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Tuesday | TezDay w/ Malicious Sheep
Recorded: May 27, 2025 Duration: 1:07:55Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, key figures in the Tezos community highlighted significant trends in NFT permanence, the growth of staking participation, and the importance of community-driven initiatives. Malicious Sheep shared her journey as a multidisciplinary artist, emphasizing the innovative ways artists are adapting to the blockchain landscape and fostering collaboration within the ecosystem.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. all right check check check i hope you guys can hear me all right awesome we're gonna get blank sorted out as well. We'll get mal today and we'll get started.
So let's just give it a minute.
And think already right from the get-go.
Nice, nice, nice. Thank you. All right, great. So while we're trying to short out Blank's mic, we're trying to get
him back up here. I see that Mal is already up. Welcome Mal, and welcome everybody down
in the audience as well.
Hello, hello. Am I coming in loud and clear? Oh, absolutely fine. Thank you for being here.
So I'll do the intro this time. You'll have to put up with my voice instead of blank, super smooth
radio voice, but we gotta work with what we gotta work. And welcome back to user tesla everybody i'm kryptonio
here with my soon to be app co-host blanks and tonight tonight we are joined by someone who's
not just been part of the tesla star scene who's helped shape it basically uh malicious ship is an
artist a builder a contributor to Thea,
and one of those people you see in the credits,
whether or not her name is on the front.
She's been showing up, speaking up, and meeting work
that carries a personal edge and a deep connection
to the community around her.
We are not just talking about what she's made.
We are talking about how she's helped hold the space
together when a lot of others drifted. So tonight's about getting to know her, what keeps her
here, what she cares about, and how she's thinking about this moment in the life of Tezos.
But first let's do a quick checkup with Blanks. I see him up as a co-host again. I see a request. All right.
Let's see, Blanks, if we can get you up here now.
We're still having those glitches from my...
Last week it was me this week is blank.
All right, never mind we'll keep trying, we'll keep trying. I'll go over the news real quick.
So there is a great new article from YoshiLabs up on news.tezoscommons.org that takes
a closer look at something called Zero Contract.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with it already.
And if you've ever wondered what it really means for an NFT to be fully on-chain,
then this article is for you.
Most NFTs today store their artwork on IPFS,
which is fine, until it isn't, of course.
If that file isn't pinned
and someone forgets to maintain it,
the art could possibly disappear.
The token still exists, but the image is gone.
Zero Contract takes a different route.
It lets artists store their work, their metadata,
and even their thumbnails directly on the Tezos blockchain.
No external links, no dependencies, just permanence.
The article walks through how this works using a no-code toolkit that includes
XeroContract, the XeroArt app, and a viewer called XeroView.
There's also a more advanced upgrade called XeroUnbound in the works,
which will raise file size limits and allow more detailed
or interactive art to be stored fully on chain uh blanks i think i see you pretty good now
can you check if you can unmute now yeah this has been fun can you hear me oh yeah there's
there's that beautiful voice again welcome so i'm on my backup setup my computer
crap the bed i apologize it is not functioning but i am now here
awesome awesome sorry about that all right so um let me quickly finish this one up and you can go
on with the next sure all right so guys, you've ever felt like your art
should live with the blockchain instead of next to it,
this might be something to look into,
the article from Yoshi Labs.
You'll also get a look that the community forming
around these tools, including the recent zero contest call-up
that brought in over 50 artists.
The full breakdowns up now at news.tezoscommons.org.
Worth a read if you care about digital permanence,
creative control, or just want to see what's possible
when artists build their own tools.
And Blanks, you can take over.
I can now see why he's like, I want you to take over,
because it would be awkward.
No, I got you.
There's a new piece by Kryptonio on news.tezoscomments.org
that breaks down what's really going on with staking on Tezos right now
and why things are clicking into place.
Participation just hit an all-time high,
but it's not because of some flashy campaign
it's because the system is doing what it was designed to do with recent upgrades like adaptive
issuance and the rio update which cut the unstaking period from 12 days down to four
staking is more rewarding more flexible and honestly kind of a no-brainer at this point. The article explains how adaptive issuance works.
As more Tez gets staked, the protocol responds by lowering overall issuance.
That helps reduce inflation while still giving solid rewards to people who stake.
It's this flywheel effect.
The more people join in, the stronger and more valuable the network becomes.
And unlike a lot of other networks, staking on Tezos is self-custodial.
Your Tez stays in your wallet.
And you can start or stop whenever you want.
Right now, you can earn around 11% APY just by helping secure the chain.
If you're holding Tez and it's just sitting there,
this might be the time to rethink that.
The full story is up at news.tezoscommons.org,
and it's one of the cleanest, clearest explanations of why
staking on Tezos isn't just working,
it's finally hitting its stride.
Keeping up with Tezos shouldn't feel like a full-time job.
