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buidl & chill: web3 hackathon vibes 😎
Recorded: May 18, 2023 Duration: 0:31:51Space Recording
Full Transcription
is also pre-recorded so uh we could play it back and uh if you're listening to this in the future
uh thanks for tuning in but um we're gonna take a moment uh do a couple quick intros uh
i'm annalisa and i am with biddlebox i do a little bit of a lot of stuff uh and uh gloria and um
well or actually no our special guest luciano why don't you give us a quick intro
where you from what you do all right sounds good thank you so much i really appreciate
the opportunity to be here i'm originally from upstate new york from binghamton currently
downstate uh right outside the city um i just uh had recently uh had the opportunity to go to
eat denver and we won uh with our with our project fund pg a uh a way for people who have yeah who
have decentralized yield strategies or defy strategies uh specifically to be able to
allocate a percentage of their yield to funding public goods and we have a few uh other fun things
in store awesome awesome and uh gloria hey hey it's gloria um so yep i am with fiddlebox is super
modular i'm here all the time to advocate for the developers and all the people out there
i'm running all the events like shelling point and your in-person hackathons and i've been a hackathon
you know judge mentor participant organizer hackathons on my jam so i love discussing them
love it and rachel and slash super modular hey y'all uh my name is rachel i do people ops
for super modular so i support the fiddlebox team in all things uh people related um but yeah i
love what fiddlebox is doing and i'm excited to do my first hackathon um here coming up we will be
doing a team hackathon at some point so um yeah uh excited to uh yeah here kind of the biddler journey
uh doing uh doing a hackathon but yeah back to you annie thank you thank you uh before we get into
some questions which i'll be uh passing the mic to gloria to um for that um just a couple
quick announcements for those uh i mean i sent this out on the weekly email last night but um
a couple hackathons that just wrapped up we had the region rangers hackathon uh with uh gitcoin's
open data team that just ended on monday and i believe uh they're in the judging process now so
winners will be announced very soon uh super exciting um shoot what else scaling x they oh my
gosh sorry there's a fire alarm please anyways let me go ahead in the bathroom scaling x just wrapped
up their hackathon last week and uh they had demo day last night and i believe that uh stream is
available um that stream link is available uh on twitter and on their youtube if y'all want to watch
it back uh it was a zk themed hackathon other hackathons that are happening um that are going to be coming
up uh we recently launched our or announced our partnership with horizon labs and their hackathon this
is the inside scoop will be live next week we'll be having them on a special twitter spaces ama also
for next thursday and then each shanghai which is going to be a hybrid in-person and virtual hackathon
will be happening in june more info on that to come that was breathful sorry about the alarm you guys
no problem happens too often awesome so uh before i dish it off um to gloria for more questions uh luciana
uh why don't you give us a uh overview of your project funding or fund public goods and also it's
really awesome to have you here uh because you are uh get coin homie too and uh for those of you don't
know uh the middle box team came from get coin so we're all get coin homies yeah let's hear about
um thank you so much yeah funpg actually came out of get coin uh and anyway as well so um while i was
doing uh public goods partnerships uh and raising uh funding for the matching pool top down uh i realized
that it's very hard to rely on past donors or past grantees to donate to to the round and consistently
donate over time um the product that just doesn't currently scale uh top down funding so we need to
find more ways to fund the matching pool bottom up and if we can fund the matching pool both top down
and bottom up then we have a more consistent way uh that will actually scale um then we can consistently
fund public goods over time so uh i started on this little journey to to find more ways to to fund
public goods um and first and foremost uh it seemed that people um already who are already allocating
capital towards uh towards crypto and decentralized finance in general uh do have some extra capital do
have the privilege to fund public goods um so have been creating more products to give them the
opportunities to fund public goods and at eath denver specifically collaboration with creatures
world where if individuals bought the shirt um 100 of the proceeds from the shirt go to funding
public goods and that that proof of concept went off and way better than i ever could have expected
um and uh it seemed that people were really uh responsive uh to the fact that they could own
a piece of merch that represents creatures world and get coin and shows the world that they funded
public goods so hopefully can keep driving uh driving funding for the uh for the bitcoin matching pool
uh through uh some of these merch sales and some of the more products that we're working on
that is awesome and also i can uh absolutely the the shirt designs were sick yes thank you so much
really appreciate that shout out to danny cole
hell yeah all right um now glory i'll go ahead and dish it off to you and uh just in case if i
have another fire alarm this happens it sounds like they're testing something in my apartment
yeah thanks annalisa uh luciana i just want to really kind of go through like the whole process
of uh going through the hackathon and you know choosing your project even deciding to participate in the
hackathon and then uh probably start to go through a little bit more funding pg fun pg um so my first
question was like a did you go to east denver with a thought in mind that you're going to participate
in the hackathon and like was this your first hackathon and maybe we could start there
absolutely great question so my first east denver uh the year before was absolutely incredible and
