GM GM, yes, I can hear you loud and clear
Amazing hopefully that stays the same throughout the call last week was just a bit of a pain in the butt
Yeah, yeah biggest cross brother
Yeah, let's give it a few minutes here and then we can get started I know I shared this with the usual suspects
Yesterday and actually out through the week, but I'm not quite sure
How many of you are gonna be able to come in and participate?
But we'll give them a few minutes
In the meantime, how are you doing?
I'm just getting myself set up as well brother just came back from Spain and
Yeah, the weather was amazing and
Yeah, I'm just getting settling in how are you
Things are good man, I can't complain, you know, it's been it's busy but
That's that's good. That's not a bad thing
I'm actually really interested in today's topic just generally I think I feel like the
Conversation has been a bit more
Focused and I guess insightful where we can draw some
interesting not just alpha, but we can actually like
Hopefully from the conversation we have and the people that we've had up here before
Not just again through conversation, but also in terms of like the products that we're all building. What do you think?
Yeah, totally and I think last week's
Conversation was very insightful in terms of
One hour wasn't enough to like cover all the topics
so I'm glad that like, you know, you've got another a call which kind of like
Like, you know connects to where it's the previous call and I'm sure we'll
I'm sure we'll find other ways and other things personally
Discussing things in abstract
Perspective is very important because you know, we end up like covering areas which normally we wouldn't have covered
DIDs last week and talking about
How important they are in this current scenario or the current
Ecosystem which has been formed. I think like having a
Having this topic of being the risk-reward of digital reputation
Fits in perfectly. So yeah, it's looking forward to
Seeing where this conversation goes
I'm unmuting the wrong machines. My goodness. Okay, I'm gonna try to ignore my I'm mobile
Honestly, I wish I could just log in from different accounts on the same device and then have the conversation
but I'm guessing there's some
Reason why that doesn't work. Anyways, actually, you know what if I'm wishing for anything
I wish that I could actually host from my desktop
So I could then put on my headphones walk with my mobile because I enjoy taking calls while walking
I don't know about you, but my mind works better when I'm moving
and I hate having to sit down because my
Secondary device on which I can log in for my my personal account, which I'm talking from today
Is a desktop or a laptop now look kind of goofy walking around the neighborhood with a laptop in my hand
so yeah, if I'm wishing for anything is that I can host from the desktop and
Yeah, I see I don't care in the audience. Good to see you man. So pull up should we get started or no?
It is a hard one I have like been known to like carry on carry carry my laptop and like
Move up and down. The thing is
You know, I was looking into it like, you know, if Twitter was to incorporate all these different accounts
We're talking a lot of bandwidth you being used from one IP and I think that might like if someone decided to get 10 accounts
Connected on on onto the same account and then if they're on spaces, we're talking a lot of data going up and down
So maybe that's probably the reasons why we can't do this. But yeah, I will all good to go, bro. Let's go
Last week, like you said the conversation was actually really interesting in that I feel like the two people we had on
If that if it was a debate at all
Really good. Like everybody had good opinions. So I just generally want to have a conversation about like reputation today
but really with a focus on like
Good and bad or risk and reward as as the the topic is framed here and to start
Would be really interested to hear and anybody in the audience who wants to come up
This isn't just me and Polaris. So please come up raise your hand
We'll bring you up, but please make sure that you're sharing something insightful and not just showing some random stuff here. But
What reputation products exist today?
