 Conor Dunham, welcome to simulation. Thanks. It's great to be on I'm excited for the conversation. I met Conor very recently just a couple days ago and Conor and Jordan Jordan Rain has been a friend of mine seven years now Very close friend and Conor and Jordan co-founded Sobound Labs Yeah, and so we're gonna be talking about decentralized reputation and we were having a good Conversation about the importance of this. I want to actually give a little bit of backstory before we go to the example You were sharing on the porch. Sure Because I think it's very relatable for the audience which is rather than taking the existing style of governance which in many ways is like Plutocracy governance by the wealthy to be able to buy voting power and pasting that into web 3 into blockchain crypto, etc Because right now it is coin or token based governance voting So we had an example just happened a couple weeks ago where Beanstalk had a flash loan attack where there was a Malevolent actor that took out a massive loan of of beanstalks token and then hijacked the voting power the governance to take out a 182 million dollars out of their treasury and then within 10 minutes they did that whole process and returned the loan And they got 80 million dollars through that process and and I don't know Thousands of people lost tens of thousands of dollars or something. It was it was a lot of people that were like what the and So what the taleg buterin has been talking about for a while now has been moving beyond Coin based or token based governance and one of the big things that Connor and Jordan are pioneering here is Reputation based governance or merit based governance on-chain activity or events being Rewarded through non-transferable NFTs or badges or soulbound badges So a little bit of backstory of where we're going with web 3 with what you guys are building So at least that and then now I would love for you to also take over share anything of what I just said about Play on that and we can also talk about what you were sharing on the porch as a good way to Bridge this into the mainstream. Sure. Yeah, I think the the beanstalk example is a great way to kind of like Explain why it is that we are developing new forms of governance. It's not really a problem with the the smart contracts It's not like there was a bug in the the beanstalk smart contracts. It's just the the governance system They're using how to flaw in it where someone can take out a flash loan and then exploit some contracts So this is a very hot topic right now in web 3 and lots of lots of people are spending their energy working on this problem I was introduced to the graph and sub subgraphs about a year ago and I realized that If you could get this information that a subgraph picks up and put it back on chain Then you could use it as a as a form of governance That it cannot be bought so you can actually Give the governance power to the people that have actually done the things that are Beneficial to the wider community or the protocol or whatever it is that is being voted on Yeah, mm-hmm Yeah, okay Yeah, so there's a good thread to pull there and Maybe I'll just table that because it already started going into subgraphs and Just for a bit because I we will get there I want to also have you mention the very relatable example that you were sharing with me on the patio about the way that today we look at LinkedIn and What how we feel like that will look in the future? Yeah, so right now you know if you want to Advertise what you've done in your past because you want to you know Get awesome jobs you put post your employment history up on LinkedIn or something like that and It's a interesting process because you know No one's fact-checking fact-checking anything there like you can can make things up and people do all the time And then they get interviews and maybe the interview goes well, maybe doesn't but The bottom line is that it's all self-reported most of the time And then the second side of that is you're sharing your data with this this company and if they they go away or They can use your data to their benefit So a new system that kind of takes advantage of Blockchains and web3 could be built where you can verifiably claim that you Did things in the past so you contributed towards certain protocols or you maybe you were a user of protocols It can even just be for you know making a certain number of trades on a decentralized exchange or whatever it is So anyone can come up with a new Criteria for what? constitutes a badge and then publish that in a permissionless way and then the people that satisfy that criteria criteria can then Claim an NFT that is non-transferable and therefore cannot be Bought and there could be voting power attached to that It's optional, so it there doesn't have to be voting power attached to it, but we imagine that a governance structure that uses this kind of Non-transferable voting power has some benefits to it and it doesn't necessarily have to be a hundred percent badge based governance and zero coin voting there there are balances there and there could be You know you could take the best of both worlds and utilize them both to yeah And move be even beyond it to something that's going to include a third or fourth element and stuff like that That's an unknown right now, which is which is cool. This is like the first push Let's say beyond just solely coin or token base voting What you just shared there is super powerful because we're all very relatable example of going and looking on LinkedIn or basically even Instagram or wherever because what's happening is people are using Social media or the