Building A Better Ponzi with Ameen Soleimani | Layer Zero

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. The Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down, and always has been.

Today on Layer Zero, I'm talking to Amin Solomani. And I've said his name on the Bankless Podcast a number of times before. He's been on the Bankless Podcast a number of times before. He helped meme Moloch into existence in 2018 and 2019. He's the creator of Moloch DAO, one of the first DAOs to come out of Ethereum after the DAO. And he makes this joke about how he made Moloch DAO with many purposes, one of them being to help the Ethereum community get over what he calls PTSD, as in PTSD over the 2016 DAO that caused the Ethereum Classic hard fork. So we we talk about Moloch coordination, DAOs, and what DAOs can do for the landscape of both Ethereum when it comes to coordination, but also for the broader world. And really why Ethereum is just coordination tools all the way down.

But then we get into some broader subjects, such as uh his his recent fight against the Federal Reserve, uh and how the Federal Reserve has this relationship with uh the broader world that is unsavory and how we as a people need to resist what is going on with the Federal Reserve. Uh and Amin has always been a very big patterned thinker, a big philosophical person who can see the biggest patterns that the world has put in front of us and sees them for what they are. And he's a he's a pretty controversial guy. Uh he's pretty sharp around the edges. He's definitely not afraid of uh putting his foot down and making people be very uncomfortable. Uh so I actually do not recommend that you listen to this episode with kids in the car or you know, young ones who aren't ready for very mature subjects. Um, but I I I even though Amin definitely has his controversies, he's a hero of mine through and through for the way that he thinks and what he thinks about uh and the lessons that he brings to the table, because uh they're very emblematic of this particular podcast. Why I call it Layer Zero. It's because he gets down to the bottom of things uh in a very fast, uh sometimes crude uh but effective way. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Amin Solomani.

And we'll get to that conversation right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. What's up, Amin? How's it going?

Great. Uh thanks for having me.

It's quite the uh eccentric background you've got there.

Yeah, had to fit the unicorn into the picture.

Is that is that a chair that you're on?

I uh yes, this is a this is a nice little pink throny chair thing.

We'll we'll get into all of that and more. But for for listeners who came in perhaps in 2021 or beyond, the most recent cohort of crypto listeners, content consumers, uh, they might not be as familiar with you as I once was when I first got into this space. Uh can you explain your perch in the Ethereum and broader crypto ecosystem? What would you say that you do here?

Uh

yeah, so I'm the CEO of Spank Chain, which was the first uh one of the first attempts to bring the benefits of crypto to

the adult community. Uh so from that perch, I get to

sort of, you know, it's like a libertarian.

viewpoint how to make things useful for everyday people.

You know, not so much like

uh the the grander things too, but uh

yeah we

um

that that stuff's more about like helping sex workers uh you know use Ethereum tools to keep their money safe

um

and and so forth uh sell nfts and

um but we we do some other things too uh we made the first L2 uh spank live so that was a fun opportunity to learn about

You know, putting L2s in production four years ago.

A lot of lessons learned that we've been able to use now,

uh, four years later when it's like finally time

uh for layer twos.

Um

I try to focus on the types of things that people aren't uh and like where the blind spots were too.

So we started Moloch Dow like back in the day. Uh Ethereum was very utopian.

And I was

uh concerned that our utopianism uh wasn't going to like

you know be very scalable or sustainable forever.

So

yeah.

Yeah, go into that a little bit more. Uh Ethere it one of the things that brought me into Ethereum is just how optimistic and perhaps utopian is the right word everyone is. It's like it's infectious. Like everyone's really generally happy and accepting. Uh

But uh but I think s perhaps somewhere to our our own like naiveness, naivete. Like w w when you come into Ethereum and you see like the culture here, what what do you see?

Yeah, I saw a lot of like well wishing sort of people, right? It's like um

uh we prided ourselves for years about being a very welcoming community, about being very friendly. Uh, and it led to the Ethereum community getting hacked in sort of predictable ways uh by people who were like.

Oh, you know, uh upfront, like very friendly, but then had sort of their own intentions and goals uh that were maybe not aligned with the Ethereum community.

And so

uh a lot of the Kumbaya culture

um

isn't very

designed, like well designed around adversarial thinking and things like that. And so

um

You know, the idea of

like Moloch uh was very appealing to me uh because it described these sort of like game theoretic traps

uh where you have to make some sacrifice of something you value because everybody else does.

And like Ethereum doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Uh it would be nice if it did, but like it's still subject to the competitive forces that drive everything else.

And so if we want our values uh of

you know,

uh pro social and

Uh, positive sum to

expand to the rest of the world, we sort of have to compete to protect them

uh and to advance them

uh against other things that might

try to outcompete them that don't have those values. Uh and I saw a lot of people taking this idea for granted that Ethereum was just like the best, it was going to dominate forever, and it was just gonna win because we're the good guys.

Uh