It could be web 2 or web 3
That are useful to people
Credit scores, I think at least for anybody here in the States and I think that's how it works in most of the Western world
there are credit scores that allow you to
Unlock money based on your good financial habits
Yeah in generally that's how it works
I mean, I'm I don't really sometimes I don't really agree with the way the algorithm works
And the fact that if you clear all your credit cards up
then technically your credit score drops and if you're constantly using credit and like, you know
then you've got a good credit score, but then that's the only way for the algorithm to to be able to
To identify if you're financially sound or not. There is an aspect of ambiguity in there
You know, but again unless you come from a business background and you can scrutinize the contracts and the way they do things
Generally, yes, I would say yes
Yeah, I mean it's not perfect right I think from
The conversations I've had in general with people about credit scores
One of the arguments against credit scores is that they're not very transparent. So you don't know how your credit is
Or your credit score is put together, right? You don't know easily
Need to do to improve your credit
Not transparently, I'm not saying that it's impossible
It's possible because you can basically pull up your report history or your report. Excuse me that pulls up your credit history
And then you can see the things that are dinging your credit and then you can improve that
The problem though is if you do that too often
you get dinged on your credit score, so
You know, you have to be pretty strategic about like when you choose to
pull your credits history and
How often you do that even if you're doing so to be financially responsible
obscurity and also getting
I guess what I would imagine would what could be defined as trying to be financially responsible by
Reading your credit history regularly any thoughts on that just generally the obscurity of it
Maybe or maybe the other one is more interesting to you
the amount of information available
For people to be able to utilize the maximum
Financial instruments, I think there's an aspect of
Obscurity there is an aspect of like information not being handled correctly
As I just mentioned that if you like technically in order for someone to be financially sound
If they clear all their debts and that should be a good thing. But according to the algorithm, it's not a good thing
And I and I always have that an issue with that that like, you know, there is an aspect which is not perfect
Sometimes people get scrutinized for that. Sometimes people get scrutinized for checking their credit report for two too too many times and
Taking out credit too much not taking out too much credit and these
Terms and procedures they like
From every single credit scoring provider, for example experience might have a different
Transunion might have a different algorithm and for the normal retail user for to be on top of all of this
It can be very hard, you know and myself. I found it very hard when I was a man 18 and like, you know
getting into the ladder of credit scoring
And stuff and I ended up getting like a lot of credit for no reason and
You know, I ended up blowing it away as well
So yes, I think that the the algorithm I'm not a very big fan of it. I
Mean look you're not alone. I think most people in their early years unless you have
Training either by your parents or your school on what is credit which I think for the most part
Neither is true. I don't think I mean I can speak for myself and a lot of people in my community
Our parents didn't raise us talking about finances
Let alone credit cards and credit scores
So you don't know what any of that how any of that works and the value of it
Schools at least here in the States
And I've it's been a while since I've been you know in high school
So maybe things have changed and that would be great if they have but for a month from what I know
That financial literacy is not at the forefront of education. So a
Lot of folks I think are gonna get in trouble
Early, especially if you go to college
You know you're you're talking about
Taking out loans to cover your education
Paying for you know your food and maybe some some other stuff school related putting it all on credit cards
Not to mention maybe other entertainment expenditures. That's gonna going to be a
Fact of life, I think unless you are being very
Because diligent about the way they use your credit, so I guess that's kind of what I'm trying to say is like there's a lot of
Shortcomings in terms of like your ability to like manage your credit now
Don't want to get too deep into that because I do want to surface this back up to digital reputation
some forms of digital reputation
That you know, we could we can see today and I'll go first again
I think historically like airline mileage
Credit card points all of these things are a form of digital reputation
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so are the
Passports and all of them. I think they fall under that digital reputation category, but then when you further categorize them
You know things get trickier, but yeah generally speaking I think you're right. Yeah, I
Mean that's good. Okay. Good. Um
What are your thoughts about those
Reputation systems like I guess the first thing that we can draw a parallel is that you're
Maybe your credit card points
Have a level of transparency in terms of how you can earn them because I think for the most part
It's written there when you're earning points that maybe it's a lot of times. It's like dollar for dollar
Sometimes it's when you use
But airline points, how transparent are they and do they need to be transparent?