internet as an extended phenotype of themselves portraying out to the social sphere their merits Right and so the idea is now can when I see somebody saying something on their LinkedIn or on their Instagram about their proficiencies their skills, how do we verify and It's through On-chain events is to how to be able to verify this in the future like that thing that you're saying that you did on LinkedIn We're just putting that in a verifiable way on chain and then we're able to have a non-transferable NFT that you Have on your portfolio Let's say and then that verifies that the thing that you're writing on your LinkedIn or your Instagram In the past and like web 2 you were writing it that you did it but now in web 3 you have a badge That is a direct correlate of an on-chain event, right exactly Yeah, it could be a collection of events Maybe you have to do something many times or maybe you have to do Five different things that admit five different events and once you've done all those things and you get a badge Yeah, yeah, this is so this is the cool like Way to understand this I would say for the mainstream like a mainstream perspective of understanding this I would say this is one of the most friendly ways is like Man like web 3 is gonna be about badges To correlate to on-chain events that are non-transferable They're soulbound and that I'm gonna have a collection of soulbound Badges and That Those are going to correlate to not only single Events on chain, but like you said multiple events on chain So over a period of five months if I do the thing one time per month And after five months checkmark then I get said badge That's so there's yeah, that's cool. I love that. I love that. It's a it's a very powerful way to visualize Reputation and merit and then I like another thing you said which is crucial is then it's Merit based access control or reputation based voting Yeah Yeah, I think that there are a lot of A lot of benefits to having sort of Reputation based voting that's going in line with a token based governance model because the interesting about interesting thing about governance is It's not necessarily a bad thing if people are not participating in governance, you know, if If you don't need to contact your Congressman Then you can kind of assume that things are doing pretty well, right? Like if people don't need to talk to their government officials, then things are going well So it's hard to tell when you know people are just not voting because they're lazy or if they're they're voting because they Are not informed or whatever it is But usually with a web 3 protocols, especially there's like a kind of a smaller group of people that are have like a Larger stake in it. Maybe they're actually spending their time working on this thing and then there's people that are interested in it from like an investment angle and The ability to kind of have more say If you have skin in the game, I think is pretty valuable And I think it's something that a lot of web 3 projects will be moving to in the next few years nice all right venture us into the Subgraph so what you started unpacking earlier? Sure. So a Subgraph so this this is coming out of the graph protocol a sub graph is a it's kind of like set of instructions on how to index the blockchain so Once you have a set of instructions that tell you how to index the blockchain You can have different parties. These are called indexers Indexed the blockchain according to the that set of instructions and then they can serve queries to people that are Interested in accessing that that information In a decentralized way because if everybody's agreeing that we're all indexing according to the same set of instructions then we should all be Responding to queries in the exact same way and so the graph has a whole system for how to handle queries that are query responses that are incorrect basically the grt token is Staked by indexers and if they respond to queries Incorrectly they can get slashed so they lose some of their grt stake so yeah, that's how subgraphs work and I Guess the realization that we had at soulbound labs is that a subgraph could be used as kind of a almost like a roll-up So you can Bundle up a bunch of interesting things that happened on the blockchain Condense it into like a 32 byte hash or something really really small and then put it back on the blockchain with the attestations from the indexers so that People can look at that That thing that you post on chain and know that it's legitimate because a bunch of people are Staking grt and they could get slashed if they're lying about it So it's almost a form of like an optimistic roll-up in a way Okay all right So indexing is a A Specific style of the data on Chain Indexing is storing data on chain in a specific way Not quite so the data is already on chain. It's just Organized in ways that are not conducive to humans so I think is organizing on chain data exactly Yeah, all of the data is publicly available Anyone could look at the blockchain and come to the same conclusions that the indexers are coming to so right now if I look at Ethereum block it's not organized It's organized according to standards that are you know meant for other smart contracts to read to yeah, okay? Yeah, okay? Yeah, and then Indexers further organize Right, okay, and the main use case for this right now Things like the uniswap dashboard that just displays all of the you know trading volume of all the different pairs and stuff like that That's built using subgraphs. So on the back end. They have a subgraph They're querying to come up with all the data to display on the website Okay, so indexers are