That's where the baking sheet comes in.
Each week, it brings the latest Tezos news, standout community updates, and project highlights straight to your inbox.
No noise, no spam, just a solid recap of what matters.
If you're tired of hunting for info across feeds, this is the easy way to stay in the loop.
Subscribe at bakingsheet.tezoscommons.org and get Tezos updates the way they should be.
Clear, consistent, and actually useful. Tezos grows because of its community, and it's time
to recognize the people making it happen. The Tezos Community Rewards program is your chance to spotlight creators,
builders, and behind-the-scenes contributors who deserve more credit.
Do you know someone putting in the work?
Nominate them at tezoscommons.org slash rewards.
Or tag their post with hashtag Tezos CRP.
Let's make sure the real ones get seen.
All right, well, that's the latest.
So now let's bring on someone who really doesn't need much of an intro in this space.
Malicious Sheep has been creating, contributing, curating, and just generally showing up in ways that make this
space what it is. Mal, thanks for being here. I want to start not with a pitch or a project,
but with the real question. Where does your story start with Tezos? And what was the moment
where it clicked that this was a space that you wanted to be part of?
And welcome, by the way.
I'm so glad to be here.
Oh, you sound amazing.
I know.
I thought my mic was going to be wrecked today, but it's good.
It's good.
No, that was mine.
Yeah.
We all get the bug every once in a while
um again thank you for having me i'm so glad to be here um
yeah i started off in tezos uh through a music community where i met muumu the stan Moomoo the Stan, an OG within the ecosystem, and learned in September of 2021, for about a month,
all that I needed to know about Tezos. I did my research. I learned about everything and anything
that I could get my hands on. I observed, I watched people get rubbed, I watched
people thrive, it was wonderful. And on October 12th, 2021, I minted my first piece. And then a
month later, Hickett Nunk shut down. But I was very glad that I was able to do all of that learning in advance.
I myself am someone who has never had access to art community before, as someone who is
multiply disabled and was incapacitated for 10 years and is immunodeficient and cannot leave home. And so the digital space, finding
Tezos and the beautiful community that was there felt like stars aligning for me in a really good
way. And so I wanted to contribute any of my skills that I possibly could after Hickett Nunk shut down in
November. I was there on day one being like, what do we do? What can I do? Can I make a poster?
Can I make a spreadsheet? What can I do? Please tell me something to do.
and was welcomed by the community,
And was welcomed by the community, even though I had only been there for about a month.
even though I had only been there for about a month.
And I loved every minute.
And that's kind of where we started.
So you mentioned you never really had access to artists' community.
Were you actively creating?
Were you exploring that world?
Was it an outlet for how you were living?
I have been creating art since I was a child.
I'm a multidisciplinary artist.
I had the benefit of learning a craft or skill in some artistic form or fashion,
be it food or craft work or woodwork or metalwork or painting or dance or singing
from one of my family members over the
years and got to experiment a lot even while I was very wee, very small. Art has always been
part of my life. I went to school for art for a year before I got very, very ill and had to drop out and was doing quite well
in it. So that was a little bit disappointing for me. But I was able to also serve as a
curator in Toronto for a year as my health was declining until I became fully incapacitated. And I was primarily a painter, utilizing acrylics and assemblage on canvas, applique of random bits and bobs that I would find on the ground or would create from whatever I could find and apply to canvas alongside my paintings.
I did a lot of high detailed, flattened, illustrative realism.
I had a lot of crossover between art and STEM.
I applied to both of those educational directions post-secondary and went for the art route because I figured I could still apply my science love within art.
Regular M.C. Escher over here.
And, yeah, and but then with the disabilities that all came compounding on me over the course of about a year, but drastically over the course of a month when I was like 21, I want to say.
For context, I went from 185 pounds down to 125 pounds in a month with no explanation and then spent 10 years being studied like a guinea pig trying to figure out what was going on and still no definitive answers to this day.
So, but yeah, so I lost all of my muscle mass, all of my fat, my density, everything was very dwindled.
And so I was very, very, very much incapacitated and was disconnected from the outside world for about 10 years.
um and when i tried to re-engage with it um there was a lot of ableism and other social
barriers or physical barriers uh within like the actual structures of buildings that prevented me
from actually participating in our community um and then covid happened a year after I found out I was immunodeficient
so I got a head start
but then Zoom
opened up the world for me and I started doing
disability justice
activism
and policy writing
and then made my way finally
into Dezos where I
spend all of my time
currently
So here's kind of, I don't know, like you said That's where I spend all of my time currently.
So here's kind of, I don't know, like you said, you've got a huge background.
What did you expect Web3 art to be when you arrived?
And then, I mean, did your expectations hold up?
I had known about crypto, just like crypto itself, for over a decade.
It was one of the things that I was starting to dig into when I was in university for that one year.
