Starfish Cast #6 - Aleksi on Konsensus Development

No, I mean, yeah, I mean, that's, that's like, like you're a hero. People like you are heroes who actually spend it. Like Laszlo, uh, the pizza guy, people always say this and say like, oh, he should have hodled. And, but no, I mean, that's like somebody's gotta do the work and, and put the things in motion. Like if nobody uses Bitcoin, then what good is it for? So. I mean, I don't think it's very useful to think that way. Like, of course you can always go back and I'd be lying if I didn't think like, oh yeah, I, I wish I kept mining in 2010 when I started instead of like, you know, going, going on my fiat career. You can always think that, but it's not really like everybody has their own path. Yeah. And, and Bitcoin takes its own, own path through us, through our action. So we, we always make a trade. And in this case, like let's say you paid the developer 5 Bitcoin, that was a, that was an extraordinary act, you know, from the perspective of Bitcoin network, because now you, you, uh, you got what you needed at the time. It was probably a very good experience in terms of payment. The person you paid got an experience that was very fundamental probably to the understanding of the network and the, and the possibilities of Bitcoin. So I mean, there's immense value in that.

Yeah.

It's, it's easy to get stuck with the fiat valuation. Of course.

Yeah, it's, it's easy. But I, you're right, actually it was pretty mind-blowing back in the days that you could just, we did, we had no idea who the guy was and it was like a, it was very anonymous transaction, but he delivered like half of the project before and then we paid him half and yeah, it was quite extraordinary, like. 10 years ago that you— and I can imagine, like, I kind of saw that. I saw the value of Bitcoin already back then, but then, then the first, like, bust came was in 2014, and basically Bitcoin crashed. And that's when I kind of lost— we had also a project going back in the day. We were thinking already at how What could we build? And our first obvious idea was a gambling site, of course. And we were really into esports already back in the day, so it could be like a gambling site with Bitcoin and esports. But I guess we were way too early both for Bitcoin and for esports. So, uh, yeah.

I guess that's the story of, uh, a lot of Bitcoiners' lives. Like we, we, we seem to be like a decade or two, too early with our ideas and stuff. Like, I remember seeing like in a, in a StarCraft tournament, there was like a, the, the 5 to 8 places you would get, the prize would be 25 Bitcoins. And like the first place was like, what, $500 or something like that? So that was, that's pretty crazy stuff.

Yeah. But anyway, I, like I said, I got like, I left the space basically in 2014. Couple of years I kept some eye what's happening. And then was it in 2017 or '16, maybe beginning of '17, I saw like, yeah, now there's this new thing coming called Ethereum. Like it's, it's coming and yes, it's for the world computer. I must get hop onto this. Yeah, I started investing in all kinds of Ethereum, the next Ethereum, some shitcoins.

The Chinese Ethereum?

Yeah, the NEO and all that. That was there. Can't remember those names. Pretty good, pretty good gains, but then I never sold and learned kind of quite the hard way, the shitcoin casino thing. 2017, 2018. And in 2018, I think we discussed, we, I, I saw that you were like, kind of like transitioning into Bitcoin maximalism. I was a bit skeptical about Bitcoin maximalism then, but kind of after seeing the shitcoins, all kinds of like, Shitcoins and Web3 and ICOs and now the scene and scams and kind of like got lured into the, back into the Bitcoin maximalism. And of course then I read Bitcoin Standard at some point and after that it's like full-on Bitcoin, Bitcoiner.

Yeah, I think the way I remember it, it was around 2017, 2018 for both of us when we started transitioning. I think we met 2017 at the end and end of it. Yeah. And then in 2018,

uh, with the,

with this great shitcoin crash, I think, uh, we both got, got the final lesson there and, and started gravitating towards something better. I mean, we, hell, we were, we were building some shitcoin projects together. Yeah, we were back in the day. Like, I'm not, uh, I'm not ashamed of that. Like, that's, that's the path. And, uh, yeah, it was a very valuable lesson, a very expensive lesson as well. Well, I mean, not the developing part. The investing part was expensive. Uh, the developing part was just, uh, Just a detour.

Yeah. And I'm glad that we never did an ICO or anything. Like, I would have not wanted to take people's money and, uh, not deliver something.

That's probably why we didn't do it. Like, we, we had the time, like we were working for at least a year on projects, but we never actually launched it because it just felt dirty.

Yeah. It felt wrong.

