#citizenweb3

Episode link:
https://www.citizenweb3.com/jelena

Episode name:
Human Nature, Cencorship and the Free Market with Jelena Djuric 

Citizen Web3
Hey everybody, welcome to a new episode of Citizen Cosmos. And today we have Jelena with us from Informal Systems who's taking care of all the product marketing efforts. I hope I got it right, Jelena. Hey, welcome.

jelena 
Hey, Sergey. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, excited to be here. I've been listening to your show for a couple of years now, so it's nice to be.

Citizen Web3
No, that's a lie. I like the sweet lies though. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

jelena
I ever since I joined Cosmos, know, Citizen Cosmos, it's a good name, it's a good brand. This was one of the first places, yeah, I think I started to, you know, listen to people's voices and see what they were all about and what's this crazy community all about, you know?

Citizen Web3 
Nice.

Citizen Web3 
To be honest, that's very flattering and a great compliment. Thank you for that because that's what we strive to, to try to bring people and to get them to understand who are the people behind Cosmos like yourself. we're going to try and get, this is actually my first question to you. So I could like do a better intro for you, but I don't want to, I want you to explain because when I look at the information about you online, you were like a community manager at definity.

then now you're taking care of all the product marketing efforts and informal systems. If you look at your Twitter, there is a lot of like political, not political things. if you read about you, so the question, first question is who is the Elena? What does she do and where is she going? Where is she heading? Where is like, what's, what's the goal? What's the targets?

jelena 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's a little bit all over the place, isn't it? Well, yeah, let me kind of, yeah, I'll introduce myself and maybe take it back to probably university when I first discovered Bitcoin, fell down the rabbit hole. So yeah, I'm from Canada, I'm from Toronto. And yeah, at the University of Toronto, I was very interdisciplinary in my degree and I've always been.

very interdisciplinary minded, if you can say that. So I studied political science, economics, sociology through a degree called the Peace and Conflict Studies Program. And yeah, when I was at the University of Toronto, I kind of like had this revelation, this was probably before I discovered Bitcoin that...

our modern institutions and systems are failing us and we're gonna see a lot more crisis pop up. Probably not on the scale of a major, I don't know, world war or something, but there's micro-crisis everywhere, right? So one huge thing that kind of happened while I was studying at the University of Toronto was the refugee migration crisis from the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, into Western Europe.

I mean, I'm sure you saw photos and I mean, this was like all over the news. It's still happening, but it's not headlines anymore. And I noticed, I mean, as I was watching this, I saw like that the migrants were having to cross through the Balkans and I'm actually Serbian. And I was really fascinated by this because my own family has a history of migration and being political refugees.

We don't have to get into that, but I was really fascinated to see how this country, well, I mean, this region, which dealt with its own refugee crisis only like two decades ago was now dealing with a new refugee crisis, but a very different one. So anyways, I was having to figure out my thesis for what I would graduate with. And I decided I would focus on this.

jelena 
this crisis in the Balkans and how actually this part of Europe, which is not really part of the European Union, it's definitely not Western Europe. It's kind of this space in between how they were dealing with all these people coming through. And then really quickly, I realized through self-organization, through a decentralized system of governance and care, and then I kind of...

went there. I went there. I saw what was happening. I met with lot of organizations that were providing this aid, trying to deal with this crisis as the European Union was failing them. And then, yeah, kind of apply that, you know, I guess I always remember that experience because I think even in our like little ecosystem, governance is a huge, huge issue or huge problem challenge. Sorry, not an issue. And so I kind of always remember my practical experience being there, seeing real people.

physically, materially struggling, and then all these other people trying to self-organize and provide some system for them in absence of a dominant system. And then, yeah, I guess that took me to here. No, but I mean, I think in all seriousness, it really kind of made me have this huge revelation that as systems fail us, we're gonna have to continually self-organize.

And we're have to continually find new ways of coordinating. And yeah, I think that probably resonates with you, Sergey.

Citizen Web3
A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. I like when people are not being shy that they have values behind their journey because a lot of the time you talk to, not specifically on the podcast, the guests, but in general and people like for some reason they're like, they really like don't want to talk about what brings them somewhere. And I really like that because I used to live in Serbia for some time as well. And yeah, not for too long, just for a couple of months, like a couple of years ago during the pandemic actually.

Yeah, so and in the Balkans in January and we had Jarko obviously from an informal and he's he was speaking a little bit about that situation as well. But back to you. So all this like political or partially political thing that led you to Bitcoin. let me just clarify what year are we talking about with Bitcoin?

jelena 
Yeah, so, university, discovered it in university 2014. And then I went to do this like research project in 2015. So, yeah, that was kind of the timeline. I did and it's very, it's very sad. So what ended up happening at some of the, I'll tell you, so some of the Canadians may be listening might, might know about this. So there was this big exchange in Canada called Quadriga. I don't know if you've heard of it. Yeah.