further organizing the data on chain and then They're making that able to be queried Okay, so the the idea of like the of the graph not of subgraphs, but of the graph is to be able to make the data on chain Retrievable for those that desire it and then to make like an inclusive stakeholder process so that indexers are incentivized for good behavior to return the correct Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, the graph protocol is I mean their endgame is to create a decentralized marketplace for for data and It's not quite there yet because there's there's still the decentralization side has a ways to go I'd say but It's a great vision and I really hope it plays out. I'm happy to be contributing towards this kind of thing Yes and now So subgraphs are Is it a way of? Visualizing indexed what indexers are doing a way of visualizing it like is it is our subgraphs a Way of visualizing what is happening on chain The data on chain that indexers are organizing I Suppose you could put it that way, but it's still like it's still all just numbers, right? There's no there's no UI there. These are literally just like queries to a database. So usually Yeah, and it's current form the most common thing. You'll see Being used with the subgraphs are you know dashboards that kind of display data about certain protocols Okay, and so then how do you envision? Subgraphs in the process that we were describing and what is role and how do you roll up? Like reputational or merit-based data Yeah, that kind of Yeah, so okay, so if a subgraph Defines the criteria for Earning a badge then it can it can roll up all of the badges that have been earned into an encrypted An encrypted hash that is like very small We're I love this we're gonna break this down piece by piece. Okay, so the subgraph is The Like what would be required as On-chain behavior to earn a badge That's defined within the subgraph that's defined within the within the subgraph. Yeah, it's not the whole subgraph, but it's part of it. Okay. Yeah interesting then each Dow or each community is Designing their own subgraph and then Dependent and then the on-chain behavior of of agents Then depending on what the Dow wrote as their subgraph would then reward those agents with The communities badges. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And then Just to add one more thing there the criteria for earning a badge Doesn't have to be baked into the subgraph. It could change like you can deploy a subgraph And then the subgraph can listen to a smart contract to see if any new badge criteria Should be tracked and that's what you guys call foundry Foundry it would be like a that's what we're referring to as like a like our governance Badge-based governance. So so when a Dow wants to update their subgraph, I thought you guys were calling that foundry. Oh Yes, so yeah, if the governance determines that they want to update the subgraph Which would mean that the subgraph needs to track new events or new you know new stuff. Then yeah foundry That's fine. Cool. Cool. So that's Yeah, one of the ways that That's how that's what soul bound is calling that Functionality is the foundry component to it. Now is updating the subgraph Tracking new on-chain Events to then give their community members badges Okay, so that was the first part of what you shared was trying to So one part of subgraphs is Monitoring on-chain behavior of agents and then rewarding Those agents with badges, right? Okay, and then what was the second thing you said about? Oh the Get getting that information back on the blockchain. I think So yeah, so a subgraph it can award badges, but those badges are just existing in the Indexers, right? So as as I would get the badge then that data also needs to be placed on chain Is that what you're saying? Yeah, it doesn't need to be placed on chain But we feel like there's significant demand for it to be on chain There's also cool things you can do without putting it on chain. Okay. Oh Yeah, okay. So that's another component to subgraphs. So it's yes to you so far Yeah, I'm not so getting the the data from the subgraph and putting it back on chain is kind of a Technical problem that popped up for us kind of from the get-go really we initially planned on using chain link as an Oracle service to Get information from a subgraph and put it on chain, but we felt like it was complete overkill and That this could be done better by using attestations from the graphs dispute process because they have a really good Setup for slashing indexers that respond to queries incorrectly. Oh, so can indexers also put Subgraph data on chain They could yeah, okay, so yeah, really any so it could be set up in many different ways and theoretically it could be permissionless where literally anyone can query the subgraph for the latest state of the roll-up and When they query the decentralized network They get a response back and they get an attestation back from an indexer Okay, and so if you just post both of those things the response and attestation and the query to a smart contract Then the data could eventually be used once it's been sitting there for long enough that people agree that oh It's been here long enough and no one's disputed this so it's got to be true So it does take that extra step of everyone agreeing. Oh, how long does this need to? To be here before we can start extracting data out of it And then after that window is up then essentially you have this tiny bit of data That you can extract badges from by providing proofs to a smart contract and The way we imagine this working at least initially with soulbound labs is that we will literally