Yeah. And then of course, uh, you start to realize that a lot of those projects, all of the projects can be done with Bitcoin. Like you don't need a token. Like Satoshi is the token.

Yes.

It's such a simple realization, but, uh, so many people seem to be stuck with the mindset that you need, you need a separate network for a, and a token for some application.

Yeah. And a big realization was back in the day for me that the blockchain as a technology isn't, isn't that great of technology, but it exists for the purpose of like decentralization and doesn't make sense in most cases to decentralize things because, oh, I, I like, uh, Bitcoin is probably the only, the money is the only thing that

Right. And I think that you, you hit it in the, in the head there because for me it was the, the hardest thing to understand, the use case of decentralization. In fact, like decentralization is a, a little bit of a misnomer. It's, it's kind of like, uh, lost all meaning, the word, like almost nothing is decentralized.

Like, yeah.

It's like a natural phenomenon that like occurs and, and I, I think Bitcoin is like Technologically speaking, software-wise, probably the only decentralized software that you can claim, that can claim such a title. And the only use, like you said, is, is money. Yeah. And that's something that, uh, took me years to realize. Like I always thought that, uh, you know, maybe it does have something like, uh, distributed, but yeah, then, then we start to talk about distributed ledgers and databases and that's a, that's a whole other thing. It's not really, yeah, it doesn't have to be decentralized to be distributed.

Yeah.

I think this is something that a lot of people get stuck with. They, they think that, oh yeah, decentralize everything. But no, don't, no, don't fucking decentralize everything. Don't. That means inefficiency. Yeah. A lot of times the best services are provided by centralization and money happens to be the exception to that.

Yeah, you're, you're exactly right. Like building on the, like let's say The first version of Ethereum, like PoB and the services, they were really slow to use and well, I haven't used any of them like ever since. So I don't know, maybe if there was a good decentralized services, I would be using them. I'm kind of want to try the Nostr thing, but haven't really tried that.

Yeah, Nostr is interesting. I, I, I've been there for quite a while, but, uh, As, as many of those Twitter replacements, they kind of fall short still in usability. And of course, network effects, which is the most important thing. Like a lot of people switch from Telegram to Signal, but for me to do that would mean like, uh, I have 100 people in my network in Telegram and then moving to, uh, Signal is just not plausible. Same with, same with Twitter. But that being said, like, I'm really excited to see what's been built, uh, on Nostr and how fast it is moving. Yeah. With the community power, so this might be different. This like this time it might be different really. Like we might be able to have something resembling a decentralized social media platform. That's huge. People say that it's bigger than Bitcoin. A little bit of an exaggeration probably because probably Bitcoin played a big role role in in you know inspiring that. And the guy who who came up with Nostr, he had Jeff is is. The, the, the person who made the Lightning, uh, LNT Xbot on Telegram that we've been using since 2018, I believe, sadly is, is gone now. But yeah, so I, yeah, that's, I think they, they go hand in hand and, and like this decentralized town square and decentralized money. I mean, uh, it's just a match made in heaven.

Yeah. The Lightning tips in Nostr, that's what I'm also excited.

Yeah. The zaps.

Yeah. Zaps.

Yeah.

It's a good idea.

Yeah. I was just posting my, my old tweets, um, on Nostr and then somebody just zapped me, zapped me and it came to my Lightning wallet and it's like, huh, you know?

Yeah.

Kind of realization that you got in the early days of Bitcoin when you make your first transaction and then it works and you're a little bit surprised. Yeah. Uh, I, I felt that joy again. So there, there's, There's some hope there. Yeah. Uh, speaking of Nostr, I, I see there's a lot of potential for, you know, like renewing this world university concept that has been the internet and Google and all that. I feel like this might be the last missing piece. Well, now we have something like ChatGPT and, uh, artificial intelligence, and then we have Nostr. You have a place, this town square also doubles as the town university. Like you can go there. And get the best information from the best experts that are not verified via fiat degree, but the community support. Like, you know, you have your Nostr private key that can be connected to your online persona. Doesn't matter necessarily who you are, what your credentials, your fiat credentials are, or even what is your name or what your face looks like. All that matters. is your proof of work that people respect and people have come to trust. And then you can go and get your, your education from them. And, and I think, um, some, some projects like Geyser, for example, is using Nostr badges already. So I see there's a lot of like, I, I like from LinkedIn credentials or fiat credentials or fiat university degrees, we are moving towards something different, something more flexible. Like you can have several different online personas that are not connected to your meatspace identity. And, and, um, you know, you can, you can live different, different lives online and you can be a teacher, you can be a, a builder.