Citizen Web3
Did you buy Bitcoin at the time? Yeah! Why?

jelena 
And back then I was very, I don't know, I was silly. guess I didn't manage. Yeah, I didn't manage my tokens properly. And anyways, I ended up losing the first kind of, you know, bunch. That's okay. We live and learn. I never, you know, I should say something like speaking about personal like incentives. I never, you know, got into this like I never when I discovered Bitcoin, maybe again, I was a little bit naive or something. But I never actually thought of it as like something that could make like

Citizen Web3 
Hahaha

jelena 
me money or like even wealth. Like I always thought, it's just really like useful. It's practical. Like it's this thing that can like protect you if you're a dissident. It's this thing that can protect you if you're fleeing persecution. And I'm going to buy it not because I'm in that political situation myself. I mean, you know, I grew up relatively quite safe, but I'm going to buy it to, you know, like see how it works. Like, you know, what a wallet is, you know, I was just interested to like use the thing. But I never thought, I'm going to hodl it and like, you know.

Some sort of like asset maybe I should have I don't know It was always this thing that I was like kind of you know Loose with I guess but obviously I know better now

Citizen Web3
I can imagine telling this story to your grandkids or me telling this to my grandkids. I could never imagine myself owning a digital ape. But let's go back to your journey. I want to get the journey down to the end. So there's uni, is Bitcoin, there is everything. I mean, was this affinity, right? I don't know if you want to talk about it too much.

jelena 
my god.

Citizen Web3 
So you spent some time as a community manager at Infinity, right? How was that?

jelena
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was so that was my yeah, that was my first full time job in the space. Before then I was, you know, going to meetups in Toronto, learning as much as I possibly could, and trying to like, deploy a smart contract with some tutorial on Ethereum, I don't know, just doing whatever I could to like really start to understand this technology on a deeper level, right? This was after I kind of discovered Bitcoin's principles, but but you know, before I was, let's say working full time in this space. So

Yeah, I was in Toronto, a good friend of mine joined Polychain and obviously, Definity had a really kind of well-known funding round from major sort of kind of investors in the space. And then he was like, hey, like they're looking for a community manager, would you want to join? And I was like, yeah, I mean, absolutely. I went to go interview down there and then I joined.

It was really exciting. think community management means a lot of different things in this space. think depending on where the project is in its life cycle, you'll focus on different areas. at that time, obviously, DEFINITY was pre-launch, just raised a major round. The direction also, I think, at the time was more around mass communications, like PR, media relations, that kind of.

let's say community management, also like some investor relations, like how do we engage the different token holder communities? Because I don't know how much you knew about their different rounds, it was, they had a seed round, they had I think two or three strategic investor rounds. So depending on when people bought in, like there was different kind of ways of engaging them. And also we didn't actually know who the seed round folks were until like, yeah.

later. Well, I mean, I don't even think now they know like it was anonymous, right?

Citizen Web3
Well, think think like all the best people that I made that work in crypto, myself included, obviously, we started as community managers. So, know, it's like, it always it always starts like that. And then it goes down the hill from then. And then you're like, my God, own a company. I go, my God, I'm doing crypto all full time now. But I'm kidding, of course. so but I have like a devil's advocate question. I can't not help not to ask. What do you think about where ICP?

jelena
No!

jelena
Yeah.

Citizen Web3 
let's call them like that is now and the whole like with the validators that they had. It was a bit like a lot of people I know who invested at very, very early stages, of course, like hoping for it to be what it was with a lot of, I don't know what's the right words to put here, right? Like, again, this is devil's advocate question. So the question is that, do you think that what it was set out to be originally?

the same thing is still going on with all the validator thing that they only had like only approved equipment and only the equipment for it was like a whole, a whole mess kind of thing. And in some people's opinion, what do you think about that as somebody who worked for them?

jelena 
Yeah.

jelena 
Yeah, I mean, like being on the inside, like I, you know, I was kind of able to see like privilege information, so to speak, like before launch. And everything, to be honest, like I saw in terms of like how, like, you know, how the network was going to be rolled out, how they would engage like data centers, for example, data center companies, how they would even like do SLAs with with different validators, how

how developers would be onboarded. There's like a unique programming language called Matoko. I all of that I got to see before launch, right? I guess before like the public and to be honest, I mean, you can argue whether or not the strategy is correct, but they have like stay true to their principles, I would say. mean, DEFINITY has always taken like,

I think they've taken a different approach. mean, it's literally like black and white compared to cosmos. I mean, it's completely opposite, but they're a lot more, I mean, I think they take a lot more inspiration from like the Silicon Valley playbook, right? I remember like the founder, he would always talk about like a blitz scaling, like, which I always found to be an interesting term, because like, it has like wartime connotations, but it's like the Reid Hoffman thing, right?