But then other challenges presented themselves.
And I had the false assumption that I would need to have a master's degree in engineering and or finance in order to really understand what was going on but I was wrong uh when I came to Tezos I was just overjoyed with seeing everybody
creating in every facet that they that they do um every medium it was really exciting because I hadn't had much exposure to stuff outside of my, like aside from things that were showing up in museum articles or research papers, like there wasn't much that I was coming across outside of Canada.
and there was also mediums that I had never considered
would be successful with NFTs, which I was very pleased with.
So things like performance art.
It makes so much sense now.
I think it's all performance art at some point, isn't it?
This is probably fair.
But I think it was just really exciting to see all of the ways in
which uh people could collaborate as well like collaborations from what i knew prior to nfts were
very limited and tended to be if you shared a studio space or you know shared a building with
the studio with somebody who happened to be there
too. It wasn't something that you could just do on the fly, which was really exciting because
my favorite thing is smashing things together. The collision point of stuff is where I find
the most creative inspiration. So be it medium or identity or experience or what have you, that collision point is my favorite spot.
And so, you know, seeing folks from, you know, with different mediums, from different countries, from different experiences, being able to apply their lens to a piece together was amazing.
their lens to a piece together was amazing um not what i was expecting but i didn't know what to
expect really uh that's fair and was happy regardless because it was the first like
honestly i had like not talked to anybody aside from my immediate family for over 10 years when
i came into desos so it got very busy really fast in my conversing.
So I had to learn, but yeah.
Now, do you think being here on Tezos
has changed at all what you create
or just how you release and talk about it at this point?
I think during the process of adapting to my disabled form with my alphabet soup of conditions, I had to adapt from painting due to hand tremors to photography as my main medium because I was not satisfied with what I was creating due to the hand tremors
and was still dealing with a lot of internalized ableism and all of that fun stuff.
So I switched to photography.
And so I had spent about five years rebuilding my muscle mass through photography.
Every day I would go outside for as long as I could tolerate,
photograph as much as I could, and then when I got too tired I would sit down on the ground for
about 15 minutes and then would get back up and go back inside and then study everything that I
had photographed, research them, identify all the species, all that good stuff. And so I had about five years where I fully committed to photography. Like,
that was my full day, night, everything. And so I was blessed when I came into Texas that I had a
lot that I had worked on, that I could present and curate my own work into series matching palette and texture and theme and associate it all with
poetry each piece generally has a poem associated with it as well um and i feel like when
it was it was something nfts were something that i had been imagining for a very long time i'm like
there's got to be a way for something like this to happen.
Like my idea was like-
So it's your fault then,
you manifested all of this.
Perhaps.
I had thoughts about non-money
that could be used as tokens.
This was when I was like seven, I think,
non-money that could be used as tokens
and people could like trade things together and we could like appreciate what what each other
created and it didn't have to be like real money because i struggled with that concept in my own
mind um when i was a child so i was like there's got to be a better way but yeah um not taking credit for that at all um but that's
fair there's a lot of chaos too so um but yeah i i thought it would be something really cool
and then when i came across it when i was in university i was like oh like this is the thing
i need to look into this.
And then I was like, I started to look into it.
I'm obviously looking at development layer things and not art-related things.
Because it was not the time for art marketplaces in crypto.
It was definitely in the back of people's minds.
I mean, Arthur even said it was in the back of his, right?
It's the very beginning.
So it's been there.
You bit off of something that was vibing,
I think. Maybe
it wasn't you were the inspiration. Maybe you
tapped into that inspiration wherever it was.
Yeah.
And so I
was very excited
when I came into Dezos because
I knew this is my
new home. I've moved in and you can't get rid of me
um i've already bought my malicious sheep.tez for the next several years um i should have done
probably 20 but really um yeah you're stuck with me all of you. Just letting you know. This is like all of my favorite things,
all of the elements of my life can merge into one thing.
The art, the science, the community, organizing,
the, yeah, just all of it.
I just love it all, everything.
Now, is there a piece of yours that you maybe keep coming back to mentally, emotionally, or creatively?
Is there one that sticks out to you like that?
Ones that I've minted?
Anything that you've created, a piece of yours, something maybe you haven't minted,
something that you have at home that literally inspires everyone.
I don't know.
I'm just asking.
Well, for minted ones, I would say aubergine and repose because that was the piece uh the first one that i staged
and lit artificially all my other photographs are unstaged and unedited and only lit by natural means and so i wanted to replicate the feel of a renaissance
oil painting but instead of the general you know the the thematic or trope of a a nude
i used an aubergine for object for object in uh 2022 i I think. That one I come back to a lot because
I just find it hilarious, it's got good lore, I feel very proud of my ability to create it
technically, and just the discussions I've been able to have about the gaze, the audience's gaze
as related to this piece has been really interesting.