Mm-hmm.

And that's something that I want to also in the long term build for ConsenSys Network. There's something that, uh, we've been talking about and planning for like 3, 4 years, ConsenSys Academy. Yeah. But since the book thing is taking, uh, most, most of our time now, haven't really gotten into it. But I think, uh, the time might be soon ripe for something like that, that we can, we can have this part. Maybe it's a Nostr client, maybe it's just using a Nostr client and we can have some classes there. But, uh, to take the education to the next step, um, we already have the books that we can use as a, as

a curriculum.

And, uh, yeah, I just see, see that, uh, as a nice, nice little development. But yeah, talking about ConsenSys, why don't you tell, uh, a little bit about your ConsenSys story?

Yeah, I was there in the, I guess I would say in the beginning when you kind of started ConsenSys Network, was it in 2019?

2018. It was, uh, the, the, there's, uh, there's still, uh, uh, Consensus Association in Finland.

Yeah.

You know, they started kind of like, uh, well, I tried to, tried to make it a Bitcoin association, but now it's a full-on, uh, shitcoin association. Still has the name though. And then at some point I, I kind of forked the content creation out from it because we started having this like a little team. You were one of, one of the Uh, part of it, uh, Rafa and, and other, other great people, Ulu and Maxi Lebrand also. We were making content and it was kind of like a separate thing. So that's how Consensus Network started. It was kind of like a spinoff from the Finnish association that was kind of like localized, not really so much for the international markets. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I remember you, you were making A lot of good content is still available on our website. Some of it is in, in English, some of it, it's in Finnish. But yeah.

Yeah. That's also quite interesting content about nature of reality and everything.

Yeah, we went pretty deep in that one, uh, with the,

yeah,

how consciousness creates reality and stuff. Uh, but that, that, that might, that, that, that might be in Finnish. Or is it?

I can't remember, right? It might have been in Finnish.

We, we gotta link it here. But yeah, it's, uh, it was one of my favorite shows. Got a lot of feedback of that. Like some, some serious, uh, Finns were thinking like, oh, that's too deep. Like that's too, uh, whatever. Weird.

Probably is weird.

But guess what? Human mind is weird. Like if you don't think human mind is weird, then you don't really You're not aware.

Yeah.

And who's to say what's possible?

I mean, we are traveling on a big rock in middle of nowhere, hurling on a big rock. Who's to say what's really possible and real in this act?

Yeah. People are so eager to jump to conclusions. I guess it stems from the need to feel secure about your surroundings and your life that you, you have on things that are under control. It's kind of a scary thing to think that anything can happen and you don't really control anything in your life.

But yeah, back to Consensus, I think in 2019 we did content and then I helped you, I remember, start the first bookstore together with, uh, Elmar, the first site.

Actually, that's, that was be— way before Elmar. Elmar helped to build, build the new, new site, which is now being revised with the, with the third iteration.

Yeah.

You helped me with the very first one that I built myself with the WordPress, which by the way, thanks for that. I, I couldn't have pulled it off by myself. And, uh,

even before that, I can't remember everything about the history. It's like brutal.

Yeah. I mean, I, I, I might also, uh, forget about stuff, but it's nice to remember where we came from. And the first site was, yeah, I was, it was an experiment, but that's how we started. Yeah. It was just a WordPress site made by, made by me and, uh, yeah, Alex made the UX, uh, experience and the graphics.

Yeah. I think I've made some UX and then I helped with some plugins and WordPress. I don't know how it's these days, but I can, it's always been quite hard to get stuff working in WordPress.

Yeah. Yeah. But we did get Lightning payments working in 2019, which was kind of early for, for merchants. Of course we used the custodian, but, uh, still.