And so anyways, his whole strategy was like, you know, like hire fast, hire fast, scale quickly, hire the top talent, pay, you know, pay them, you know, Google competitive rates type of thing. And I mean, yeah, like the team itself is like, definitely like one of the strongest in the space, like from like an expertise perspective. So, you know, I think a lot of people expected like, definity to follow.

the same kind of trajectory as like other projects that like launch. I mean, you always see a dip like in the beginning, right? But I think they expected like the token price to be somewhat steady. And of course there was like a massive, fluctuation between like the close to the top and like what it is now. But again, like it's a long-term project. I mean, I still keep in touch with the team. I think.

jelena 
they are still focused on the way that they want to build. And that's their choice. Not every project needs to come out with a bang and stay at that level for the whole time. I mean, it's like a century long project, even longer than that. I Dom always, mean, there's also like,

Citizen Web3
Definitely.

jelena 
ICP holders, like if you want to stake in the network, like it's like an eight year long staking set up as well. anyways.

Citizen Web3 
Definitely, definitely. think if I'm not mistaken, it's like one of the like longest drugging. I think made safe is probably like the longest where they still like they still build in something and eventually they probably will like one day hopefully. And with the Finity it was like, you know, waiting for so many years and then a lot of people, I think that was like the main shock. was like, okay, but I agree with you. This is the beauty of decentralization. Each team has their own like approach.

And you have a choice as a potential token holder, you see in advance what you're going to get. As with a post, nobody's telling you this is what you're going to get. And then somebody's lying to you. So you see already where you're getting. I totally agree here. But on a slightly different question, what do you think about the approach of... And of course, you work in for quite a big company, I would say, like Informal Systems. You guys do a lot of things.

I can understand that your opinion will be different to mine here, but I'm really curious in hearing it. Like, what's your opinion on approach of a lot of networks when they're tracking the initial set of validators, they go through a KYC process. And some people say that that could be kind of dangerous, to be honest, because if somebody somewhere has the detail of all those

jelena 
Hmm.

Citizen Web3 
Like, the KYC process is not often just the name and the address, it's often a lot more than just that. So that's kind of like a could be a point of failure where somebody somewhere is sitting on a detail of like half of the detail of proof of stake network operators. Like what do you think it's something that should be done, should not be done, a different approach by different teams, as you say, what's your opinion here?

jelena 
Yeah, mean, so this is, I mean, this is me speaking personally now on like kind of my philosophy or political perspectives on this. I definitely think like the single point of failure on the validator level is a big problem. mean, like, obviously, this concept of a censorship resistant kind of decentralized network needs to be practically adhere to through like obligations, right, by different network participants. So for example, I mean, if you have

an SLA and if you have like this KYC process and you know, you're let's say identified by whatever jurisdiction you reside in, there's always the possibility that you could be compelled to maybe give up certain information, maybe even change your operations. There's definitely a lot more possibility for like manipulation and coercion and control by like entities.

like far removed from you, let's say. So I mean, I think like, it's interesting actually, just speaking about Definity, there was actually like a very interesting governance discussion in their forum a month ago, maybe. I hopped into it because this is something I care a lot about, but there was this issue where a company, I can't remember which one, it was like a gaming company and they,

actually sent a letter to Definity. I don't think it was a cease and desist letter. I don't think it was that intense, but it was some sort legal document that pretty much highlighted that their network was actually processing software or digital assets that could be construed to be copyright infringement.

I forget exactly which company. I want to say it was like Nintendo, but like not Nintendo. Anyways, it was like some company that was telling Definity, hey, your network is processing assets that are most likely copyright infringements. Like, what are you going to do about it? And so there was this governance discussion because the question was, do we now censor

jelena 
that do we censor the nodes that are actually processing these assets? And it was really interesting because the actual DFINITY Foundation overwhelmingly has governance power and control over the network and could in fact, in a very centralized way, make that decision to censor those nodes, those validators. But in the end, I think that didn't happen. That didn't need to happen. obviously, in the end, the question is,

if that were to happen, if like, let's say tomorrow, like in your network, there is something horrible happening. don't know, like terrorists are raising money or child porn is proliferating in the network. Like what obligations do you as an entity that stewards this public open network have versus the decentralized web of participants that are just one entity of many in this network. So yeah, I mean,

I got into it, I think that it's definitely a slippery slope. I mean, we see this right now with like Web2 and like also like Facebook's and like the Facebook's of the world and like YouTube and Google and others of censorship of content and also like manipulation of what you see as the end user. I mean, I think with Web2, like there's been so many decades of, you know, development and...

It's a bit different, right? Like we're still at the early stages. So we also don't want to compromise ourselves in the eyes of like regulators, in eyes of policymakers and say, this is going to be like anarchy. But at the same time, we also do want to prevent like the things I think we're seeing in web two right now happen in web three, which is, you know, a very few number of companies that are centralized with like very small, relatively small set of decision makers, like on their board or whatever.

making these decisions to kind of override the will of the majority, I would say. I mean, it's complicated because we see now happening, but at same time, you don't want to, like, shoot yourself in the foot and, like, let really bad things happen before we've even, let's say, been proven in the market as, like, a technology that will be here to stay forever. 

Citizen Web3 
At the time of recording this, which is today, what, the 11th of February, I hope it's not a secret. So there has been quite a lot of discussion on Twitter recently.

jelena 
Yeah.

