#citizenweb3 Episode link: https://www.citizenweb3.com/specialonroad2 Episode name: Money, Values and Motivation with Felix Lutsch, Andres, Edouard Lavidalle and Juri Maibaum at LBW Citizen Web3: Good Space Time, y'all! In the second part of our special On the Road episode, I catch up with Web3 Builders to ask them more or less the same set of questions revolving around motivation, goals and their work. The episode is recorded during the Lisbon Blocks and Week events, so the sound is more raw than usual, especially during the last part of the episode. Apologies for letting advance. The final part contains interviews with the Staking Validator team, Yuri from Cosmoverse and Friends Validator and Felix from CorusOne Validator team. Juri Maibaum: For me, decentralization aims to basically get rid of the censorship and also make the borders lower for people to enter the financial system. Andres: There's also a risk of becoming the traditional financial finance that we know today if we don't participate and continue to protect it from centralization. Felix Lutsch: If you don't have decentralization, then you're kind of exposed to someone taking control of your freedom. This ecosystem is so big and it's growing and if you're not doing anything essentially, then other bigger parties or existing big players come in and take the cake and control the system. Citizen Web3: Before we rock it off, into our next episode, here are some news from the sponsor of this episode, Cyber Congress Dow. The foundation has started its delegations policy for validators on the Bostrom blockchain and the Space Pussy network was launched, with 96% of its supply to be dropped to various Cosmos ecosystem chains. What's your name? Juri Maibaum: Juri I'm from Friends Validator and from Cosmoverse Citizen Web3: ELI5 what you do as if I've never heard about crypto before what do you do? What are you trying to solve as well? Juri Maibaum: Yeah what like what people from the outside actually ask me I often do not mention crypto because then I get like these annoying questions all the time like, oh, did you see Bitcoin went down? you know These questions that you avoid to answer. But if I would answer the question, I would say that we are like with Cosmos, which is more tangible, I would say we are doing big events, like big events bringing communities together that are coming together in different places to celebrate the Cosmos network and how we also offer a place where projects can exchange lessons learned, their knowledge and where they can also present potential investors, their products. I think that's very straightforward and for the validator business, I would stick with It's Citizen Web3: Whats the best one to explain right now. So let's go. Let's go. Juri Maibaum: I would say you might have heard of Bitcoin and that you need these gigantic... Citizen Web3: I never heard of crypto. Juri Maibaum: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's very tricky. So I would say I think, okay, you have a bank account. So let's pretend you have a bank account. Yeah, in this situation, I would say, yeah, this has like a benefit for you because you are like obviously able to pay the fees and stuff like this. But most of the people like nowadays struggle to actually pay for a bank account. Like in most parts of the world, it's impossible to set one up because most people are too poor and what we are trying to do with crypto is that we are trying to aim for a decentralized alternative. So that people can have access to financial services without owning a bank account and therefore like a network structure is necessary that is decentralized and we are building them. Citizen Web3: Can you eli5 decentralization and in your own opinion though, not necessarily to somebody outside of that world, but eli5 decentralization in your understanding, what it is for you, what is their end goal? When, how does it work? Juri Maibaum: So I think the important thing about decentralization is that it prevents censorship and forced and very centralized power. So let's say you are transferring 100 bucks from your Portuguese bank account to a Turkish bank account. Then the bank has the power to say, hey, we intervene. We won't let you transfer the money to person XYZ just because we don't like the Turkish people. Let's put it like this. This is like a huge danger and like for me, decentralization aims to basically get rid of the censorship and also like make the borders lower for people to enter the financial system. This is what decentralization. Citizen Web3: Do you think for the real world, which does exist, I guess, sometimes for us anyways, do you think that the things we are discussing here, financial world, decentralization, censorship, resilience, do you think it is today a topic that is understood by people outside of this world? Do you think that that is something they not care in terms of, I don't want to point out to any particular latest events that in case people get offended, but let's just imagine as to an important world event. Is it important for people what we are talking about in your opinion? Juri Maibaum: I would say it depends who you ask. So I think in like let's say in Europe or in Germany, people think that many things are granted. So I'm from Germany. So I think that most of my friends, they don't care about decentralization because they have a bank