just mint all of the the badges for Maybe for a Dow like if a Dow wants to have badges for their users We would mint all of them on a layer too because it's very cheap and as long as You understand the sub graph code and you kind of understand the protocol that you're making reputation for you have some kind of idea How many badges will probably be awarded or at least some kind of upper bound like? We can't commit to minting five billion badges on polygon even if it's one cent, right? Because it's just too expensive so There's that side of it as well like you have to know How many of these badges will come into existence and whether or not? Centralized party is willing to mint all of them or if you want to keep it Decentralized where like like for example, maybe if there's no party sitting there minting badges for everybody And I did something that's badge worthy Maybe I could query a sub graph and then just post the response and attestation to a smart contract myself and of course There's there's not actually a lot of technical know-how behind that if you have a nice web app Where you just click buttons and it does it for you? Like it sounds scary because it's like oh individuals are querying a sub-graph. Why would I want to do that? But really like it it could be a good use case for people that want to opt-in to their reputation instead of Having someone just summarize all of their history and put it on chain without their permission, you know Oh man, this is so good Okay, so Trying to keep breaking this down in Digestible ways so So is What is a roll-up in this process with sub graphs and data that's on chain The roll-up is basically, you know, you're taking well You ask me like what is a roll-up in general or for for this use case like a sub graph acting as a roll-up If I understand really is rolling up just compressing data Yeah, essentially and it's It is also ordered. So it's it's additive like you can't And in other words like you can't remove a badge like once Once something has happened The thing that happens after it has to build upon that. I got it. It's additive. Yeah You can't go back in time on chain and change things right immutability. Yeah, right. Okay, so it's additive so So actually roll-ups never in a sense decrease in size unless the compression becomes better They're always increasing in size in terms. Yeah, the state of the roll-up is always, you know over time. It's It's history is growing Okay, so then how does this work with the sub graphs? Yeah, so the sub graph what is the roll-up consist of with this? Yeah, the roll-up. So it's it's looking at all the things that the sub graph in the sub graphs In the sub graph code You you point it towards certain smart contracts and you say oh Listen for you know events that emitted from this smart contract in this smart contract Yes, and then whenever those events happen. Here's how you should respond. Here's how you should organize your data So is the is the roll-up a compression of the sub graph? It's a compression of part of the sub graph That you want to be in the roll-up. Okay, so in our case what we're interested in is reputation So the badges so what badges were earned? I see so your the roll-up is Compression of this repute of reputation of sub graph Reputation. Yeah, just the badges though just the ones that were actually earned like okay The stuff that you want to take from the sub graph and put on the blockchain That's the stuff that's in the roll-up. Okay. Okay, cool Okay So then I Or any Dow Ken We uniquely Program a sub graph to monitor for on-chain events Right, and then that's rolled up Yeah, that's what's rolled up. Yeah, that's what's compressed Yeah, the actual events not not the Which events to look for like the actual events that happen as they come in and they happen cool That gets rolled up. Yeah, very interesting. I keep I keep seeing this as some like ongoing like chain every whatever minute or the block on the chain and then I'm visualizing it as some sort of like a Like those thin silky hairs or something like that are just like kind of all pointing down That are all like looking for those specific on-chain events Hmm Interesting. Yeah, and then like As those are like being being being like it those happened then that is Like that's what's rolled up and then that's against stored on chain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Interesting and that's a sub graph this yeah, but the right and the storing on chain part The sub graph doesn't deal with that. Yeah, that's what you're talking about as An oracle that you are looking at potentially using. Yeah, so Right. Yeah, and in this Kind of design that I just explained the oracles would actually be the Indexers because they're the ones that are attesting to the data That is not even though it was generated on the blockchain. It was summarized in a Way that was not defined on the blockchain. So it's It's called a computation oracle like you are It's an oracle in the sense that it's Providing data that's not native to the environment that it exists in so and it's computation because it's it's literally just computing Data that was derived from the blockchain So oracles like chain link that provide price feeds It really is a different architecture than what we're looking for because we're just computing data that was already Generated by the by the blockchain What in this visual that we were talking about where the indexer is needed in what specific process Well, the indexer is Basically responsible for making this whole thing decentralized so The indexers are staking GRT and so if you're going to have any kind of assurance