When it comes to things that I've painted
because I've gotten back into painting in the last few years
hadn't touched it for a while. Had to rebuild some
foundational muscles maybe. Yeah and I've been also treating myself as a guinea pig
and eating a lot of lion's mane mushroom to do some motor system repair,
which seems to be working.
So this has been excellent.
So I no longer have hand tremors, everyone.
It happened.
That's huge.
Congratulations.
Yeah, I appreciate. have hand drummers everyone it happened i that's huge congratulations yeah i appreciate um yeah so i started painting again a couple years ago i did uh one painting um as a commission
um which was a duplication of an ai generatedgenerated piece,
which was very successful.
I'm very good at duplication.
I've done it a lot.
So you would have been working for Thomas Crown?
Yeah.
I used to replicate records,
like vinyl album covers, in painting form and give them as gifts when I was in high school.
And then, yeah, so duplicated that.
That was fun.
And then took a little break, did a couple portraits of others.
I did one of Mumu, the stan, which I was very proud of. And then I also did a self-portrait,
which was the first time I had ever done that. A three-quarter self-portrait of my face,
which I want to say like three people have seen. And then I made just recently my favorite piece that I've ever made,
which nobody's ever going to see,
is a six foot by four foot self-portrait of myself
as a means to reassemble my perception of my body
through all of its changes through time.
And I feel very, very, very, very, very proud of this piece.
And it is enormous.
It is beautiful.
I am so happy with it.
It is cool.
It glows in the dark.
It's got cool stuff on it.
It's also gilded.
It glows in the dark and it's gilded on it. It's also gilded. It glows in the dark and it's gilded.
So it's like the 80s and the Renaissance all fused into one.
Apparently.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm very happy with that.
Well, thanks for sharing.
I know we'll never see it, but I'm sure it's amazing.
And I bet it feels absolutely liberating to be able to do that again.
Yeah, very much so.
I have a list of 150 projects that I've been brewing for those 10 years,
plus the five that I've been in.
Tezos, being too busy.
I've allocated some more time for myself and i have just generally more time
now uh because for the first several years i was in tezos for the first three years i was
also taking care of my nan i was her full-time 24-7 palliative caregiver for three years
caregiver for three years and she passed uh last year or yeah last year year before one of the two
year before um but yeah she's the best and uh so i have more time now so i've been creating
and i'm very excited about it now let's go back to teia real quick i know teia has always been a platform that reflects the
people in it when did you first get involved with this community layer itself and and what
was it that really drew you in uh it was the day that hickett nunk went down
okay that's fair that's that's pretty yeah that's pretty, yeah, that's like, where were you when somebody happened? Yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense.
people all in there um trying to figure out a direction trying to communicate and come up with
like an organizational structure and everything was very frothy and uncontained and I came in
poked my wee little head in and said hi I have skills what can I do and lovely merchant capella
was like here do these things I was like okay done and then like 20
minutes later i was like here and they were like amazing what else would you like to do
excellent i found my place uh i needed to be here this is fun and uh uh so i spent a lot of time
uh both me and merch especially we would take notes of the hundreds
of conversations that were going on in the discord simultaneously and all of the channels
and make summaries and cross post them as needed for the other channels uh to keep everybody everybody updated and we would, I was, I was, you know,
North America and merch was Europe and beyond.
So we had like the two time zones.
We would like pass the torch to each other, high five, be like, all right,
I'll see you later.
I'm like, here's the update.
I'm going to bed.
Oh, well, I'm just getting up.
So let's go.
Did not blink for a very long time.
So we're talking, this is like night watch in the military like yeah changing the guard like you don't sleep you you you respond to
every little cricket and you tell and report everything wow that's amazing and unbelievable
how long did you do this um well after it slowed down in 2022 we didn't have to do that as much but it was right no but
I mean like to do it for a week let alone for like a month oh it was months six you know it was it was
months it was a long time I mean we're civilians we're not military we're not trained to just do
this you know and then we thank you thank you and then we ended up trying to simplify it for
ourselves over time and then we made a newsletter so we're like well we'll just instead of cross
posting all the time we'll just make the newsletter and then make an announcement that'll make things
easier for us and then slowly became more and more efficient. I then designed the organizational structure for TEA-Ed,
which is lateral and not hierarchical,
which I like because having,
I'm doing disability justice
and interacting with hierarchical systems.
It's horrible.
I don't like it.
And so I wanted to make something better.
And so I did.
And so I proposed that in early 2022.
Everybody seemed to like it.
It seemed to be what we were doing anyway.
For folks who don't know,
Taya does not have a leader or a boss.
We're just all mucking in.
We're like an organism over there
with many layers and growing and shrinking and all that.
I feel like that's kind of a huge part of the Te'an narrative, sort of general.