Citizen Web3
from J from J when J J I'm not sure how to pronounce J's name. That's weird. But anyways, and he pointed out that the ICF didn't publish reports for a while. Is that what you're like? Does that have any reference to the definitive foundation of what you're talking about? Do you think it's a good thing? A bad thing?

Citizen Web3 
Is Jail right? there be more? I mean, for example, there was a discussion between, I believe, Jacob from Notional and Daniela in one of the governance chats about, they should use the memo every time when they do transactions. So again, being on both sides of the coin, I understand that it bends.

Decentralization does bend. Let's put it that way. It's a big spectrum. But the question is back to you. What do you think about this? Do you think that there should be more? Do you think that whatever has been done is right? It's like a vague question, abstract one.

jelena 
Yeah, I mean, it's a really relevant discussion. I mean, being like, again, kind of like on the inside, so to speak, at like, divinity and like now like at informal, we work very closely with the interchange team, as well on like different initiatives. You know, a lot of these discussions, think theoretically are like really important to have. But I think it's also important to kind of look at it practically like factually, like what's

Like what's happening, right? In terms of like following process, like governance, like upholding like important norms, like transparency and accountability. And I mean, just like very like straightforward, what Danielle said was like very correct. Right now, there's just been so much work being done at the ICF to just reorganize and rebuild processes around like the grants, around...

just like even things related to compliance that, and also in terms of like how the ICF works with other teams, because I think the ICF like holds obviously an important position in this ecosystem. So making sure that like teens working with the ICF are like adequately supported in terms of like not just resources through like funding, but also through like manpower and like making sure that.

work happens collaboratively. We actually publish a blog post at Informal around our workflow and how we do work at Informal in terms of negotiations and something called the customer-performer relationship. It's all very much in the spirit of Informal, which is a cooperative. But we're trying to take that as well to other entities in Cosmos because it's definitely been a challenge historically. So this funding thing and

posting blogs, post on like where resources go to, think is like, yeah, unfortunately just probably something that hasn't happened, not because of malice or like mal intent, but because of literal like human resources. I don't like calling people resources, like literally just like human energy that hasn't been able to be dedicated towards this type of thing. Yeah, it's like not.

Citizen Web3
Wow. Wow.

Citizen Web3
Energy is resources, right? no, come on. I'm just being like, again, devil's advocate here. But to be honest, in my experience, citizen cosmos experience, we worked with the ICF and actually it was very...

jelena
Yeah, that's true. I don't know.

jelena 
Yeah.

Citizen Web3 
We, we, don't know, like our contact with them has always been like up to speed, up to date. don't know what's the right like expression to use here. So, but it will be interesting to see how it evolves because like I say, I have been on both sides of the medal here of the story and not in particular this story, but before. And yeah, let's see how it's, I'm pretty sure though that it's something that it just needs more, like you say, manpower.

jelena 
Yeah.

Citizen Web3 
I just need more people. can imagine like the, how to say, the responsibility that the guys at the ICF feel like handling such a huge amount of funds, to be honest. And like, it is a lot, but

jelena 
Yeah.

jelena 
responsibility. And like, just one thing I'll say, you know, in our ecosystem, we talk a lot about, you know, again, governance, coordination. And I think like people just like forget there's like a very human element to all this. It's not just about like, you know, consensus algorithms and, you know, these theoretical like, like, like, like, computer science.

Citizen Web3 
Sure.

jelena 
Focuses it's also actually like literally like coordinating humans like humans with biases humans with their own political perspectives agenda in some cases and so you really have to be I think thoughtful and like actually the human governance probably takes a lot longer and it's a lot harder I would argue to figure out because it's a lot more variable You know, there's different things that can happen that you can't necessarily account. You can't account for you can't predict so how do you like

manage that, like how do you respond to that? So again, like, it's good points that were raised about transparency and accountability. But at the same time, it's like, we have to kind of look at the bigger picture of like, what is needed to effectively coordinate the ecosystem. Like you said, it's a huge amount of funds, it's a lot of different entities, it's a lot of different priorities as well. So it just it takes time. And like, I think in our industry, unfortunately, people are like a little bit impatient. So

That's all I'll say.

Citizen Web3 
It is a very quick industry, like in terms of, think I've never in my life, I'm not that old. I'm not that young though. And like I've never, I don't think I've ever experienced anything that's quicker. not because it's just 24 seven, everything happens like such a great, but, you're definitely right. And it's became very like, about community and about governance. It's became now very.

Fashionable to call because I'm up to the layer one layer two and now it's very fashionable to say that there is a layer zero and that's the community and not anything else so we have like all the L ones but below that you have to sort out the main layer, but anyways, Let's let's go to informal finally. So in formal, I've always been personally quite interested in the role of informal first because well, I guess one of the founders of

jelena
Yeah.

jelena 
Yeah.