account. They can do whatever they want. They have freedom. But ask someone who is living in Africa and does not have this privilege. So I think this is where we basically start. The only thing is that we have to teach people about continuously. Also like now with the Fed is printing money. I mean, the Fed printed a lot of money. The stock market went up. Everyone was like so excited. Oh, the economy grows, economy grows. And now we basically experience the hangover of this huge inflation. And this is all due to centralized power. But of course it's super, super, super complex. And this is what we have to do now to teach the people that it's about no matter who you are. Citizen Web3: What motivated you to join crypto originally? Try to remember though, not how you were joining already starting a project out. But what are you already found out about crypto? What was the trigger like thing that motivated you to, okay, I will do it. And if it was money, what other apart from money? What other which I don't think it was for you. Juri Maibaum: But yeah, it was like back then I was 17 or so. And I've met like my business partner Fabian who started like crypto a little bit earlier. It was like 2017. And of course he told me, oh, I made this amount of money in such a short period of time. Of course, it's a 17 year old who's just doing student start jobs. It's like very interesting to hear from things like this. But it felt for me always like a scam. And then the cool thing about Fabian is he was like still very open and he's open minded and he like taught me a lot. He said, look, that's not the case. And here are the benefits of Bitcoin. Here are the benefits of Ethereum. And back then he used to give me math lessons because I sucked in math. But then I completely threw this overboard and I said, okay, no, I want to focus on crypto because he taught me. He was like very patient. So I asked this super stupid question, but he took the time and said, no, it's like this and that and here are the benefits. And this is how I basically entered crypto. And then in Africa, I've thrilled for a very long time in Africa and East Africa. And this is where I really saw, hey, there's so much adoption potential for crypto. And this is where it really caught me. Like I remember this one day where he really like explained crypto in depth and I left his house and I knew like, I don't know a shit about crypto. I don't know where I end up in life, but it will have to do something to do with this. Like, I don't know. I just felt it. Citizen Web3: You mentioned some very big things here like, you know, freedom, resilience. You spoke about your motivation about how you started crypto. In which way is currently what you do with friends or with Cosmoverse HQ solves what motivated you originally? And do you think you're currently working on what was your original personal goal, what made you come here? Do you think and if yes or if no, are you planning to if yes, how? Juri Maibaum: Yeah, so I think with Cosmoverse, it's more tangible and more obvious because we go to different places in the world. We teach people about crypto. We go to different places and basically we praise that the word of Cosmo, so to say. So you basically see like the first impacts like immediately people like creating their wallets, people are interacting with the products. People are getting more free from a financial perspective and are using one more crypto products and learn about decentralization while it matters. So here, 100 percent and with friends that like happens more in the background because of course, in order for the products to work, you need a decentralized infrastructure. And we're like one of the let's say in the Cosmo hub, I think we have like slightly more than 200 validators in the active set right now, I believe. So we are like one of the 200s who make this, yeah, decentralized back end possible for like people to use it. So these are the two parts. But yeah, you can always do more. We will figure it out. Citizen Web3: Small blitz of those short ones, but last one, we talked a lot about decentralization and about what it is in your opinion. And I agree. And I think most people will probably agree on the, of course, about freedom. But we came essentially to that validators. And in your opinion, are validators decentralized today? And are validators who are essentially the builders behind all a lot of the post at least blockchains today and not just actually can non-decentralized entities help make a decentralized world or is that the paradox? I don't know. How does it work? I mean, what do you think? Juri Maibaum: I agree with your take that it may seem paradox and the beginning, but I mean, look at ours. Like DOWS who are super over this year, super decentralized. Everyone was like thinking fantastic, we're changing the world. But very often you see that if there's too much decentralization, no one feels like in the position to do something or has the feeling to take responsibility for something. So I think some slight centralized elements are not that bad. And if you like, look at also at the validators nowadays, it's like they're like big companies behind it with experts with that are doing it very professionally, because you also have to think about if you stick with a validator, the validator might get slashed. And then the question is, do you want to stake all of