 Wow I'm incredibly humbled and honored to be here. It's just such a fun event and I'm really excited to be here I won't be talking about mastering Ethereum Except for one thing There are probably at least a dozen people in this room who contributed to make that book happen I don't know if you know the story, but if you don't I Work with my publisher to make the books that I published through a Riley open source Which is something they don't do with all of their books and not just open source eventually, but open source from the beginning So you can download My books on github and read them for free and of course you can also buy them, but most importantly, I had the freedom and the privilege to be able to write my book as a Collaborative project in the true spirit of open source I'm a very big Believer in the creative commons. In fact, I think that's one of the things that We have That none of the competition has by we I mean the entire open source community around cryptocurrencies We don't suffer from the tragedy of the commons of closed proprietary systems We celebrate the festival of the commons through collaboration the creative commons and When I do my work, I know I'm standing on the shoulders of Thousands of other people who have put their passion and their creativity into building things that I have the privilege of trying to explain In my books and that's a collaborative process so Messering a theorem had a hundred and eighty contributors who pushed more than eight thousand commits and Submitted more than a thousand pull requests and issues more than a dozen of those people are in this room today So thank you so much all of you. You know who you are. Thank you Now I've been provided with what I've been told is a crawler It was suggested that I have a sip to loosen up Before I do my presentation that would send me directly into a blackout And what I by this point I can probably do a full-blown Bitcoin presentation blind drunk But I think for an ethereum presentation. I need to be sober so This will have to wait until the Q&A. So the way the Q&A goes is I start drinking when we start and Then it gets better As it progresses You'll know I have reached Peak relaxation when I suggest that you should buy XRP That at that point I'm clearly drunk All right So I'm glad you all here and I'm glad you all having fun This is really a tremendous conference, which really showcases the culture and ethos of the ethereum community and the broader cryptocurrency Ecosystem, and I'm really really honored to be here The topic I want to talk about is a bit touchy though so I Want to talk about unstoppable code? I Bring a certain perspective Because I started with Bitcoin and in fact I've been fascinated by the cypher punk ethos since the early 90s. Yeah, I'm that old and Part of that ethos is this idea of of Using Cryptography as a defensive mechanism in order to claim Assert and enforce our human rights It's about using the magic of numbers that cannot be used offensively They can only be used purely defensively But they bring to an individual the awesome power That rivals even the power of the state the most fearsome conglomerate of totalitarian governments in the world can kiss my 256-bit key and They won't be able to brute force it. It doesn't matter how angry or violent or annoyed They are with what I said or signed or paid or did Cryptography gives individuals this ability to assert power to assert sovereignty to create The conditions that allow them to express human rights and enforce human rights and assert Human rights, and I strongly believe in these things I believe in freedom of expression and freedom of speech and creating diverse environments where we all have powers that can't be taken away from us And so one of the things that fascinated me about the theorem from the very beginning Was this idea of unstoppable code? You may have heard the slogan Unstoppable code. It was the first two words on the website during the launch And I think it informs a lot of the people who got involved in this project early on It's the same thing that makes me interested in Bitcoin and that got me started on this journey the idea of having speech that is Uncensurable Not because you asked nicely not because anybody likes what you have to say, but because they simply can't stop you And that's a very powerful thing and it's more necessary than ever in today's world We're gradually sliding into crisis after crisis We're seeing a rise of totalitarianism and As a result, it's never been more important to give people all over the world the tools To be able to express Themselves to assert their rights and to be sovereign right now Most of the environment in ethereum is very very kumbaya. I love it Unicorns Buffy corns puppies and rainbows. I love it this beautiful wellspring of creativity passion joy This sense of possibility It's not gonna last and part of the reason it's not gonna last is because what we're doing here is important and It seizes power It seizes power on behalf of individuals, but it seizes power from Forms of power Governments corporations states associations cultures religions countries it seizes power from these big things and gives them to little people and Sooner or later Some of the people who are losing power in this equation unearned power Undeserved power abusively applied power will start fighting back and At that point we're gonna find out How unstoppable the code is so what kind of code needs to be unstoppable? What kind of code do we need to build that is in fact unstoppable? Just like in free speech The only speech worth protecting is that which offends deeply offends Inocuous speech does not require protection In some cases it doesn't even deserve it journalism is Speaking the things people don't want you to publish Everything else is public relations You've heard that quote The only speech worth protecting is the speech people don't want to hear and the only Code that needs to be unstoppable is code that someone's trying to stop and That's worthwhile That's exciting governance is the killer app for ethereum and unstoppable code is Also the killer app for ethereum, but between them there's this very subtle tension and That tension doesn't appear until you start doing interesting things you see There used to be a time when Bitcoin hadn't offended too many people We were still in the laughing at us stage The ridicule stage of development and then something interesting happened Called the Silk Road. How many people have heard of the Silk Road? All of you very good. I Won't ask. I'm sure it was just insulin and asthma inhalers Good stuff. You were buying and you should The Silk Road Brought Bitcoin to the limelight prematurely scared off a lot of Bitcoiners and Generated a ton of bad publicity that haunts Bitcoin to this day because it associated the spending of money with the consumption of Narcotics and of course if you want to malign a technology