roots of accelerationist politics of which Nick is known for his work on left accelerationism, its controversial implications, and its ongoing interpretation. We discuss why he doesn't like the term accele...

In this episode we had the pleasure of speaking to Lawrence Lessig, the legal scholar known for coining the term "code is law" which if you've been in crypto, you'll know that this phrase has been very influential on the space. During the discussion we talk about the original design of the internet, how it has opened up a Pandora's box of overlapping sovereignties, and  th...