your savings with someone who has a service in his apartment? And I don't know the electricity turns off for a couple of minutes and then you are getting slashed or do you want to stake with someone who's like maybe using centralized servers? It's less likely that the worst case scenario comes in. So I think most of me knows the centralized I would say like this, like some elements are crucial nowadays, at least Citizen Web3: small blitz, which are going to have Bitcoin or Monero. Juri Maibaum: I use Monero once. I think you can imagine for what I use. Citizen Web3: No way. Juri Maibaum: So yeah, like for using my money also to. Citizen Web3: I guess paying for it. VPN probably. Juri Maibaum: Yeah, yeah, like paying Citizen Web3: VPN. Juri Maibaum: VPN, VPN, of course. Yeah, yeah, of course. Only for VPN. Yeah, like for using Monero for holding my Bitcoin, but obviously I'm a bigger fan of Atom and ETH. Citizen Web3: It is Bitcoin and Monero. Not ETH or Cosmos. Wait a second. Okay. Distributed DAOS or small and effective multi-six? Juri Maibaum: Small and effective multi-six. Citizen Web3: No puns intended, by the way, in that questions. No things at all. Juri Maibaum: I mean, they are super effective DAOS, but we are talking about a minority here. Citizen Web3: We're answering the question. Juri Maibaum: Yeah, and I have also the feeling what I also want to say is like I have the feeling also nowadays that people are also like, say they are DAO and in the end they are basically just a WhatsApp group or a Telegram group. Citizen Web3: Essentially, sometimes the DAO is made of a multi-seq from three people. Okay, last one. You are launching a product. You have a choice. Community out of 5,000 people, where none of them are developers and they will never study any development or three amazing developers. Juri Maibaum: Good one. I would say it depends on what you wear, what your product is all about. If you're an NFT project, 100% take the 5,000 and if you want to build something that stays forever, take the three developers. Citizen Web3: I hope it says that's the best question. Why? I don't like this one, but I hope it says the best line. Okay, thanks, Jorian. Thank you. Juri Maibaum: Yeah, thank you for having the opportunity to speak. What's your name? Felix Lutsch: My name is Felix. Hi. Nice to be here. Citizen Web3: Nice. Nice to meet you, man. Tell us what you do. Felix Lutsch: I work at Chorus One on the business side. Chorus One, we're a staking provider. So I look at new networks. I work with partners to help them offer staking to their clients or navigate the proof of stake ecosystem, let's say. Citizen Web3: Nice. So it's going to be like another bunch of questions. Try to answer them anyway you want, but in the most simple way that you can. So if somebody wants to say to you, somebody not from the crypto world, Eli5, what's Chorus One? What do you do? What are you solving? Felix Lutsch: That is the hard one. We're helping people earn on their assets. So kind of like a bank that pays you in a savings account. That's one of the things we're solving. Citizen Web3: And you know this typical VC question. What is your, not typical, I guess, but what is your end target? What is the goal of Chorus One? Where are you guys heading? Like what is the purpose apart from helping to earn, of course, to understand? But let's say you achieved your goal. When will that happen? Felix Lutsch: I think it's like continuous thing. In the end, I guess we are part of these decentralized networks and part of the new internet, the internet of money. And we want to make sure that that is built in a way that serves the users and is less extractive, less kind of monopolistic than the current internet. And we do that by being like active participants in the networks, running the infrastructure, but also participating in governance and educating people and then helping them steer the network in the direction that they want. So if I guess the goal is never really reached because it's a kind of continuous thing, but that's what I would say. Citizen Web3: Nice. What personally motivated you to start working in crypto? Right. Felix Lutsch: Yeah, it's a very good question. I think, yeah, I have a finance background. So I was like seeing a lot or like learning from there how that world works. And I, you could see like a lot of inefficiencies and kind of just how some power structures or some corruption exist in that system or like things that, that I thought maybe you could get rid of with this new way of coordination that the crypto allows us. So that was really like motivating and then also just like being part of this new movement, innovation kind of technology startups was just like much more interesting to me than being in a suit in a bank and working for someone else that's already rich. So that I would say, so kind of like helping achieve the goals of decentralization and just being part of this new ecosystem and contributing to its growth and to building it in the first place. Citizen Web3: What is decentralization? But again, if you could answer from a point of view of a person who not just not into crypto, but let's try to imagine a world which I hope we still can. Where, okay, people are familiar with the financial world with finance. You know, people are familiar with more or less what the central bank is. Well, which most people to an extent