Citizen Web3 
Cosmos is the head of the organization, obviously Ethan. And then I've been in contact with a lot of people from Informal and a lot of the work that, for example, that's Jarqoda, that's fascinating me. That was like, probably one of my favorite episodes for sure. Like I really love talking to him. But tell me what's...

taken care of, like all the product and the marketing stuff. Tell me all the secrets. 

jelena
Yeah.

jelena
At Informal,

jelena
We are structured first of all as a cooperative, which means that every member in the organization has one vote in terms of key kind of business decisions that get made. But I mentioned that in the context of our work because we're also, I mean, we're structured formally as a crop cooperative in terms of legal rights, but the way that work is carried out is also very, I would say cooperative in nature and collaborative. So right now we're very focused on

again, like planning and like workflows and making sure that the way that the work happens is thoughtful and deliberate. I could get into the like specifics of exactly the projects we're focusing on, but I would definitely encourage people to check out our blog post that came out think last week on workflows and also our handbook because I think, again, just talking about like human coordination, this is something that like we're intensely, intensely focused on. anyways, there's the workflows. That's one thing that we're very focused on.

shouldn't be a secret because we're starting to now publish a lot of the thought and theory behind it and also the application. But in terms of specific focuses, so right now, there's different teams, different projects, we're working on different things. Something obviously interesting, I think, probably to you and to people listening is around IBC and a lot of the work being done around the relayer. it's really exciting, obviously, to see IBC live, token transfers just

pinging back and forth constantly between the different chains. Obviously a lot of the traffic going to Asmosis right now. We're still working on obviously Hermes, improving the Relayer. It is the most widely adopted Relayer in terms of functionality, user experience, fun things like that. But we're also now focusing on actually figuring out the Relayer operations side of the business. So how to make it sustainable, how to even think about the...

real-life operations part of the business as like maybe its own like business entity. There are dependencies in ecosystem for sure that will influence kind of how we're gonna be productizing or real-life operations, something like the IBC DAO, which is probably gonna be shared more widely in the coming weeks.

jelena 
But Reeler Operations is interesting and informal because not only are we building the Reeler itself Hermes, but we're also actually running it through Cephalopod, our validator. So you have this really interesting kind of like, I guess, symbiotic relationship between the researchers, the developers on the IBC side, and then also the operators through the validator. we're becoming a lot more thoughtful and deliberate about thinking about the business model of both.

Hermes, but also the realer operations side of the business. So that's something very interesting. I'm doing a lot of like design sprints, you know, with different stakeholders, something that I love doing, getting people's feedback, finding that like finding the nuances within that feedback, really talking through it, like the culture and informal is extremely, I think, empowering. And I think that has something to do with the cooperative, like people and I mean, I hope but people feel very

like empowered to give their insight, their feedback, their expertise, so that at end of the day, we're like genuinely like designing and building this thing together. So that's like, you know, the IBC side of things. We're also working on Interchain Security. That's also in cooperation with some of the developers over at the Interchain team. And Interchain Security is something obviously I think like the Cosmos ecosystem is really excited about.

Yeah, working to Johan is leading that effort in terms of the design and development research behind it. And I've been supporting him in reaching out to different stakeholders that will like, you know, be kind of leveraging into interesting security in one shape or form. So obviously, the validator community is important to us talking to prospective consumer chains that we that might join us. then and then just generally, I think educating the Adam Holder community and the

causes community about what this entails. those are kind of two things happening, but I mean, beyond that, there's like obviously the verification work that we're doing around Appalachee, also through the audit business. So we've been working with a number of projects, including like Agoric, Injective and others to actually audit their code, use a lot of the verification tools like Appalachee and methods within the audits to uncover

jelena 
kind of bugs and, you know, we had this T-shirt I designed in December. was like, in blockchain we trust, but trust was scribbled out and it was like verify. So it's like, you know, this idea of like trust by verify. So that's something we're always thinking about, right? Like we can't be passive actors with like the systems and protocols we interact with. It has to be very deliberate sort of, you know.

trust forming process and usually you need to verify to get to some level of trust.

Citizen Web3
What personally, which out of these features, you named so many, what personally excites you the most?

jelena
that's funny. It's like having to choose your favorite kid or something. It's almost, I know, right? we're being honest. No, I mean, I think that my, to be honest, like energy security, like most fascinates me. think like, there's just still so many, you know, I think there's like so like questions around like with which version are we gonna launch with? What are trade-offs like?

Citizen Web3
Everybody has a favorite kid, come on, surely!

jelena
How do we properly communicate this? How do we also mitigate any sorts of risks once this thing goes live? I mean, there's a lot of different stakeholders involved. And I think that to me is always something that fascinates me because you have to manage different interests. So I would say like intertune security is definitely something I'm interested in. And also, if I'm being honest, as an atom holder, I'm just very excited to see the Cosmos Hub also just, you know,

develop like this year is going to be absolutely critical for the Cosmos Hub in terms of its value proposition sort of being realized, value cruel to the atom, things like this, think are something that the community is ready for and energy insecurity is like one step in that direction. But like I said, there's other initiatives happening and.