I think this is very interesting because me personally
Organizations business providers
Whether it be airlines or whether it be like, you know anything they have literally like, you know
Exploited the their their users their customers, and they've exploited their information their data
You know, so this is this is how I feel like, you know that
The loyalty aspect has been more exploitative and I'll give you an example
So if like in the UK, I've got a bank account
And if I don't do it if I don't change my bank account
Like, you know, there would be other bank accounts which might bribe me
To like, you know change my bank account and switch over to them and they might pay me 200 pounds for that
But then if I don't change it
My bank wouldn't pay me 200 pounds to be a loyal customer for them for the last 15 years
It seems like you know, and I noticed that in Covid as well like
All these organizations started utilizing
The restrictions and laws to facilitate their business and create maximum profitability in there
And the fact that also another example is Amazon
And Amazon's customer service, you know, there's reviews about profit
About products and then they say do you find that helpful and it's just some poor old person you who use that and
You know, he's doing that for free just to help someone else
Despite the fact that there are loyalty programs in place and despite the fact that the
Organization is trying to create this image that
If you carry on using them
But I think there's an aspect of no non transparency transparency and
It doesn't really empower the customer that much
So I'm not very happy, you know, I used to be like nectar points. I collected them there
They started this nectar points thing
Where you collect all your points and then what you do is you put them in this savings account within the nectar points
and then you collect interest the interest was about 15% and then I left the
All my next two points and I should and I transferred them on to that nectar savings account
And then I left it for about five five years ten years and then one day
I decided to check in a find out that they've stopped that whole nectar program about four or five years ago and
And I said what happened to all the points it was like they're they've been dismissed now
So I've had a lot of issues with these loyalty programs
They I think like like they're like disguised as loyalty builds. They're more after doing a business degree
I realize that it's not loyalty programs
They're just there to like extract valuable data and be able to pinpoint that valuable data to to the customer so that
Maximum profits can be achieved
So yeah, I mean when you ask me about it, I have got like a
Make you know, I'm not very happy with the way
Organizations have given back to the community or the society or the customers, you know
It's only when laws were placed only when they were forced to do so like the
The European Union for example forced them to like, you know, create some sort of a data protection act
Where user data is being protected. Otherwise, you know, it was just becoming a
the next layer of that would be that like, you know all your
Precious data which is connected with the loyalty programs
That precious data can very easily be compromised because it's not being catered for correctly
How that makes sense what I'm saying?
Yes, I'm trying to understand like
the interest and the needs of the consumer and
Loyalty or reputation rewards from you know brands companies
What is it that we need like what I guess let's explore this space a little bit and then we'll bring it more into
Web3 like what is it that?
You really need as a consumer
Where you would be willing to I guess jump through hoops to participate in these loyalty programs. Is it?
Spend $100 get a dollar back or that's called a 10% back. So that's $10 back
Is it purely a financial transaction or is it something else when it comes to loyalty?
It depends, you know, like for example
Different loyalty programs can trigger different types of human behavior
If you look at the common denominator of all of that, I think I
Think there is an aspect of like, you know getting something back
There is an aspect of incentivization whether it be financial or non-financial
That's to be discussed, but it's definitely something
Which makes you keep coming back
Incentivize repeated behaviors because I mean
It was I mean that three changes that right now like, you know the fact that community means a lot
That's a that's that's something
Which has been introduced by the web 3 aspect, but before that was just
They were just using the community aspect
For sure, really and the real truth and I even in web 3
I don't think that like, you know
We have truly immersed ourselves with the whole community aspect and how important the community is if you're creating a service for the community
How important is it for everyone to be on board?
Dows, how does dour system run? We had dows, but no one was voting on them
Because it's costing 15 16
Dollars per transaction just to create a vote. So
Yeah, I mean this is like a very this is something which is still developing and it has developed
but from that from the from the original web to web 2 to web 3
Things seems to be getting better and in the right direction
where empowerment towards the community is equally as important as the
Because if you if you think about it Humpty like if I'm if I've got a product to push right and if my
If all my perspective is to make as much maximum profit from that product as I can
How am I going to why on earth would I care about what that product might do to the community?
Whether it's harmful or not and all the other aspects which come with it
So there has to be a balance, you know, so governments kick in and stuff
But sometimes it's not too government's quick in too late
sometimes it's just you know, sometimes it takes like a
Wild for us to like realize what is important what's not and many other factors like and we see that happening
I'm gonna give my my two cents on this topic and I think this this could be controversial
Okay, raise your hand if you can hear me or do some emoji reaction cuz I don't know if I'm getting rugged again
You can hear me, okay cool
Think web 3 over uses community, too
So one of the things that totally frustrated me about the previous cycle, especially with the emergence of dowels
Is that everybody and their mother and their cousin and their dog would talk about community?