are, but what for them is this decentralization? Why do they need it? Felix Lutsch: Right. Yeah, that's a good question. I think the maybe have like the other extreme. If you don't have centralization, basically you have centralization. That means like you are. You're reliant on one party that will be able to dictate what you can do, what you can't do. So it's like about freedom. It's about liberty. If you don't have decentralization, then you're kind of exposed to someone like taking control of your freedom. And maybe in some cases, that's okay. You know, we live in the Western world. Like there is some centralization and we don't have it bad because it's working. But in other countries or other places, it's not like that, right? And one, you can see that there are still dictators around. There's still shit happening in the world where we thought it wouldn't be possible anymore. So decentralization really is like trying to have a balance of power between different parties so that something like this can't happen or happens less, let's say. So it's a goal to strive for continuously to keep the powers in check. And yeah, that's something I think worth to do for sure. Citizen Web3: That was a very good answer. Thank you. Now to put it all together, you mentioned what Chorus one does to help people earn money you spoke about decentralization and about tyranny is about the Western world, about different things, about financial things. In which way does Chorus one put that together? How does it solve that? Because this is what motivated you personally. What I'm trying to understand during, and I'm now going to give it away a little bit, the idea of this episode, the idea of these interviews is to understand whether what we do and what motivated us to do something is really what we are doing. So what I want to understand, you're talking about your motivation and that's what I really, like what we've been trying to get it for the past two and something and a half years or whatever over the course of these interviews is why do people build it? What was the reason? Because nobody just wakes up and says I'm going to build a billion dollar product. You don't just wake up for a lot of beds. So how does that motivation that you were talking about, how do you exercise it with Chorus one and how do you see Chorus one helping you as a project that you currently involved to reach that motivation, to reach that goal? Felix Lutsch: Right I think that's a very good question. I think definitely you can lose yourself in the goal of just getting more customers, growing the business and maybe losing track of the things that motivated you in the first place or the things you want to achieve. I think in the end, it's a lot about the values within the company and the other team members that you have, if they have that. So that's definitely something where we try to uphold so that people have the same kind of thinking. But in the end, it's still a business, right? So there is this conflict where we want to grow and we are part of the problem. But also not, I think in the end, this ecosystem is so big and it's growing. And if you are not doing anything, essentially, then other bigger parties or existing big players come in and take the cake and control the system. So I think us from being from this ground up and from being born out of this revolution, let's say us having our share and making sure that we are represented big enough is, I think, really important. So just to kind of balance the existing powers that might enter from just kind of recreating what was already there and then having that counterforce, I think, yeah, that's how I see it. I understand there's a kind of like a little bit of a twist always there where you want to grow as a business, but you also want to kind of maintain these values. But I think we're doing it in the sense of like everything's open source that we do, like we program or like we release a lot of content that's free for everyone to read and trying to like help people understand also. It has like a lot of elements, I think that's what we do. So I would say that I hope that's a good answer. It's a very tough question for sure. Citizen Web3: A very quick three different questions to completely random. Bitcoin or Monero? Felix Lutsch: Wow, I would say Monero actually. Back in the day, I guess I would have said Monero definitely. Now maybe it's a bit more into Bitcoin because now there's other ways to do private transactions, which are like maybe based on Ethereum and doesn't need like an extra token, but you just kind of maybe privately send your ETH or USDC. So I would say maybe that made Monero a bit less useful itself, but like I guess the core idea of Monero was quite important. And I guess now Bitcoin is just like this, yeah, digital gold. I never was like super into that story. So yeah. Citizen Web3: DOWs or committees? Multisix of very important people. Felix Lutsch: Right, I think they come together at currently there's no really full DOW that isn't comprised of people obviously, but yeah, some mix is probably too much on the committee on the Multisix side and could be more on the DOW side. Like that is actually autonomous, right? And follow some, but I guess in the end there's always humans involved somewhere and it will be a mix of these systems. And I think there's also a long way to go for us to really build