Citizen Web3 
Lets touch on that a little bit more. You said the value proposition of Atom or the Cosmos Hub. and The conversation about this has been since before day one, actually, way before the mainnet was launched. It's been always spoken and spoken and talked about what's your vision.  personal vision for maybe not even as informal systems, maybe as How do you see Cosmos Hub

jelena 
I've been following the Cosmos project like before launch. And I think the, like, it's funny that most people don't realize, I guess, how first to market like the Cosmos Hub was in terms of its validator set, for example, in terms of even it's like token, like economics, like the fact that like even the token distribution itself was like pretty

decentralized, there was like an open sale with like a cap. There wasn't any of these like preferential, let's say treatments to investors was always like very thoughtfully decentralized and like somewhat, you know, like transparent and thoughtful and it's like governance formation, if I can say that. So I think like a lot of that thoughtful, deliberate sort of like ethics, I guess towards like development, I think are

still happening today. So what that means for the hub in like three years or whatever is that it'll remain, in my opinion, the most secure kind of, not conservative, but like secure place from which to like experiment and do development on. I think partially that is because of the robust kind of nature of the validator set itself. I think that's because a lot of

the development around the protocol and the SDK and things like this happen. I mean, now for now, mean, I think there's a lot of amazing other teams doing important work around these elements, but it happens within like the Cosmos Hub. And when I say it happens within the Cosmos Hub, it's happening within the teams working on the Cosmos Hub. So there's kind of the legacy nature of the Cosmos Hub in terms of its role just generally within like the ecosystem, having like strong relationships with like custodians, exchanges, being an

jelena 
on-ramp, off-ramp to the greater cosmos network. But then there's also the sort of secure kind of robust nature of its validator set, but also the team kind of working to experiment on it. I think inevitably, like you might not see like the same sort of like fluctuations in like price or speculation. I think it'll just be this like kind of not a reserve, like that has too many connotations, but almost like a secure place from which to like

launch into the cosmos, right? So yeah, I I think like inevitably the Cosmos Hub is going to still retain a lot of those legacy features and yeah, be a place for people to experiment and sort of like choose their own adventure type of thing. 

Citizen Web3 
You mentioned so many times during not just answering this question, but I think during the whole course of our conversation validators. So, and the conversation about this is growing per day. I mean, was like per hour among everybody in your opinion again, Validators who.

should or should not be how do see that

jelena
I think personally, I just kind of look at validators. Maybe this is too simplistic, but I almost look at validators as like individuals, members of parliament and like a greater like governance framework that they all have to adhere to. Like they all have their interests. I think they all have their unique like value proposition. I think in the case of Cephalopod, the fact that we're, you know, relaying on like the major channels across like in Cosmos right now, like actually, you know, efficiently performantly like.

transferring value between chains. think that's obviously an important value proposition. think every validator, I think, is starting to figure out that, obviously, general metrics like uptime and not being slashed need to be adhered to. But in terms of actually providing utility back to the network itself, I think it's

I mean, just differs between validators. Again, considering these individual validators as representatives within some sort of government, you even see this in the real world. You have certain members of parliament that pass legislation, advocate for certain policy adjustments, are active in their communities, and then you see others that are sort of just passively.

involved and maybe even just there due to legacy reasons. So it's kind of like the same thing. I mean, I think in the beginning, like the role of a validator, I think like a lot of the impressive kind of validators we see today are in the beginning were just like really involved in governance, sponsoring proposals, posting proposals, getting the community talking about different.

proposals, having even tools built for those discussions to take place. And then I think like as the nature of like Cosmos evolves and there's like more attention paid to let's say things like infrastructure operations and now also like building tooling, like, I mean, different tools for different reasons, I guess, but you'll see those validators, think like.

jelena 
step it up, so to speak, like solicit those delegations maybe more aggressively. So I think it just really, it depends on like where we are at in the current moment. And that's in terms of like the evolution of the network and what's needed. And that's sort of gonna like dictate kind of like how validators are like supported by delegators. And yeah, I think that's kind of what's happening.

Citizen Web3 
I guess, I guess the reason I was asking is the way I see a lot of the work that you do personally, at least from the way you describe yourself or the companies that you work for describe your work as a mixture of like product management, marketing, business dev, communication. And I think that validators are very similar here. They're like, it's a mixture of sometimes business for the network because you start to look for partnerships where and

jelena 
Mm-hmm.

Citizen Web3
This is very behind the scenes, but it does happen. Or like you say, you know, build communication tools or build infrastructure tools or whatever. Like there's so many, like relaying or, know, and it's such a huge abstract concept. But I'm going to take it slightly different. I'm going to read this out because I couldn't remember the phrase, but I found it in two places about you. And I want to ask you what part of it means. So it says like on your Twitter.

the near in the central revolution will be more beautiful than last and the question is going to be a bit maybe not as expected as you think so wait a minute wait for it. What was bad about the last revolution and what are you talking about what's what are you referencing to which one of them there has been so many is it's well i'm not going to say anything i'm just going to you talk so sorry.