i mean it was one of the best experiences one of the best crypto experiences denver is just such a
great environment and a great atmosphere for for new entrants and for for like new builders um so i i
was in the space since about 2017 i founded the cryptocurrency club at the university at albany um
rallied a bunch of students around like what blockchain is what bitcoin is what ethereum is how we can use it
um etc just because like we we saw this awesome technology and we're like okay how can we like
participate in this in this realm so when i uh i got to denver you know i i had yet to really be like a
be a hacker and i saw everyone around me was just like going so hard like building and like uh diving
deep into the weeds so it really inspired me to to do the same so i had a plan to definitely go back to
east denver and to definitely do the hackathon um about three months prior to denver maybe two months
was the public attack on here in new york city and that was the very first hackathon that i actually
had participated in ever um and i had the idea not not the not the product we built for east denver
but i had an idea like i was already starting to formulate this idea for front pg and kind of like
the need to fund public goods bottom up so uh after going to uh after going to the public attack
we actually i was on two teams i won with a different team uh called bibliotech we won second
place and then i also pitched my other fun pg product but or idea but it was just too early to
like win the hackathon so then brought it to east denver um i asked my a front end developer and a
back end developer who i'm really close with if they would help me on the project um and they did and
and they are definitely the reason uh that we won uh i'm just the lead idea guy they're the real talent
um and dylan's actually here in the audience he's the front end dev and uh does an absolutely amazing
job and can't thank them enough for for all their help yeah that's i think one of the beauties of
hackathons is like you don't always have to be the front end person or the back end person sometimes you
are the business person or the idea person or just understand in depth the problem and people can kind of
build once they have an understanding of the problem and you kind of find alike people and
you build upon that so like kudos to your team there um okay so then i guess the questions would be like
for your team was had they hacked on you know the stack before or like was a great question so i i actually
have uh a knack for uh getting devs who are a little bit more web2 focused interested in crypto
um and kind of like sliding them down the rabbit hole so i like to do that with with public goods
specifically because it helps show people like what kind of infrastructure they can build that people
actually want to use rather than just like you know shilling meme coins or making meme coins trying
to find exit liquidity like that whole like degenerate route so i like to onboard people to
crypto in the most regenerate uh way possible uh especially since the average person you know is
on board in a very degenerate way so uh they were they weren't as familiar um with like with
blockchain infrastructure etc but have been getting familiar and then i feel like uh at that at that
at that point at east denver um you know they've become much more proficient and are now definitely
crypto native devs awesome so were you guys were they were you all able to use any like tools to
get started really quickly did you use like a scaffold or any type of like boilerplate that was helpful
for y'all or like what was the key for you all to get started so quickly especially someone who's not
crypto native so my for my front-end developer he's just incredibly savvy um and can pick up anything
very quickly i'm back in dev dev very similar but my back-end developer actually had some experience
with uh solidity already and uh and just building out uh building out infrastructure um on on ethereum
so not like nothing too crazy but he had uh a gig with genesis um so he was building out um he was
building out a decentralized exchange for a company uh who who like um they put up a grant for it and
they had given the grant to him um so he just had some experience already building out some uh some
infrastructure in the space okay and and my next question is now when you're trying to build something
that was aligning with public goods how did you like did how the the thing i struggle with sometimes is
like defining public goods and like why we need to fund them with people who don't quite understand it
the first part so how do you explain that in like public in public or fund pg like the importance of
funding public goods and uh what is a public good great question yeah i i mean this is the only reason
i have a good answer for this question is because of my time at gitcoin so all all thanks to gitcoin for
this one um so when when i was working at gitcoin going through the process of like uh of like kind of
learning what public goods are what has been funded in the past what people want to fund in the future
um was really important and i ultimately what i've kind of decided is like um you have the gitcoin
criteria of like no private funding um and no like uh no clear no clear business model at least for the
infrastructure and i like i like those things a lot and then the only thing i'd add is um what the
community wants to fund so at the end of the day if the community decides that they want to they
want to fund something whether it's a playground or or no matter what it is whether it's technical
infrastructure whether it's physical uh infrastructure uh in real life doesn't matter
but if the community wants to fund it then technically it is a public good um i think it
is important to add the criteria that there is no clear business model or way to fund it um because
if there is a way to already fund it then it doesn't really make sense to use public goods funding
so for me public goods funding makes the most sense when something does not have uh access to
capital or ease uh easy access to capital um so especially when it comes to so i did a lot of uh
like i said public goods partnerships laws at gitcoin but i i did some um onboarding