When in fact, it wasn't community it was just customers
right, I think that there needs to be more to build community and so I
Don't think that web 3 is necessarily
You know kind of should be excluded
From some of the bad behavior
From what two companies where they talk about community, but if there really isn't it's just you know
financially incentivized relationships
both ways, you know where like a company or a project is
Creating a product and they want customers to buy it and then there's a customer that's speculating on that product that it's going to cost
More down the line and so they're financially incentivized to buy and hold right? So that's not a community
So I just want to clarify that because I always had a bone to pick with that
I didn't really care for that terminology being overused
Reputation and loyalty and how we can improve that I don't even think that we need to look as far as like
web 3 I mean, I think that even web 2 can
Create the real rails for better loyalty mechanisms, but you know, I think it goes beyond
You know just a financial relationship. I actually agree in terms of like I think
Reputation or loyalty in this specific example
relationship between two parties
That is that that has some synergy
Have are aligned in terms of maybe some core values and beliefs
And wish the other to succeed and so a financial transaction is simply a way to kind of like vote
You know with our money as they say in terms of like I really like this company
I like what this they stand for. I'm going to buy this product and by using that product
That my values are in line with theirs and their success is my success and my success is their success
My definition of loyalty and it might just generally be the definition of loyalty
But I don't think that that's how most
companies and even in web 3
Think one of the examples that gets used a lot
When they talk about like brand loyalty is companies like Apple
Which it's a weird example because they are this behemoth of a company
Billions if not trillions of dollars worth and
They're looking but but the individuals who support this company whether they be
Purchasers of an iPhone or someone who purchases the Macbook or some other device or software
There is this alignment in
what that brand represents and
It was actually not marketing itself or the populace saying where the computer for everyone. In fact, some of the early advertising
Exactly how that wasn't the case
Microsoft was touting themselves as
Powering the computers for everyone
A lot of the Apple commercials in the 90s
Were talking about or maybe even the 80s about think different
so it was counterculture it was basically written for counterculture and
Then eventually when you look at like those commercials about like I'm a PC and I am a Mac
You could even see the differences in the way that they represent themselves in traditional business culture
There's these group of individuals who feel like they don't necessarily fit in
Traditional, you know work places, maybe they're hackers independent
You know contractors who are working on projects they love
Versus just punching in and punching out the clock to get paid to do something they don't care about
And so they will get a Mac
Even though Apple is much bigger than it was then
Kind of like signal or cultural element better said that
Continues to kind of spin this flywheel for the you know selling products
Repeatedly to the same customers
I mean, do you have any thoughts about that before I kind of continue because I can keep tying this into web3
But just generally in terms of like defining
Brand loyalty from that perspective
Against maybe the conversation we're having earlier against like maybe a airline loyalty where I could care less if United
My father has an advertising agency and
In the 1980s late 80s early 90s
He was using a Mac and posh and then the newspaper firms and the TV people
they were all using Apple computers and I was intrigued at that because
So I went to a grammar school and you know
They had like Windows their systems we didn't have like Apple systems there
So I was like lucky enough to experience both the systems, you know at home
I would be using the Macintosh and then at school
I'd be using the windows and I realized like the reliability aspect and the reason why my father uses it for designing and all of that stuff
Is because it was a completely different interface empty from the very beginning
so that loyalty which was developed was through the
Excellence of service like the product does not let you down and I remember like having a studio and
Doing a recording session once and we was using a Windows system. It was the top of the range Windows system
But then it crashed on us and corrupted all the audio files and was working on that audio file for the last 48 hours
And it wasn't worth it because it costs a huge amount of like
Capital to like arrange the musicians the mics everything and then the audio file got corrupted
so there's some wisdom in this, you know in terms of
That brand well loyalty got developed over the years because they did not mess around when it comes to like
You know the service which they were trying to provide and as a result it became the
The giant it is today because it just focused on like making sure that the product which they're selling is not messing around
So that's how they got their loyalty
So it just depends like, you know, how that loyalty is attuned
But then if you was to buy shares of Apple at that point
Then you would literally be a stakeholder as well
But if he was using the products you would be somewhat a stakeholder as well
so it creates a very interesting situation where
You are so in so much vested into the ecosystem of an of a company
That if they do good as in like they create a better product
You are automatically going to do good as well because you would be using that better product, you know
Yeah, sorry I was talking and forgot I was muted
So basically what I was saying is that like this idea of like brand loyalty
We can keep talking about it, you know
For a while, but I don't want to get stuck too far in that. I do want to tie this back into like web 3
What system is exist today you think based on what you've seen?