like more complex governance structures instead of just having one token, one vote and some Multisix there. So yeah, I think Cosmos is on the very forefront of that obviously. So we need to do a bit more. We have already like cool systems, but I think there's a lot more to do. Citizen Web3: Last one, a community of 5000 good cool people, but none of them are developers or three developers? Felix Lutsch: I think community of 5000 cool people because they will... Citizen Web3: Three very good developers. Felix Lutsch: I hope the community of 5000 people will still be so cool that they find some developers who also join the community and will grow that. But I guess I made my pick. I'll stay with that. Citizen Web3: Okay, thank you Felix. Man, thanks. Thank you for the very quick interview during Solana breakpoint. I don't know what we're doing here and I'm joking. Hey, hey Solana. Thank you man. Felix Lutsch: Thank you for having me. It was super fun. Citizen Web3: Guys, what's your names? Edouard Lavidalle: Edward. Andres: Andres. Citizen Web3: And what do you guys do? Andres: Marketing basically Edouard Lavidalle: Stakin. Stakin at Stakin. Stakin is Stakin. Citizen Web3: Staking and staking. Edouard Lavidalle: Stakin officer. Andres: Yeah. Citizen Web3: So if you were to pretend that I'm not from the crypto world, can you alle five what you do and what you're solving? What problem are you solving guys? For somebody who has never heard about crypto. Edouard Lavidalle: That's a question for Andres. Andres: That's a very good question. That's something that I try to do on a weekly basis. You know, I teach high school kids, 12 year old kids. So what we try to relate is that Staking, it's building up to be what the internet was in the early days. So it's very complicated. It can be very intimidating for someone who's outside an industry. But it's basically a new way to transact value without third party and basically protect your free speech without other people being involved in the how you trade. Edouard Lavidalle: I'm not as good as Andres. I don't have the chance to teach high school kids. So we run servers and infrastructure, machines, computers that are going to process the transactions for decentralized future. Citizen Web3: I like this, but you guys mentioned the word decentralization in your personal opinion. Forget about the Tira validator for a second. What is decentralization not to somebody outside the crypto world, but somebody who might have heard the word before? What is the centralization and what is its goal? When is it going to be decentralized? What is the decentralization? Andres: It's a very good question. And Edward Edouard Lavidalle: I see you really like that one. It's about removing third parties, removing single point of failures. The way you interact with the internet today, there's very often just one party in between, one big entity on which most of the servers are even one person on an immediate company. That has censorship. The goal is to provide where there is no censorship, no single party who can stop you from building something. No third party was going to take massive commissions in the financial sector or something that just transacted in a peer-to-peer manner. They're just making things more efficient, more fair, more accessible, more open. Citizen Web3: It's cool because the next question, you guys live in very different parts of the world. Well, you are from very different parts of the world. Originally, I don't know if you live in the same place or not, not the point. You mentioned a lot of words which we all understand them here and we think we understand them. In your opinion, currently, as somebody who's been in this industry for a while and somebody who's been doing what you guys are doing, do you think that those things we talk about are something people outside of this industry care about? Andres: I think... Edouard Lavidalle: You say where you're from. Andres: Yeah, yeah. That's a good place to start. Yeah, from the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean. And sure, the words we speak are maybe become a bit abstract, a bit hard to digest and maybe something that in some cases, there's a lot of hype, a lot of things that may not have a real use case at the time. But certainly, if you look at the underlying technology and the potential that it can serve to those who are currently disenfranchised from the tools that are needed economically prosper in this world, it's a different way to transact and to bring those who don't have the access to the economic world that provide the prosperity that SORLY needed. Sure. Citizen Web3: What do you care about those topics? I don't want to name anything loud, any particular topics that have been discussed right now and all because if you want to get offended, I guess. Explaining it is one thing, which is very cool, and you're a teacher especially, you know, you're a founder of a quite a big project. Do you think that people care about those things? Is it something that in daily life, something that you think they wake up and think about every day? Do they think that this is going to change your vision of essentialization because you just said you're subjectively what it is for you? Would that make a world a better place for everybody else? That's the question. Edouard Lavidalle: I hope so. I come from France and I live in Portugal. I've