onboarding and some grantee reviews for dei round and worked a lot with the dei round um and think it's
really important to focus on like specific issues like that specific initiatives where uh where like
the funding for these ideas and for these uh for these initiatives is not is not accessible for the
average person so like we need to uh create pools of funding uh for people to be uh to be able to
access so for public goods funding for me um the most important thing is for individuals who do not
access capital uh we are that access for capital for them okay awesome thank you all right let's go
back to like the hackathon time and when you were building i would love to understand like pain points
that you had during that time so were you building like just straight through was it easy from the
moment you got started to the moment of submission or like what were the pain points that you had
encountered and how did you mentally get to the point of like having a game plan on what you were
going to build great great questions so uh i think the hardest part actually was like finishing the
implementation so like i even had to like uh i had to dev up so like i've i've done a lot of project
management um over the past like two years here in crypto so like have been dev adjacent for a while
um so i have like some acumen but definitely had to learn up for eath denver and definitely had to
had to do my share so like the funny thing about about building is everyone eventually has to do
everyone's role at some point especially in those like small environments uh small startup environments
um you have to play every role so that's the most fun part um but also the main pain that uh most painful
so um but other than that i'd say uh the deadlines like just making sure that that you meet everyone
you network and you meet all your deadlines um is really hard there's just so much to do at these
conferences outside of like building um like socially and professionally etc that like it's hard to do
everything but it's just it's just something you have to do you got to buckle down you got to put all
your time and attention to meeting people creating relationships and building product
okay i'm still gonna go back to the eath denver time too and was there a specific challenge that you
were applying to that when you had won um your prize and then the other question was like as much as you
can say do you know what your tech stack looks like at that time yeah both so actually no for both
questions just had the idea um and the reason we didn't know the tech stack was because we didn't
know exactly how so we were deciding whether we wanted to do like a pull together product or we wanted
to like uh we wanted to add yield strategies that people were already using so like more individually
add like the alchemic strategy or you know things that like already were getting lots of volume
um so we eventually decided uh on the ladder and and uh and going um and going the route of
like individual uh strategies so we had no idea what our tech stack was going into uh into the
hackathon we had to decide within the first two days uh what we were going to build exactly more
precisely um how exactly we were going to fund public goods and how exactly we were going to fund the
gitcoin matching pool and like what product people actually wanted to use so like like i said i just
kind of knew what i wanted to build for and build towards um and what track we were going to build for
um and then uh dylan and joseph um really helped me hone the idea and and hone like uh which piece
of infrastructure we should we should sort of use um whether we want to use pool together or whether
we want to like build stuff from scratch and we ended up building a lot from scratch um but funny
enough we did get uh pool together did reach out to us after the hackathon and they do want us to build
on their v5 which is launching in a few months so we do have something cool planned for them for that as well
so that is awesome that is great um again for me from the hackathon participant then uh
oh this is oh one of the people wants to know if you have a non-technical background or what your
background actually is luciana yes 100 my background is non-technical my back i was born in the trunk as
they say so both my parents are are theater people and do a lot of the local do a lot of the local
theater upstate new york and binghamton so um i've been in more shows than i've been in hackathons
from a very young age so i was an entertainer first and foremost uh at the age of about two years old
um actually no that's not no wonder no wonder no wonder yeah i was i was uh my first show actually i
was um uh like lit quite literally a week after i was born so um my expertise really is in in showmanship
and like just understanding audiences and and people um and like how to really be able to create
relationships in a way that we can actually align incentives and actually get shit done rather than
rather than quote-unquote networking
i so i have a theater background as well as well as a technical one but i think having a tie to uh
both of it because it's a strong suit if you can build the technology but it's also great when you
have someone who can present the technology in a way that makes sense to people who are non-technical
as well so that they can understand so i could well you know it's the only thing that's been
holding me back for becoming like super technical no go the the the people around me are so freaking
good at what they do that it's hard sometimes for me to be like okay i should like refocus on what
they're already so good at but every day i do learn a little bit more so it's i'm like always in this
like i've been in this weird limbo for the past two years or so where like i i'm always thinking
i should put more time and focus towards like becoming more technical and learning more than
i'm like well i i trust these amazing people around me and they're so awesome at what they do but i
still need to learn like uh so it's it's eventually going to come i just have to i just have to keep
putting the time and the focus that's really all it is is just time so like it's the difference
between someone who is like um you know super technical and someone who's not it's just really