Like if you're going to be talking about this thing, we collectively seem to forget that
this is a community driven thing.
It's almost magical in that way.
Yeah, exactly.
It's all volunteer powered.
None of us have been paid.
We've been doing it for however many years.
Yeah.
It's a work of love and passion,
which is,
you don't find that often.
Yeah,
exactly.
And like in 2021,
there was hundreds of people.
And then like,
as lockdowns were eased and people had to go back to,
they weren't doing remote work anymore.
They had to go back to work.
And life took on its path again for most people you know that number dwindled but
we still have pretty strong crew I would say even throughout the bear we've had
somewhere in the range of like there's the 27 core team members. There's 19 multi-sig members. And I'd say about another 15 or so
peripheral folks who pop in every once in a while and help out with particular tasks
that they have passion for. But like 2021, 2022, trying to organize 200 people all at the same time was interesting.
But because I had done community organizing through my disability justice work prior, I feel like that gave me the tools to succeed in that.
me the tools to succeed in that.
But yeah.
But yeah.
Now,
you've put in some serious work behind
the curtain. Does that
change how you view platforms
like Object or FXHash
in comparison?
No, not really. I see them as siblings.
They all have
different methods.
The team members on each of them are all lovely and they thrive in a different type of work environment, which is why Atea, we're hoping to provide room for equitable experience as related, immunocompromised, neurodivergent, and disabled, like me.
I am all four of those.
yeah, we
try to support the community in the ways that we can
make it something that's accessible
hoping to
grow it in future. It is volunteer
powered so the things that we can do
depend on how many volunteers are there
I cannot be anywhere
everywhere all at the same time. I would like to be
if I had clones.
No, no, no excuses
all your excuses needs to be done. If I had clones. No, no, no excuses. All your excuses needs to be done.
If I had clones, I would.
But yeah, it's been interesting.
I did push myself quite a bit where I shouldn't have been to do more than my body was capable of handling, even though I am weirdly able to manage a whole bunch of things with my
brains.
The lack of sleep caught up with me after,
especially after Nan passed away.
So I took a little break six months or so,
but aside from that,
I am here for about 18 hours a day available.
and I have been since 2021.
Well,
thank you for that.
And that's a choice.
You know what I mean?
That's not like nobody's forcing you to do this.
You,
you have,
you have some real desire to do this,
which is rare.
So thank you.
Now,
what does community building actually mean to you?
I mean,
it's not in a buzzword sense, but in, your lived experience, like you say you had some tools.
A lot of people need help building orgs because, I mean, let's be honest, building organizations is not something anybody's ever taught or you're just not unless you meet people who build orgs.
So what does it actually mean to you?
So what does it actually mean to you?
Well, for me, one of my few special interests is systems, which is helpful.
This could be in nature.
This could be in language.
This could be in social dynamics, all of that good stuff.
So I've studied all of this since i was a child and just
made things more efficient and any job that i was at i could make it more efficient i could make it
more accessible and i could make it more enjoyable for everybody and so i have attempted to apply this to TAYA as well. I think community itself,
it requires those key components, especially accessibility, to be in place in order for it to thrive. Because if you're coming up against the same challenges over and over again, and the culture does not allow room for things like trust repair or,
I don't like this word, but like a postmortem where you're like reflecting after the fact
if there was a success or a failure and how to build.
Have we just watched too much like crime drama? Is that why?
If we hadn't, that would be a fine word.
That's probably fair um but yeah it's
it's a it is a dissection of sorts so this is yeah um but it's important for community to have layers
of of care built in um and enabling people to thrive.
So in my experience, a lot of the time where I was excluded from community was systemic
and largely outside of the control of folks who were interested in making it accessible to me but couldn't.
Most traditional institutions, they preserve, they do not like to innovate.
And so challenges to that structure
and norm, culturally and systemically,
is often met with resistance, either unconscious or
actively malignant.
It's that self-preservation bug it can get nasty yes um but you know it would
improve a lot of things if they would just take the time but no no no same old same old and we're
just fine they can do that web three however we can build things from scratch um people aren't
interested in solving problems because we're all creatives here
in some form or another. We're already outside of the norm. We're on the edge of the bell curve
just as a group because we're interested in crypto just as a starting point. So there's
more flexibility in going against the grain with folks here and everybody here is so lovely and once they realize that there is some sort of barrier or challenge that needs to be corrected for, then they're like, okay, let's figure this out.
What do we do?
Who do we know who could probably solve this?
It's never a reflexive defense. It's always an
active engagement of intention to modify whatever barrier is facing folks. So I'm grateful for that.