drugs is step one Right child abuse is probably step two terrorism is step three You might rearrange them depending on the proclivities of your government But if you want to wrap up a nice big dollop of censorship You're gonna pick one of those three wrappings to deliver it to the sheep and tell them why this thing needs to be stopped You know, I'm no prude when it comes to consumption of narcotics And buying things in underground black markets. I understand. I like to think of these things as biology right Did you know the dolphins get high? so You know puffer fish right and if you annoy them they puff up They also excrete a toxin on the surface of their skin. That is let's say annoying at least but Potentially fatal to most fish except dolphins dolphins get high of puffer poison so what they do is they get in a circle they find a puffer fish and Then they squeeze it in their mouth until it gets Annoying and release a bit of venom and they puffer puffer pass puffer puffer pass because you know they understand the etiquette of puffer chewing and And so like if we were the first species to not get high That would be an anomaly because evolutionary speaking There is no species that doesn't get high So when it comes to drug markets, I'm a pragmatist like there's a reason people Want to use drug markets and the reason is really simple you can't get stabbed over TCP IP It's really simple. It's all about violence and It has a very interesting effect on markets because it immediately removes violence which removes a lot of the risk-based Premium driving prices out down and driving organized crime out of the market now I'm not gonna try and persuade other people that we should legalize this stuff. Colorado is doing a pretty good job at it What I'm gonna try and persuade people is that these things will exist They will keep happening They will happen because there's always been demand They will always be supply and where demand and supply exists markets emerge always And so what do we do about that and what do we do about that as a community that's building platforms of code that are potentially unstoppable Because right after the Silk Road happened The conversation around Bitcoin changed rapidly until then Quite a few large corporations were talking about it And then they came up with this great phrase which is Well, we're more interested in the technology behind Bitcoin the blockchain Right, which is the sound of 10,000 marketing officers backpedaling furiously because they just read the article about drug markets and like oh shit Take it off all the posters I've got news for you We're interested in the technology behind Ethereum smart contracts that is a phrase you're gonna hear in the next few years People are gonna start backpedaling furiously and The reason for that is because Ethereum is going to succeed It's going to succeed in being a viable platform for writing unstoppable code and the next silk road Will be fueled by dye Will be running on swarm will use whisper communications will be a fully autonomous Dapp without administrators that you can give to life sentences plus 40 and it will be unstoppable and the moment people figure this out There's gonna be calls To every prominent person in Ethereum every committee foundation Authority governance body anyone who seems to have any control and they're going to say Yeah, that's that's cute, but stop it. Yeah, you've you've had your fun We heard you on stop the code yada yada smart contracts Dabs the sentence just stop it. Okay, cuz now it's a drug market. You got to stop it and Most of the people in Ethereum if they're smart are gonna go will I can't won't Can't won't what's the difference between can't and want What's the difference between can't and won't? Two life sentences plus 40 years is the difference between can't and won't when you say you want governance Beware what you ask for Governance changes can't into won't and the moment you go over that line What became what started as an ability? Becomes a responsibility and If you claim you don't have the ability anymore that responsibility just became negligence criminal negligence governance and Unstoppable code are going to form this very very fine line that we have to tread very carefully Is your line the Silk Road? Probably not. I mean look at where we are. Look at this crowd clearly not But what about child port? What about terrorism financing and and here's the problem? The problem is that We all have a moral compass. We all have a set of principles. We all have a set of ideals and we like to believe That these are universal ideals that these are universal principles that we believe in One morality one human set a Code of conduct. Where do you get yours? Maybe from a book? Maybe from evolution maybe from parenting maybe from socialization maybe from Montessori I Don't know but you got yours somehow you have a moral code Well, I've got bad news for you. It's not universal. It's highly subjective. It's incredibly relative So let's talk about moral relativism Moral relativism is a fun topic especially for conservatives Any conservatives having an aneurysm in this house right now moral relativism now? I'm a moral relativist Not because I believe Moral relativism is the moral choice Ironically it isn't Moral relativism is the pragmatic recognition that I look around me in the world And I read my history books and I look at other cultures other religions other countries other people with other capabilities and Chances than I did and They don't share my morality In fact, I'm hard-pressed to find any two people who share Everything in their moral code and this is where the crux of governance versus unstoppable code comes to a head Because every conversation I hear about governance among affluence privileged Northern American Western European people who share 90% of a common code of morality that is common only to 15% of the human population I'm wondering do you really think when you're saying governance has to be Subservient to some kind of legal framework when you're saying we need an anchor in law or a basis in law whose law Maybe you're assuming your law. I wouldn't assume that Because every time someone says you that's illegal don't go. Oh, yeah Go where Illegal where if you understand one thing about the law You understand that that question is the most important where in Denver in Colorado in Wyoming or South Dakota if you leave Colorado after having Partaken and you go to South Carolina They can arrest you for possession For the trace amounts that are in your bloodstream So they don't share Colorado's laws And you don't have to go very far to cross that line and not know that you cross that line Or that the law suddenly changed very very radically Just in this country, but if you go a bit further Things get really really weird and we live in this bubble where we assume that our morality is of course the true one the one true doctor and