jelena 
Yeah, no, that's so that's really nice that you asked me that. So this is specifically actually referring to the kind of previous technological revolution. I mean, the most current, which is the Internet revolution. And I think, you know, I always kind of like to say to people joining this ecosystem, you know, I don't know where we are in the life cycle. If like if we compare it to like the early Internet, like is it like early 90s is like the mid 90s? Like, you know, I'm not going to debate that right now necessarily. But

it is early, right? And just like it was early days in the 90s for the internet. I think what we saw with the internet was definitely revolution in like in so many ways for our society, for politics. And I think unfortunately, a lot of those ideals and principles have been totally

undermined and perverted. And we're seeing the fallout of that every single day with, I mean, in the material physical world. So, you know, these principles around privacy, around permissionless communication, around even like sovereign identity, you know, I think are, yeah, just.

not really a reality for most people. think if you're like technologically literate, you could still like find those platforms, find those tools and like maybe, you know, still uphold those principles, but in a very, on a very small scale. So I say it'll be more beautiful than the last because I think that the last revolution has not turned out to be so beautiful. I think it's actually quite ugly and corrupted. So I say the nearing decentralized revolution because obviously, yes, we have Bitcoin. Yes, we have Cosmos. Yes, we have

all these incredible projects that are doing such important work. I still don't think it's actually reached that precipice of like, it's now a full-scale revolution because there's so much skepticism, there's so much pessimism. A lot of the discussions around are like, get rich quick schemes, Ponzi's. I mean, it's just like an accelerated version of late-stage capitalism on a technical level that I think we should probably grapple with sooner rather than later.

jelena 
So I think if this technology does actually empower and become beautiful, it will look very different than what we have today, which is probably going to be around actually impacting real local communities, impacting real political systems, also empowering existing community leaders that don't even know anything about blockchain or cryptocurrency to do their job more effectively, whether that's launching some small scale campaign in a very

war-torn oppressive part of the world, whether it's, you know, many different problems in the world that this technology could apply to. So yeah, I mean, I say it'll be more beautiful than the last, because I think that the previous one in conclusion was very ugly. And then it's not here yet. So I say it's nearing because it hasn't happened yet.

Citizen Web3 
if we're talking about, a decentralized revolution, a truly decentralized revolution, is come well, I would take as part of an assumption, the free market as part of that. So nobody manipulates with the market. couldn't that lead to a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot more Ponzi's and kind of like responsive with free will comes.

greater responsibility, right? So again, like, what do you think in these terms? Do you think that it's gonna cause people to, like, to be more responsible about their choice or the opposite, like human nature will stay human nature and regardless of whether the world is decentralized and the market is free and nobody manipulates, we're still gonna like go for greed and you know, it's gonna even make things worse. So

Citizen Web3 
We have like those two things to, what do you think about that?

jelena 
Yeah, well, I mean, another quote I often think about on this topic is like a quote by Anthony Gramsci when he said like, I'm just paraphrasing this isn't word for word, but the old world is dying and like the new world struggles to be born like now is the time of monsters. So I do think just generally politically, historically, and these like points of transition.

you get a lot of bad actors, a lot of ponies, a lot of corruption, a lot of fraud, a lot of criminal activity. And I think ultimately if the next phase of our society or system is more beautiful, has to be, we have to equally, I guess, those monsters to some degree.

with stories and with visions that are just more beautiful than, I guess, or more attractive than the short-term self-interested behavior, I guess. I mean, it's hard, depending on your personal opinions on human nature and psychology,

you know, potentially the short term is like more attractive or like people are survivalists and you know, they will just do what they have to do in times of chaos to survive. 		

Citizen Web3 
think it goes a lot with what you mentioned five, 10 minutes ago about trust and verifying. And a lot of the information we possess today as a society, as a not nation, but as humanity as a living organism, maybe even like go further than that is not really verifiable. think was it Arthur Clarke who said that stars are not for humans, right? That like meaning that we're not ready in terms of our like internal like

Beauty, right? If to carry on with your analogy to kind of like evolve, but let's hope he was wrong. didn't have blockchain, so he didn't know about it.

jelena
I actually like another thing I read recently and like I was talking to my partner about this and like our friend because I couldn't stop thinking about it like they're speaking of like the stars and like, yeah, like these like almost like sci fi dreams or whatever. You know, right now, like we're too late to like most of us, we're too late to like have witnessed the moon landing. And that was I think a huge cultural shift in like what is possible.

But we're also too early in our lifetime to, I don't know, settle the planets in like a practical way and go to Mars. I'm very pro space exploration. I mean, that's a whole other topic. feel like that's divisive in some communities, like, space. And why do you want it? And it's like, we've always tried to find new places to prosper within. mean, obviously, the history of colonization is like,

ugly and disgusting and we want to like prevent that as well. But like I said, like anytime there's like that opportunity for exploration, yeah, there's also going to be opportunity for destruction. But anyways, talking about our current time, it's like most of us, yeah, we're too late, but we're also too early. So it's like, what is really like our hope, like in the next phase of human evolution, like if we can't even in our lifetime realize something like, you know, mass space exploration. So anyways.