And so when I was designing the organizational
structure of TEA, having had the experience within political spaces and
disability justice spaces which intersect often, I am acutely aware of how weaponized systems can be used to quell change or to prevent communication between
different groups within an organization. I like to call this siloing. And so I wanted to prevent
I like to call this siloing. And so I wanted to prevent those types of cultural hierarchical traditions possible on the first go and leave room for it to
continue to be dynamic and flexible in future as things and needs change for the community so that
it's not locked in. And so when I designed the lateral structure that is what I had in mind. mind and so um yeah like teya itself there's no leader it is technically a multi-sig contract
that is the owner of teya as legally registered in the marshall islands as of 2023 and
the multi-sig holders who are the signatories of that multi-sig there are 19 of them
who are the signatories of that multi-sig.
There are 19 of them.
Thea is made up of several guilds,
which are flexible and are not siloed
and communicate with one another actively.
And anybody is welcome to come and volunteer
or be mentored within that space
or provide their expertise at any time.
Regardless of your skill set, you can come and and learn you can come and share your skills all that good stuff and yeah just overall enabling
folks to participate is the main goal so and it is difficult for folks to wrap their heads around
because it is not hierarchical there's no boss boss, there's no person to really, you know,
we've been trained by social media
to look for like a complaints department.
That's just not how it is.
We're all just fellow artists maintaining the marketplace
and trying to provide benefit for the community
by helping to organize and using
our skills to bolster everybody's initiatives. Now, Mel, when people like me are out there in
public, we aren't nearly as articulate or succinct, using very catered wording to make sure that what we say is not
only powerful but accurate.
What do you think we get wrong when we talk about decentralization or collective ownership
in practice?
I think most people understand decentralization very differently.
Everybody has their own idea of what it is, which makes it difficult to meet expectations for everyone.
So we know what decentralization is not, and that is something like a multinational conglomerate that has a very small core team that makes decisions like whether or not a certain word can be used on a platform or, you know, as related to censorship or could be unwilling to adapt to needs of the community,
so will not take feedback or things like this.
Or, for example, within finance,
limited options for where to store and build wealth and all of this stuff.
All of those layers have their own aspects of decentralization
within web3 um so like defy and the art markets and all of this stuff
there are different degrees in which people feel comfortable within the level of decentralization is there. I feel like the goal would to be full self-custody of things as
decentralization with what would be like the equivalent to a co-op in the
traditional world where folks who have their own autonomy, who have their own IP, who have their own
what have you, funds, whatever, are able to collectively decide on things and be able to
freely move from space to space without restriction. And then that therefore provides them the opportunity to be more liberated in their experience with life, have more choice instead of the illusion of choice, which most of us have been trained to since birth to experience.
You know, are you going to get the white Honda SUV or are you going to get the white Hyundai SUV?
Hey man, I like close up magic. Or are you going to get the white Honda SUV? Or are you going to get the white Hyundai SUV? Hey, man, I like close-up magic.
Or are you going to get the Ford SUV?
I want to see the car change right in front of me
and believe that it's magic.
I want to.
It's so much easier.
Yeah.
And so, like, with what we experience here,
decentralization also has to, it doesn't have to, but is impacted by cultural norms, by systems.
So for example, lateral versus hierarchical structures,
decentralization is going to look very different in both of those places.
It is an element that is attached. It is not a pure state. It is more of an adjective
than anything. It is not something that... like pure decentralization I would equate to something like being the void in space
everything is floating in the abyss and not attached to one another but that is not cohesive
for or useful for a human civilization which is interdependent and actually relies on one another
to survive.
Like even if you were to be like, that's it, society's done for me,
I'm gonna go live in the forest.
You would have had thousands of people help you
just to go to that forest that you've never met,
who crafted your tent, who grew the fiber
that the tent was created out of, who wove it,
who created the you know
um the the flint strike who created the axe that you need in order to chop wood in order
to survive i think there's no possible way for you to be separated from humans um did you see
the guy who who decided to make his own chicken sandwich?
I did not, but I can imagine.
I want to say he spent around $2,500, or maybe it was even more, but basically for like a
mid sandwich that wasn't that great.
Yeah.
He grew all the ingredients, got it all from scratch, you know, that sort of thing.
He went to the ocean like in the Mediterranean, got salt, that kind of stuff.
But anyway, you know, YouTube video
garbage. I like this.
I might go look for this
after, because this is interesting to me. I am
somebody who creates a lot of stuff from scratch, because
I can't eat any
processed foods at all.
Oh, yeah. That's rough.
Yeah. Nothing in a can.
No fillers.
No fillers. Yeah. Nothing in a can. No fillers. No fillers.
Yeah.
Making it all from scratch.
My permaculture organic garden.
That's awesome.
How big is your garden?
It's 1.5 acres.
That's like a farm.
That's not a garden.
Well, yeah, there's different portions.
There's herb sections, some trees and berry bushes
we got some grains that's a farm that's a small farm yeah don't remind me it makes me
no it's beautiful you say you're available but let's be real you you have a work of love
and hard work like that's a life you know that. That's a life you've chosen.