the one true religion the one true ethos the one true culture USA But the truth is that we live in a varied world And so when you talk about governance and you talk about applying law the fundamental problem is where whose law and Boy, will you hate some of those laws? My existence is Illegal in at least four countries Not my ideas not my actions My existence I'm an atheist in at least four countries Even if I say nothing if someone can prove From something I've said in the past that that is my situation label Non-religiosity, I mean, you know, it's a pretty narrow claim to make It's not an earth shattering description of what defines me But I am worthy of the death penalty in four countries just for existing Anyone whose LGBTQ 83 countries where your existence is illegal in North Korea Only six hairstyles are allowed for men North Korea is the fifth country Where my existence is Illegal You may have noticed at this point that I managed to call this a hairstyle as If I have a choice Denial the point being that the morality you apply is going to be highly relative The laws you apply are going to be highly relative If you set up a system of unstoppable code that is by default global from day one That is completely borderless You now have to contend with two possible scenarios no laws or all laws and The second one's impossible. You cannot comply with all laws There will be contradictions that mean that in some jurisdiction what you're doing is illegal So I'll just go for no laws fuck it unstoppable code No permission No apologies No reservations and think about this for a principle For every bad application of unstoppable code that you can come up with I can come up with a hundred good Applications of unstoppable code that are abhorrent in countries that do not share my moral code self-sovereignty for women in Saudi Arabia abhorrent to their culture adapt that allows 13-year-old brides to escape the hellhole of their impending marriage in insert four or five countries here abhorrent in their culture Moral in my view, but it's not my view that matters The question is if you create a framework for unstoppable code What applications can we write as human beings? What applications will we write as human beings? I Think we'll write some great applications. Well, we don't share morality I think one of the common themes of humanity is goodness We all share that the vast majority of people given unstoppable code Will write code that enables them to give their family a future their children in education healthcare sanitation Housing an opportunity That's what people do with freedom and guess what freedom itself is abhorrent in Dozens of places in this world and unstoppable code can fix that If you have the ability to apply governance to override to overrule to backtrack to remove to reverse You will have the ability and then you will be asked by every jurisdiction in which your code appears Which is every jurisdiction at some point to exercise that ability and maybe you'll say no because they can't reach you from there But they're gonna reach you somehow because you live in at least one country. Hey, you never know We might fuck up an election and end up in a situation where our own government is asking us to do up hard things What are you gonna do then? Governance is a double-edged sword. Yes With the doubts we have today. We need to have in many cases and oops claws Right. Oops. I locked a hundred and fifty million dollars in my multi-sig oops My decentralized autonomous Mutual fun just went kaboom. Oops Yeah, okay, we may need some forms of governance Be careful when you put those in and think carefully about what capabilities you want to give to who? because Ability very quickly becomes Responsibility and then not acting becomes negligence You will find yourselves unable to travel to a lot of countries if you start doing the wrong things with governance if you do put an oops claws Make it an oops claws that blows up the entire dap Preferably so that you can start a new one where you fix that problem and have less of an oops claws Don't put oops clauses that allow you to reverse one transaction or narrowly tailor an intervention There's a principle in law at least in the United States, which is the idea of a common carrier The concept of a common carrier is that like a service provider or a platform where The service provider or platform does not create or post content and Therefore they have a degree of immunity for the content posted or transmitted across their platform by users right if I get on the phone and Arrange a conspiracy to commit a crime AT&T is not responsible for stopping me They cannot be held liable One of the concepts behind this is the idea that they cannot and will not tailor responses to specific content If they start picking and choosing if they start exercising discretion if they start Moderating if they demonstrate the ability to remove some content and not other content then The requests start pouring in Right. I've been in some of these offices. I've seen it happen You have a fax machine in the corner and every few minutes it spits out a page And on the top of the page is an eagle holding a hammer with a shield and a sword And it says sheriff of piss-fuck podunk little town compels you to do XYZ if You open yourself to that you're going to learn the names of some very exotic places Followed by the word cease and desist so don't Don't allow content-based restrictions. Don't build systems where you have moderating ability don't give yourself the power to stop unstoppable code Embrace the fact that what we're doing is important and it will require courage and Before long we are going to hear some very non kumbaya sounds Coming from the Enterprise Alliance the corporate partners the senior executives the board dudes the consultants and all of the MBAs And at that point we need to remember why we're doing this Why we're building this? because There's no point in building stoppable code We already have it It's called the cloud It's an international surveillance engine where you put your data on other people's computers So they can rape your privacy every day and make billions We already have Stoppable code and if we were going to build Stoppable code for God's sakes don't do it on an infrastructure That's so hard to scale so bloody inefficient so difficult to understand that just to explain the most basic Concepts takes four hundred and twenty pages and two years of my life. I Have a suggestion Microsoft sequel server enterprise edition with replication engine got it That's the platform for stoppable code Databases we have them they work. They're efficient. We know how to use them There's thousands of people trained on them hundreds of thousands millions of people trained on them. You don't need that platform This platform is for unstoppable code This platform is our promise to the future. We will do things differently Because it matters