Citizen Web3 
I think we'll live during a very interesting time, during a very, very interesting time to see like what is going to be and totally agree with 95, 99 % of what you say for sure. And I think this is like a good note to kind of like ask you the traditional question about stars and everything. What motivates Jelena to build?

Citizen Web3 
a better society in your daily life, keeps you going, what's something that you want to share with others or maybe recommend to others, maybe read something, maybe do something, whatever is in your mind.

jelena
Yeah, I mean, I think what motivates me is like constantly learning how to analyze like the meta narratives and like the meta structures that like govern our day to day life. Like it's almost like every day there's like something horrible that's happened, but it's horrible, but it's actually also gets us closer hopefully to figuring out a way to make those horrible things happen like less often.

So I've been reading a lot about narrative structures. I actually got a wedding gift by one of our best friends, Carl Jung, the red book. It's like this new book that was published by the Carl Jung Foundation, which is a work that he...

wrote and also there's a lot of illustrations. It's work that he undertook during his lifetime that was never published because he actually didn't want it to be published. It was a bit controversial whether this should have ever been public anyways. anyways, it's him analyzing his dreams. It's obviously, it's a lot like Jungian psychoanalytical thought. But these types of methods of analyzing our current day and

like the meta narratives governing our lives is something that like really drives me. Like obviously memetic desire is something that is very popular right now. Like memes themselves, mean in crypto are so fascinating because they literally drive prices. They literally drive adoption. But memes in and of themselves are not just these like stupid like JPEGs. They're also like literally tapping into some psychological desire that we want to see manifested in the world, right?

Mimetic desire, think, practically manifesting on the internet is something that I think a lot about. And then on a more political, societal, material level, how governments themselves are responding to crises. But all of this is in my mind, and this is something I'm just interested in, is the meta-narrative. When we say inflation is happening, when we say interest rates will not rise as much as they should, let's say, to cover

jelena 
our obligations. Is that science? Is that like math? Or is that actually just like a story we're telling ourselves? So I don't know. I think like in crypto, generally, like a lot of people think about narratives and storytelling. So I mean, I guess maybe this isn't unique, but I would definitely encourage folks to read more Yangian theory because it's very relevant. I almost feel like the 21st century will be about Yang and like the 20th century was more about Freud.

And like, you know, because Freud was always like about like tapping into desires and like, how do you manipulate someone to like buy something or like sleep with someone? And then like Young is like a lot more about like, lot more about not just like a lot more about like, overarching meta themes and meta narratives and like how those also influence

people's deeper unconscious or subconscious rather and how that manifests. It's more about investigating the self to be a better person to help those around you versus a tool for manipulation, I think, which is, I don't know, kind of like what mass advertising did with Freudian thought and sexual desire. But anyways, that's something different.

Citizen Web3 
I can relate a lot to that, progress from web two to web three, actually, and maybe like from being manipulated or your data being manipulated by one company to being able to manipulate your own data. Again, manipulate kind of springs to mind, but I understand what you're talking about, obviously. And this is definitely a big, big, topic for discussion.

Citizen Web3
Jelena, is there anything else you want to share about Informal before I let you go? About the works that you guys are planning or something that I didn't ask you or anything like that that you wanted to share?

jelena
Yeah, I mean, this has been such an interesting conversation. like, really appreciate like, yeah, just I want to thank you. Like, I appreciate your thoughtful questions, especially about like, some of the things maybe like I've said, because I think a lot of the times, people don't really follow up or something. So thank you for being a thoughtful partner in this conversation.

jelena
I don't know for informal. mean, you know, we're we're hiring, we're organizing. I actually I'll plug like the work on my team that we're doing in case folks are listening and interested in joining us. So we're doing a lot. So I'm building out like the marketing design capacity of informal. There's going to be a lot more front user facing front ends being developed a lot more thought on like productizing packaging, the software we're building. So, you know, if I recently hired a

two designers to join the team, one visual designer, one UX engineer designer to work. it's been really exciting getting to work with them. So I mean, we'll definitely need like more support around those functions in the future. We're hiring a lot across all the teams and not just like marketing, like, you know, not just marketing design, also eventually business development, the research team.

the engineering team, we're developing actually, we're gonna be more, we're gonna be focusing more on developing local currency applications, local money around Cosmos. So actually specifically around mutual credit clearing systems in Cosmos. So definitely like keep up with our careers page because a lot of these things,

so far have been like discussions, but we're finally starting to hire and be a lot more thoughtful about how we kind of going back to our discussion earlier, like build for like a more like just world. So yeah

Citizen Web3 
People get hired. I think it's a great opportunity for a lot of folks who are entering crypto, who already in crypto. I like to work for a company that has values. think that that's already, it doesn't matter if it's about crypto or not. It's a company that has values and it's a big, big step up from Freud to Young. It's been a huge, huge, huge pleasure.

jelena 
Yes.

jelena 
Yeah.

Citizen Web3 
hope we can talk sometimes in the future to see how you guys progress. Thank you for coming on.

jelena 
Thank you so much, your guys, was really nice. Thank you.

Outro:
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