Farming is tough.
People don't know.
They think it's just throw some seeds down and then you get corn.
Yeah.
It is understanding the intricate dynamics of all of the things.
Interdependence.
Interdependence.
Now, Mal, I normally like to open up the show here toward the end for questions,
if people have any. Would that be okay with you? Absolutely. All right. And then, of course,
I do have more questions for you, if that's all right, too. We don't have to sit here quietly and
wait for people to fill the void, although that would be kind of fun and awkward. No. So,
what does it mean to have a voice here? And I don't mean just artistically,
but as someone people look to,
because I mean,
you're running spaces,
you're involved in the community,
you're working with Taya,
you're an artist,
you're creating.
What does it mean to have a voice here?
I think it's wonderful for me
because I didn't really have a voice anywhere.
I pretty much didn't talk for 10 years.
So like on like a physical level, it's a big change. Like I didn't speak for the first year I was in Tezos. Nobody heard what I sounded like at all. I was only through text is how I communicated with everybody.
And then slowly coming into my own by participating in lovely communities like Burritos, where I first spoke in a space and slowly building up my confidence in spaces like The Jam, which is on Thursdays at 9pm Eastern Time with LM Designs 8 and Mindset Makes Money.
Thursdays at 9 p.m. Eastern Time with LM Designs 8 and Mindset Makes Money.
Shout out to them. That's where I learned how to write thought tree two years ago.
So if anybody ever wants to learn, that's where I would recommend you go.
But having this role that I've kind of, I don't know, coalesced into or something,
know coalesced into or something. I know from multiple different layers of my life
the experience of being silenced and losing my autonomy and being infantilized,
being like literally having like my autonomy removed by the state in order to get supports to all
of this stuff. I know what it's like to not experience access to community in
various forms and so I strive to be the person who is enabling folks and to use my voice to do so.
Anytime that I have a stage, I try and shout out other people as much as I can to check them out.
If you have the opportunity to be in a space, shout out somebody else.
It's wonderful.
You don't have to
worry about losing it out on an opportunity um because you recommend somebody else uh that will
come back to you don't even worry about it um but yeah having having the role that i do, I try my best to accommodate for everybody, assess needs.
Having organized town halls for hundreds of disabled people who all have very different access needs, I got a crash course in that.
So I can do that for everybody else because everybody has access needs.
Everybody does. every single person.
It's whether or not society deems it worthy of care,
whether or not you have access.
But yeah, I feel like my,
I want to cultivate my own power within myself
and use my time available to me to amplify everybody else
so that they can cultivate their own power within themselves too.
I love that.
And we can share in that.
Well, Mal, we've got a couple of people that apparently have questions for you.
Saints, thank you for your patience.
I saw your hand. Red, welcome to the stage. We'll get to you in just a second. Saints, apparently have questions for you. Saints, thank you for your patience. I saw your hand.
Red, welcome to the stage.
We'll get to you in just a second.
Saints, how the heck are you?
Hello, good afternoon.
Greetings and salutations.
So my question for Mal is, I know that you are multidisciplinary and, you know, attack a lot of different medias with your art.
If there was just one piece you had to pick that you would want people to see from your art to let them know about you, what piece would it be?
This is a good question.
This is a good question.
This is difficult.
I would say probably my recent submission that I made in January for Quantum Poetry Open Call,
which was accepted to the Citsario collection.
There were two pieces in that, which I submitted together, so I'm counting them as one.
One was an oration, and one is where I'm experimenting currently.
The first one is an oration of walking the audience through the experience of multifaceted experience and time and sensory experiences related to synesthesia and quantum layering and all of that and then the second piece is a palimpsestic poem
so that is if you imagine a chalkboard and you write dog and then you erase that and then you
write cat you erase that and you write mouse you can still see cat and dog underneath so it has
like these layers that peek through and this could be in relation to time, which is where I
was inspired because I am a palancestic thinker when it comes to my perception of time. It is
nonlinear and it is multilayered across itself, probably due to the, you know, baker's dozen
concussions that I've had in my life. It probably doesn't help. But yeah, my sense of time is very strange. But the poem itself is broken down into bracket types indicating different states in time, past, present, and future, and uses the same framework and alters certain words in order to change the meaning of the piece.
I think that would probably give folks kind of the best idea, at least how my brain works anyway.
There's not much for visual elements in there, but for creative process, that would be what I would choose.
And I appreciate your question very much since you're a treasure.
And I was actually, you know, I'm lucky enough to have heard you recite that.
So that was a wonderful piece. Both of the poems were wonderful.
I appreciate you.
Well, thank you, Saints. Great question.
Rad, welcome.
Welcome.
Yeah, I feel welcome now since you said it blanks. Thanks.