Yeah. Then I, then I've been helping with concerns also, but I do best just develop the things, software development. And now we are building the new webshop at, uh, a new bookshop. Well, the new bookshop, and then also updating now the affiliate, affiliate site that's now under development. And oh yeah, and we have also made the new landing page for Content Network, the new brand. I, I really like the new brand. It's—

Yeah, thanks. Thanks to Upright One for, for making that brand, brand, uh, rehash for us. That was really, really good. We've been rolling it out slowly. Uh, we still use our old logo in, in some of the designs and some of the books. Obviously it takes time to change it, but I think it's a, it's a good, uh, change. It was time for a change and I think it's really reflecting our going, going forward and the starfish is a little bit more pronounced in the branding. And yeah, there's a lot of, lot to like about the new site, the new landing page. There's gonna be more content there. We're gonna add blogs and stuff, working on 21 Futures, which is the fictional anthology about Bitcoin. There's going to be, we got like 50 submissions for that. And by the way, I'm going to make a whole other video of that, but I'm just going to mention it because it's so cool to read about Bitcoin fiction. And I'm sure you will like it as well. I need to send you those stories. We got 50 submissions. We picked 21 of the best ones, but some of them were still good. So we want to publish them hopefully in a blog form. So that's one form of content. And of course, If anybody from the team or outside the team wants to write for us, we can publish that. So I think that's going to be one. The academy is going to be one thing to plug into the Consensus Network landing page. And then of course, right now our, our main business is thebitcoinbook.shop, which we kind of like popped out of. Like consensus.network used to take you directly to the shop, but not anymore. Now it takes you to the landing page, which is one step closer to this. a little bit, uh, bigger umbrella of, of services and content that we're about to offer. Really exciting stuff.

Yeah.

And yeah, but maybe, maybe I'll just mention a little bit about the affiliate program because that's something that has been on my mind for a long time and, and I really want to make the affiliate program work and maybe something unique, like above I've been talking about this, planning these bounties. Like you play a video game, you get quests, daily quests or monthly quests or weekly quests. that you have to do something and then you get a bonus. So if you sell a book to 3 different countries, you get a bonus. If you sell 10 books in 24 hours, you get a bonus, stuff like that. So those are, I think, some cool things that you can look forward to. You can actually help us spread the Bitcoin knowledge while stacking some sats. I mean, that's, that's a win for absolutely everybody.

Yeah.

Looking forward to that. I hate marketing, so I, I'm, I'm keen to outsource it to somebody else.

Yeah, it's coming.

Do you have any, any, uh, fun stories from to share from the past?

Yeah, I guess there are a lot of, a lot of stories. Like we've been through many.

Let's do your favorite stories and then we can wrap it up. I think it's been a good show already, but, uh, I feel like, yeah, there's, now we, we've been to, uh, working together for so long and we've been friends so long. I, I think, uh, that, that we can add a little bit of, uh, Personal flavor as well.

One story that comes into my mind is when we had the idea to present to the Mint of Finland.

Oh, that's a good one. I forgot about it. Yeah, yeah. Tell it, tell it, tell it, please.

So it was kind of like this innovation workshop for the Mint of Finland.

Mint of Finland prints money in Finland. So literally, literally it means money.

And, uh, of course we went there and being Bitcoiners, we already saw the future there where fiat is gone and Bitcoin is the thing. And we proposed that Mint of Finland could be called like the Vault of— was it Vault of Finland?

Yeah, it was Vault of Finland. I, I think it was, uh, Yeah, it was more like a suggestion of a service for them that they could offer this, uh, cold storage service, Vault of Finland.

Yeah. Yeah. We talked, said that you could offer this as a separate brand, Vault of Finland, that securely store Bitcoin for people and organizations and really looking into the future where, where, how could they like Change their model in the changing world. I think it went completely over.

Yeah, it was like we were at the airport too early again. Maybe 2 or 3.

Yeah. And, uh, oh yes, really. Well, they probably thought that we were crazy or something, but, uh, Crazy one is a good, good to be crazy one.

Yeah. Like, I mean, the crazy ones are the ones who, how, how was it? Um, those that are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.

Yeah. Thank you, Steve.

Yeah.

Was it Steve?

Oh yeah. I, I think it was Steve. What a legend. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, of course, uh, there was like this competition of these ideas and the idea that won was something like, uh, Another different promotional coin or celebratory coin that they're going to mint, like run-of-the-mill stuff. People are completely clueless. Like it boggles me day to day how how little the people understand who actually run things in this fiat world that we live in. Like it's you know when you were younger, when I was younger. I really thought that, oh, you had this, there's really, uh, the professionals, they really know what they're doing. And yeah, now the more I learn about it, it's like, holy shit. I'm like, they've got—

nobody knows what they're doing.

That's sweet. Amazing. So yeah, it's up to us to— Yeah.