There are a lot of companies which are working on it give me two examples
And I'm sure there's more than that. There's about there's loads of them which are working on trying to tackle the identity issue
Well, we're not talking about identity though. I think identity is important
We're talking about reputation loyalty, right to measure
Your activity against some sort of like desired metric. I
Mean opens he done that as well. Like they started giving out gems that didn't play out very well. So just depends like I
Just for the sake of loyalty
Can be disastrous, you know sometimes and can can benefit so I'll give you an example of blur
What they did was basically they incentivize everyone
Place bids on the NFT market and the more bids you put in
The more points you would get which would eventually entitle you for an airdrop
Which eventually created a different meta which started?
everyone's bidding on things right and
Just to get the points, but then what it did was
As you know, there's so many different layers
In the in the web 3 specially NFTs the bids would be live and then some things happen and
People ended up getting like, you know, NFTs, which they didn't want in the first place
So they ended up dumping them and that created a cataclysmic effect
And then only few winners came out in the end like, you know people who were like absolutely controlling the whole bid market
They ended up having a huge airdrop from blur as well. Then there was season 1 season 2 season 3
But right now we're in a blur season 3 and the NFT markets completely died
completely destroyed the whole market, so
I mean that was something for loyalty as well, but then who did it like
So, I don't know man, it's like it's a hard one, you know, bro, it's a very hard one because this like
The end user ends up getting exploited always always like, you know in the end
We had like friends who were like, oh is it worth it like doing blur bids blah blah blah
And then someone ended up getting a dirt NFT because it was just like, you know auto bidding on anything and everything
So yeah, but we're on a very early stage, you know, like I know I remember we used to talk about why it really feels like
We're early because these things which I'm talking about from sheer experience
Unless you've gone through the whole process you won't there's no way you'd know about these things, you know
Yeah, I mean but I think there's a good example
That's interesting in that
The way that they modeled reputation I
think goes back to this idea of like being purely driven by financial incentives and
They created this reputation that leveraged attention
To increase activity and monetization on their platform, which I think they did tremendously well to capture a big chunk of the market
Reward people for that behavior
It's absolutely fine as loyalty systems go because it's constructed to reward people for certain actions
This wasn't necessarily like positive some
Right where everybody won
You know everywhere in this like loyalty system
so I guess that's kind of like what I'm interested in specifically it's like what are some examples of like
good reputation while still of course
Being interested in like learning about like bad reputation
Or again, I'm trying to avoid good and bad, but the risk reward of these repetitions
so the risk there specifically when we're talking about blur is that
They're basically trading to bring the market to zero
Right because I mean from what I remember
The way that blur worked was really kind of incentivizing
So eventually it drove the value down of a lot of these different assets and collections
The reward however was in that
financial incentives or their revenue
regardless of what was happening to the market around them, so
You were going to do this so much that there wasn't going to be a market for you to trade anymore
It do you think that's a good assessment of that
Yep, and that's what exactly happened
Yeah, that sucks your butt right now
It sucked all the liquidity out it's it's it's created a very bad precedent
I think it just depends yeah, it just depends yeah
You know like loyalty and how we utilize it and the fact that we all know about it and the fact that as soon as you hit
Any person with web3 diligence as soon as you mentioned blurred they know about it
Yeah means that there's an aspect of reputation associated with organizations as well. That's a good point
Yeah, I think when you think about like brand
Reputation is baked it right so when you think of like the Apple brand
Whether you think about the word Apple where you think about the logo or that you think about their stores
That's all their brand and there's a reputation built-in use one thing you said earlier was like
pretty robust pieces of machinery that
Just work well for a long time
So when you think about like brand there's like a reputation baked it
So I wonder when you think about some a brand like blur, which I they definitely do have a
Recognizable brand what's their reputation like?