come from a financial background before getting into crypto. So what really kind of excited me initially is all this potential to make finance more efficient and remove a lot of financial intermediaries out there, make financial, potential investments more accessible and cheaper. So people who care less about their finances might not care about that, but it can make a good daily life, paying less commissions and even more transparent and fair financial system, having more, the same access to investment approaches that we've reserved, a bunch of intermediaries and institutions before and having direct access to those as an individual. I think that that's something exciting that people should care about. What we see, I would say like big use cases probably right now not happening. We see the situation with the war in Ukraine where crypto has been essential to main Ukrainian being used to raise donations. And also we see people who have been locked up from their bank accounts, but they've been able to keep having access to financial system too. So outside of Europe, in dictatorship, it's very interesting as well what's happening with bad monetary policies in South America, right? And I think that's where sometimes crypto has the most adoption. On the team, we have a colleague from Argentina and there they tend to use crypto a lot for payment in their daily life and also to escape those 100% plus inflation rates. And maybe we're going to get there because the monetary policy in Europe hasn't been the best lately. Citizen Web3: It's climbing like money. Edouard Lavidalle: It's a big use case for crypto. It's centralized money. Citizen Web3: One more and small blitz, I promise. I know we're in the middle of a fun thing. In what way, in your opinion, what you guys are doing with staking, I mean, you've mentioned how you see decentralization, how these things are going to solve some issues. So in what way, what motivated you guys to start doing this, whichever was the reason for your personal itch, currently solves what you think, what you've been saying right now for the past five minutes, what you're solving, how is it helping us reach that goal and at which stage are you going to say, okay, I've done, I'm out of here. Edouard Lavidalle: We need infrastructure for all this decentralized economy we're talking about. We need a bunch of different players, individuals, professional entities, small-staking companies, big-staking companies. We need people who are going to provide servers and infrastructure to run this new economy. And yeah, that's how we're contributing. In addition to that, by staking providers, they're also involved in governance. So they help shape the future of these different protocols. They vote on important decisions on technical developments that happen on all these blockchains. And we contribute to this decentralization by running with different providers also all around the world by running reliable infrastructure. And you don't want to just rely on a few providers like Coinbase or other centralized exchanges for the consensus of these proof-of-stake blockchains. You want a large set of entities, individuals that you can rely on, and I guess that's how we build this decentralized future all together. Andres: I mean, it's hard to add anything other than that, but the only thing I could maybe include in the conversation is that this requires the participation of all of us. It's not something that is already decentralized and it's going to remain decentralized. There's also risk of becoming the traditional finance that we know today if we don't participate and continue to protect it from centralization. And yeah, it requires all of us to keep building and spreading the word. Citizen Web3: That's a very good answer, guys. I like it a lot. I promise, small blitz and you can go back drinking and getting drunk now, no Im joking. Pretending to be a little bit... joking. I'm just gonna get joking. Bitcoin in a monero. Bitcoin. Edouard Lavidalle: Bitcoin, yeah, of course. Citizen Web3: Why? Edouard Lavidalle: I thought it was a yes or no question. Citizen Web3: But everybody else expanded and it was originally a no-question. Edouard Lavidalle: Bitcoin is the king. You can't dispute Bitcoin. Citizen Web3: Okay, okay, interesting. Large distributed DAOs or small and effective multisig? No puns intended in this question, not related to anything you might think about. Edouard Lavidalle: Small and effective multisig? Andres: I would say multisig if you have to trust the team for sure, but they can be more effective for sure. Citizen Web3: Last one, if you are building a new product and you have the choice between two things, community of 5,000 cool people, none of them are developers, and they will never study any coding on every development and lifetime, or three very good developers? Edouard Lavidalle: Community, no hesitation. Andres: The power of a community, I think we've all seen it here in Cosmos, is unstoppable. Citizen Web3: Guys, thank you very, very, very, very much. I'm sorry to pull you out of the networking. I'm joking, guys. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for answering the questions, guys. Thanks. Thank you. Outro: This content was created by the Citizen Cosmos Validator. If you enjoyed it, please support us by delegating to Citizen Cosmos and help us to create more educational content.