the the time that they spent on learning the craft of that one thing you know so there's times where
it almost oddly enough it's almost the same the thing as approaching a monologue of like how do you
break down a monologue so that you can audition with a monologue is the same as how do you break
down building up technical components so you can build something in it's knowing something well
enough to be able to break it down see things piece by piece and understand how you can put them back
together or inner swap the pieces or knowing where to look and a lot of the things with um people who
are you know super technical along as having the the technical background of how to do it um
is really they know where to look and who to reach out to if they have questions and understanding the
components of it so and just time you know and in general that they've spent with a technology itself
so i always try to say like it's not that they're like super human or anything like that they just spend
a lot of time in something they love and they're excited about that and if anyone has passion for
something that's great um yeah so i i try to tell people like sooner or later um we all become
somewhat technical based on like how close in proximity we are to that technology so kudos to you
all uh for that as well so uh i'd like to say that i i became technical through osmosis so uh time and just
being around very inspiring technical folks is uh is the key a hundred percent a hundred percent
yep uh and um some type of imagination and play has to come into to to play as well like the desire to
know more is good um okay cool i i wanted to know a little bit more about when you won like when you
did finally win um when you were going into east denver a did you think like okay if we're gonna
win i'm gonna create this product and let it go eventually or did you think like this would be
great in the space but i have like an actual nine to five oh yeah i was like i was like dylan joseph
if we win this like we are building we are building product and like we are sending uh fun pg like to the
moon like we are funding as many public goods as possible we're scaling this product like i was i was
going crazy with them so like when we won they they were going they were like oh god like this is
gonna take up more time than i thought it was going to like this isn't just gonna be like a hackathon
prize uh winning so after after we won uh i mean i was absolutely elated i i was jumping in and and
screaming for joy um uh like on the floor i remember this yeah so i was really really excited and then
right after the like the first question joseph said to me on back end dev he was like all right
how much time am i gonna have to allocate to this project uh so i uh i convinced them to
they like they're here and have enough time and energy to be able to fund public goods alongside
were there anything that was like um surprising to you from that transition of like okay here's my
hackathon project and now i'm like okay now i actually have to carry this as a prod a project
or a product that's in the real world it's what i wanted it's like what i was aiming for and was the
goal so like that was the that's like that was the great part and but like to your point i was like oh
shit now i actually you know now we're actually here we actually have to do it we actually have to
like build this product so i was really thankful when pulled together actually reached out to us because
we were already thinking about how we need to scale the product like we were planning on adding
more individual strategies like every week every month um and just attracting more volume and a um
like uh through that way but um we've since kind of like reconfigured and we all came together and
we're like look all right we've we built this product we've won there's some demand for it we need
to really think about like what this product looks like in three to six months um and we and that product
needs to live uh live for as long as possible in a way that can like truly consistently scale
public goods funding so like we really took like a step back and we were like okay this is like what
we were aiming to do this is what we won with what does the final product actually look like that
actually uh like solves the problem we're looking to solve right so it it took a lot of time uh after
the hackathon to like really like hone in on like what we need to build um and how we're going to build
it too and and we're still kind of working out a few of those kinks um with the pool together team
and with uh with a few others so we're still not at we're still not where we're still not sure of the
exact final product but we're very very close i'd say we're we're like 85 percent sure of what our
final product is going to look like so far that and and we and we were close to zero percent like at
the end of the hackathon so that is awesome yeah it's it's interesting to see like you know for a
hackathon you have three days so it's like okay i want to build this thing in three days and that's
like your side of vision and then to sit there and say like well what does six months look like
it's totally different uh and so that would be great so i guess in that challenge for me i'm gonna
say what would you like to see in like two years then like where where would you hope that the
product would be in two years love it so this this is this is the special part so since in v5 of pool
together it would allow individual donors to delegate where their where their yield their prize yield
is going so what we want to do is we wanted to create a sort of pool together pool where 100 of
the proceeds of the of the pool go to public goods uh in perpetuity so people can do is they can sort
of use this pool as like uh as a savings account and as it keeps accumulating capital it will just
keep earning more and more yield for public goods over time um and since it's a no loss donation pool
nobody will ever be at risk of losing their original funds so we want to create more ways for individuals
who have extra capital who have the privilege to fund public goods to be able to just park their capital
um a one i or one like phrase we had for it was like uh like park to impact uh like park your