Do you think that their reputation is?
good because they definitely were able to influence the market and
Bring something new to the table in terms of like the incentives that they developed for traders
Well, I think it's just you know the beauty of web 3 is
your personal opinion doesn't really count, you know, you all you gotta do is look on chain and
See what activity is happening on chain
So so then that would mean that they have a good reputation then because they created a lot of on chain transactions
Is that what you're saying? Yeah, but where are the on-chain transactions now?
This is what I'm saying. Like, you know, you have to look at it from a we can't look at it like from a
From a weekly monthly yearly. You have to zoom zoom out and you got to look at it like, you know
That the fact that they did create a furore is that furore is still was it sustainable and has it still been sustained
And if it hasn't been sustained, so where's the liquidity going?
It's very interesting how the new meta has evolved from the previous meta
Because it's always a reactionary kind of like
Thing which happens NFTs was a reactionary
ICOs because everyone had enough and we needed to huddle together to figure things out
but then once we learned to huddle together and figure things out we realized that some of us can
The new meta has evolved because of that where everyone's included and there's no promises in you know
There's no promises now people are making
Exploiting that as well and
You know, this is an ever-growing ever
Experimenting and ever learning kind of like living organism. We are dealing with here
Where all of us all of our actions are like
combined together as a collective
so we all agree on BTC and we all agree on the on the
On the all the values which BTC stands for and as a result
You know, everyone uses it. We all agree on what value
Ethereum stands for because of the on chain activity
We all agree on that but then the same way Ethereum classic is also a fork
But and but not all of us agree on that fork as a result the on chain activity represents that
What I'm trying to say is that web 3 elevates a lot of issues in that context where our personal opinion matters
Because eventually what will happen is we will deviate towards the right thing, you know
And in the case of the right
Hope that makes sense like
Because we've been we've been burnt
We've been like, you know
We've gone through the whole lot and then eventually we've learned and we've become so battle-hardened that we we know
You know how to like not get burnt or not to get ragged and we still keep getting ragged like so it's not
It's an ever-evolving thing. You have to be cautious
No magic Eden is the new thing
But there's no and this like, you know, they're based on all good values, but there's no liquidity left the matters chain now
So it's too late, you know, so
Mean, I think that's a good place to cut it. We don't necessarily go need to go to the top of the hour
We're almost at the top of the hour anyway, so I just want to thank you for your time
And I think this is a really good conversation. Obviously anybody else is interested in participating. Don't be shy. This is an open space
Even when we have guests up here, you're definitely welcome to come up
And join the conversation
I'm gonna see if we can't be a little bit more
Don't know. Well, I don't know what word to use here
But I'm gonna see what I can do to get more people up here next time in terms of like speakers
Because there was an interest
But I think I don't know if this is just a bad day about time
for a lot of the folks that I've been
Inviting to come up. So we'll see what check it out. There is a group forming though that I basically
joined while I was at East Denver and
They're for the most part all builders of like identity and reputation products and
I'm basically opening this space up to all of them saying come on up here. Let's have conversations about identity and reputation
Let's not it does not limit it to just ontology for anybody who's ever been into these spaces knows that
That these spaces have never just been about ontology ontology might be the host
And sponsor of these events, but that doesn't mean that we necessarily always talk about ontology
We have conversations related to what ontology does and we want to make sure that we amplify
Everyone who's building in this space because at the other day, I think it's through these spaces is through these conversations
that we can create some like really meaningful collaborations between all of us and
The space is better because of it not just the Twitter space, but like the web 3 space
So I hope everybody will join us again next week. I think it'll be the same day same time
So that's Thursdays at twenty hundred UTC
Please stay safe and Polaris sign us out man
Yeah, man, it's been a very nice conversation and yeah
It's always nice to have guests but I think like you and me because we've been doing for such a long time now
I think that our synergy and flow is just
And I'm sure that the listeners enjoy that as well because we part give out a lot of information which is
Priceless really like, you know, this is a lot of priceless information which we kind of like part
Conversations and it's always nice to to talk with you every week empty and
Yes, thanks everyone for joining us. Look after your mind body
Your health drink lots of water
I'll see you guys me and Humpty next week. Hopefully we'll have more guests to talk about other things
If not, we'll have lots of stuff to talk about. Don't you worry? Take care guys. Have a lovely week. Goodbye now