that an indexer's Response to a query is legitimate You need to know that they have some kind of Punishment if they lied right so basically the DAO still needs to work through an indexer in this process Um Yes, it needs it needs indexers indexing their subgraph and It's not like they need to go find indexers and ask them to run their subgraph like the graph protocol has a pretty good System for you know, they have curators so curators are responsible for Signaling GRT on subgraphs that they think Will become big so anything like if you see a subgraph and this is you know You have to kind of know your way around web 3 to understand this stuff, but If you feel like a subgraph will have high demand in the future and people will be querying indexers that are running that subgraph then you can Stake your signal your GRT and then if it does become big later and many other people start curating on it Then you've now made a profit because it uses a bonding curve So the people that buy curation shares early buy for a lower price than mm-hmm. Yeah ones that buy later very interesting so curation is sort of like Projecting out subgraph popularity. Yeah, yeah, exactly interesting Okay All right, so so one of the big questions maybe that we can also Leave the audience with is What would you in your communities? look for as On-chain events that you would like to reward us as soulbound labs like what I'm talking in terms of The viewers listening. Oh, yeah, so for them a question that they would ask themselves would be well What what would I as a DAO or as an organization? What would I want to reward as On-chain behavior with badges? that would then give merit-based access control or Reputation-based voting in my DAO or company So yeah, so what would they want to look at as on-chain behavior like for their unique initiative? Yeah, it's different for every initiative, right? So you have to define I mean, I think it ties in with your business model like what what are the on-chain actions that People that have skin in the game and your protocol are performing and those are the ones that You know, you want you want to reward reputation for a good example. It might be a little bit To to like crypto native, but uniswap little over a year ago did a airdrop to Users of their protocol in the past and so people people that traded on uniswap many years ago were rewarded for just using the protocol really just using the protocol and so And they also they launched a liquidity mining pro program So you could provide liquidity through uniswap and then get rewarded with this governance token union So one one thing that I kind of thought of at the time was like, oh, it seems like Uniswap governance would want to reward people that don't just liquidity mine and then immediately sell the uni token You'd think that oh, maybe that maybe it would be more valuable to the protocol to give people more voting power if they Liquidity mind and then held the uni token or put the uni token in another uniswap pool Like that's the best right if you if you literally take the governance token and then put it back in the protocol like it doesn't get better than that from You know a protocol perspective So it just seems like there are things that could get rewarded that are not already built into smart contracts and Subgraphs can be used to reward people for those things and hopefully years from now many more of our real-world events are Recorded on the blockchain so you can then reward reputation for them, you know, if a university is willing to Post on chain who has received a diploma then, you know, you can build off of that. Yeah, it's all composable Okay, so we're putting real-world events on chain and then we're having Communities create subgraphs that are looking for specific events on chain to then reward people with badges Soulbound NFTs saying that yes, we verify that this person did in fact Have this on chain event or the series of on chain events that then yes reward them with the soulbound NFT Yeah, so so a big part of of the future is putting real-world events on chain and then for Communities to create subgraphs to look for those events on chain to then reward their community members Yeah Very cool. Yeah Very cool. Okay. Now. This is great. I think we did a good job both getting into like Division and Big-scale stuff, but also Trying to get into these technical weeds that are like man It does take a good amount of time like going in deep to really grok this stuff. Yeah, definitely Do you feel like there are other components to the technicalities that you feel like you want to share? That could be helpful or do you feel like We didn't okay job covering I think we did a pretty good job covering it because it really is still In development like these are things that we're currently working on and so I don't want to like make any promises about We're designing it and then we end up going another way. You know, this is all innovative. It's fun Yeah, super fun working on this because it's a cutting edge And I like that's flexible. It's a dynamic It flows. So Yeah, I do I feel like this has been a great like first Like this is what's all about my abs is up to and this is what's possible. This is what's possible to go beyond Coin based governance into reputation and merit based governance and access control voting Which is really cool, right and right now there's an obvious demand for this in web 3 But I just imagine that years from now More data will be posted on the blockchain from the real world and not as a result of soulbound labs or reputation protocols but just because there are benefits to posting things on chain