And malicious sheep, you know, as she knows, I was actually initially turned on to her by Kevin,
who told me to follow her and, you know, go into her rooms. And I remember, you know, in the last
room that we were in, you were talking about a lot of how you
effectively had been using Tezos to give a voice to a lot of, you know, your concerns. And if I'm
not, if I'm incorrect, please, you know, correct me. But what does that mean you were also working?
You had mentioned working towards writing legislation for a lot of these things.
And if I did get that right, what are the things that you're most interested in, you know, effectively writing legislation for in the future using Tezos or using Tezos?
So I appreciate you.
I'm glad for this question. And yes, from our conversation in my, it was the Mellow Monday space, which is for mental health and kind community conversations. have written policy in the past as a disability justice advocate
and have unpacked policy written by others
to ensure that it is not harmful
in its doublespeak language
or unintentional inherent coding.
And so I have a lot of experience in that.
I would like to in future perhaps propose things as related to policy or, you know, whatever. Not actively doing that at the moment.
legislation and policy writing is exhausting and I'm a little bit burnt out on it currently
but happy to consult as related to it because it is a skill set that I have but doing it all
from scratch is it'll take me a couple years I'm sure to to parse everything that I would
need to together I still do not have the grasp that I need to have
as related to DeFi. I need to know that inside and out in order to be able to accurately
solve for legislative problems as related to that in policy writing. Because if there is a gap, it will be taken advantage of.
That's just how systems work currently.
And so I would need to know the ins and outs in order to guard for that
to ensure that folks are not being harmed inadvertently or intentionally
by actions of others.
Are you saying politicians would politic this thing?
Politicians may be politishing.
They're making everything political.
Anyway, yo, good question.
Red, thank you for coming up.
Saints as well.
If you guys have any other ones,
feel free to pop them off.
I mean, it was for coming up. Saints as well. If you guys have any other ones, feel free to pop them off. I mean, that's a good question.
But if not, I mean, I can finish it up with one last one.
If anybody else has any other questions, throw up your request.
We're closing in on that one hour mark.
I don't like to hold our guests too much longer.
It's rough enough to get you guys to come up and chat with me in the first place.
So I appreciate you doing this.
All right.
So let's say you had to describe your Tezos journey as a mixtape.
What's the opening track?
What's the interlude?
And then how are you finishing it off?
Oh, goodness.
You see, you've tapped into one of my weaknesses. Pulling proper names on
occasion or nouns makes it very difficult for me. But I will go with music stylings.
So, opening would be drum and bass, full tilt, screaming into the night, not blinking, just moving.
And then I would say middle of the road would be, or middle of the story would be
more folk-related stuff, but Canadian folk.
So this is in the vein of the Tragically Hip, for those who know.
It can get wild, it can get calm, it can get deep.
And then to close, where I'm at now is just Funk House, all all day every day. That's all I listen to now. I play music alongside everything that I do.
And so that is my current state. And I don't know what the future holds, but perhaps it will be my very own music, which I've been working on in secret.
So there's that, too.
Well, it sounds like a great tape.
I definitely would not get bored listening to that lineup.
I'm thinking maybe during your folks session, we'll throw in some old, maybe some 70s, 80s rock from Canada too.
Maybe some Chilliwack.
Yes.
Some frog rock.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just to get the vibe right, I feel like.
Rough trade in there.
Rough trade is always good.
Yeah.
If you don't know what these are,
these are all very famous people
who play on casino tracks.
And when I say that,
it's what you hear when you go into casinos.
It's that music that the older crowd listens to because they're the ones with the money.
I listen to it too.
It's good.
It's timeless.
Although when Nirvana became classic rock, I felt really old.
Yeah.
It's not classic rock.
It's grunge, people. Sorry. I'm not sorry. I had to old. Yeah. It's not classic rock. It's grunge, people.
Sorry.
I'm not sorry.
I had to get in there.
It plays on the classic rock channel.
It's classic rock.
Papa Roach is dad rock, folks.
And then let's always forget Limbiscuit.
Anyway, I think that's going to wrap up this week's Tuesday, Tuesday.
Huge thanks to Malicious Sheep for joining us
and for showing us that community isn't just something you talk about.
It's something you build through action, presence, and care.
As always, big shout out to Tezos Commons for supporting the show.
If you're not already following us here on X,
hit that follow button so you don't miss future episodes.
And remember,
if you know someone in the Tezos community
who's doing meaningful work,
whether they're building,
organizing, creating,
or holding things together,
nominate them for the Tezos Community Rewards Program.
You can hashtag what they're doing with Tezos CRP.
You can head over to tezoscomments.org
slash rewards and fill out
the form. It just takes a moment and it's really meaningful, the outcome. Mal, thank you once again.
We'll be back next Tuesday. So until then, stay curious, stay connected,
and we'll catch you next time. Thanks for joining. Thank you.