Yeah. So actually back to Steve, uh, he actually said something about like that everything around you that you call life. made up by people that were no smarter than you. So I think it's a, it's a good way of thinking things that you can actually change things around you. It's, it's not static. Well, money system is not static. Money can change.

Yeah. And people like to say things are impossible, like,

yeah,

throughout human history, I bet, you know, people thought that the making fire is impossible. And those who tried were ridiculed. Making a wheel was impossible. I mean, I, the same pattern seems to repeat. So, you know, don't listen to the naysayers. Just do what you, what do you think is going to work, even if it's not going to work. And by the way, Steve also had this thing. This is going to turn out to be like a Steve, uh, Steve Jobs fanboy episode soon, but because there's

a

bit of a fanboys here, but I gotta, I gotta share this. And by the way, his autobiography, the only one that I've read and the only one that I like, it's really, really good stuff. But he had something that he called reality distortion field that, that has been sticking with me ever since I read that in the book. And that's kind of like what, what we are doing as well. Like we are distorting the reality around it. And this is something that we went a little bit deeper in the, in the episode about the mind and consciousness. Yeah. But the, the, this is like, if you, you can will something into existence if you believe enough on it and you put work in it. Yes. And you convince people around you, like it can be as simple as radiating this optimism that convinces people that, okay, that maybe this is possible. Or the, or just them simply showing people, the naysayers, that this is possible. And I'm gonna share one more, one more quote. It's, it's a, a Japanese proverb. It goes something like this. It goes, um, uh, if someone can do it, I can do it. If no one can do it, I must do it. So, so that could, it's kind of like the same thing. Like if you think, think that the world is ready, the science is settled, so to speak. Yeah. It has never been so. How can you think that now we have everything figured out? How, how can you think that a decade from now we don't have some major revelations about, you know, space travel or whatever it is. Yeah. We can't imagine those things. Like people have been notoriously bad at predicting the future. Even those are, that are very accurate get very fundamental things wrong. Like for example, the internet was a very difficult thing for anybody to predict. I don't believe anybody did. So let's not pretend to know everything. Let's not pretend that we have knowledge. I, I think that's the source of all this, um, problems in the world because people think like, yep, this is for certain, this is for a fact, and it's never going to change. It has always been, but it became a fact because enough people believed in that. Enough people willed it into existence.

Yeah, it's, it's not an instant process also. It takes time when you start building something or wielding something into existence. And other times you just have to keep going at it and suddenly you start to see things change and start to see these new pieces of information come to you and new inventions that probably make the thing you are building possible. It's, it's a process. It's not like a, you know, you know, so you know this very well that the world doesn't change in an instant.

Yeah. Every entrepreneur knows this very well. Yeah. That, you know, behind every success, success, there's tons of failure. And that's something that people who are not entrepreneurial minded or geared towards entrepreneurship, they usually just see that, oh, but he got lucky with this discovery or invention and that's why he got rich. But what they don't see is the hundreds of failures that lead to, lead them down that path. I don't think there's a lot of people who just instantly got something. Without any, any proof of work. So yeah, I, I guess that's the takeaway. Like you have to put in the hours and you have to believe in yourself and do it yourself instead of looking for answers from somewhere up high. It used to be God, now it's the experts. I mean, yeah, in, in that sense, we are God, all of us.

Yeah.

And maybe, maybe that's a good way to wrap it up and, and we, we should probably do another, another episode on mind. And consciousness because I'm getting all fired up. Uh,

yeah, me too.

A nice topic.

But yeah, maybe, maybe we'll do a follow-up episode.

Yeah, let's, let's definitely do that. Get, maybe get some other, other, uh, cool people like maybe Knut. Knut will be a good addition to that. He's a fun guy to talk to. But yeah, let's, uh, let's wrap this up and can you just tell everybody where to find more about you and if they wanna get in contact and, and see your stuff, what are you working on?

Yeah. Um, probably best way to find me is from Twitter. It's @maindi, M-A-I-N-D-I, uh, Maindi. And there's also a link to my personal webpage where you can find some projects working on, including ConsenSys Network.

All right. Yeah. Excellent. Thanks, Alexei. Thanks a lot. It was, this was a fun episode and let's do, let's do another one themed on, on the, on the things of mind like we did back in the day. It's, uh, it's an honor to work with you and have, have you as a friend and, and thank you for coming. Thank you, Niko, for

having me.

Of course. Great. Take care. Bye-bye, everybody.

Bye.