where everybody can see it and it can't be taken down can't be censored So in an environment where more things are getting put on chain Then reputation systems that are only looking at the blockchain become much more valuable Yeah, a world where reputation and merit systems are constantly scanning blockchain which is putting real world events on on chain and then rewarding community members for that that's Yeah for for reputation for merit and for access control for voting power that That makes I mean it just feels like it makes sense like in the in the heart and the gut In the mind it really just feels like yeah like That makes sense and it and it protects us from Like we were sharing earlier Flash loan attacks or just plutocracy or Any of the things of the past that we can feel like no longer work for the whole really well There's still too many let's say holes or leaks or Attack points and to Smooth To smooth all of those as many of those out as we can with reputation and merit based governance access control is exciting Yeah, absolutely nice man Do you feel like anything else about the vision or I mean, I think it's important probably to mention like So best place to find soulbound labs is emblem dow.com Right. Yes. Um, and you said that's your first adapt emblem is your first adapt decentralized application Right. Cool. And then that um That has Two main things cooking right now role bot and soulbound studio, right, right. Cool. Yeah, so soulbound Yeah, go ahead. You can maybe should we explain those? Yeah, so uh soulbound studio is kind of this idea for um a user interface for like creating reputation with like a drag and drop type of Flow where instead of actually writing subgraph code you can You can look at At icons and drag things around and and determine the criteria for winning a badge And then the idea is that once you once you've determined that criteria You can click a button and it just generates the subgraph code for you So it really lowers the bar for creating reputation Yeah, and then a role bot Anyone that has been in web 3 discord servers knows that There's a huge problem with uh scammers and as soon as you join a discord server you Get a bunch of messages from random people pretending to be from the team of the server you just joined and they're Whatever they're trying to do like get your eth or whatever it is So role bot is a way to verify That a discord user Also owns an account that has some reputation attached to it. So Like for example in the graphs discord server There's an indexer channel where all of the indexers communicate about You know upgrading their node or just quite random questions that they have and just being able to communicate with each other Is nice But anybody can join that channel. You don't have to be an indexer to join it So there there are improvements that could be made on discord servers to really just improve the quality of conversation that happens there because there there is A lot of benefit to having a platform like discord to communicate on and the The cleaner we can make it the better. I think so role bot is then showcasing that this Agent in the discord server actually has a high reputation Right and yeah, it could either be the access control like you can only get in this channel if you have these badges or You could also maybe like when you respond to a message It shows your badges next to your name or something like that so that people know right away that the people are talking Have actually done these things being passed. Yes. They're not just bullshitting. Yes. Yes Okay, cool. And then it would be good also for you guys to check out what Connor was mentioning about soulbound studio to just even go and if you feel like it on emblemed out you can find this little gooey and begin like playing around with what you're Your sub graph architecture would look like your badge reward system what that would look like cool And so yeah emblem dow.com The ability to what join the discord if it resonates follow on twitter. It's soulbound labs. That's right right on twitter What else are good action items If you're really interested in what we're building Uh Contact us on discord. I think is is the best we have we use notion and um a lot of our kind of The stuff that we're working on that hasn't been fully developed yet is in notion And if you're interested about that stuff, you can you can message us on discord Actually, I think you can access it just by going to soulbound labs dot xyz that will take take you to our notion nice Sweet so all of these links will be in the bio below Um, so go and support if this resonated go and support. This is the best way I as you guys know Is to Is to join these initiatives that most resonate with you And also if the video resonated with you is like the video Subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet comment below with your thoughts on the video on what conor sharing around the mission and the vision And the implementation of it and also share the video with others that you feel like this idea this vision could positively influence and maybe even get involved in the community Yeah, that's I mean those are the biggest things i'm super excited for the continuation of soulbound and In the vision man, this is beautiful stuff. It's exciting. It's been great being on yeah And it's a powerful beginning to our friendship too. I'm really excited about it It's gonna get even better tomorrow with spike ball spike ball, baby Yeah, man, so excited on the beach on the beach in this beautiful Santa Cruz, California, man Thanks everyone for tuning in infinite love and we'll catch you soon