all right let's do it we're live basically i mean it's not really live it's just we are we
are hopefully recording it looks good so cool alive alive and live yeah a little little break
from the spectacle you know nice walk with some water cool some ducklings and you chose a good
spot you chose a good spot i know my way around these woods you chose i've been here i've been
here once or twice before yeah it's incredible so i told you i'm gonna grab you and i'm gonna
basically just kidnap you for like an hour or so i am kidnapped i'm officially and you know what gg
does now in his spare time that is my new hobby it's kidnapping people and taking them it's official
yeah okay yeah and uh we're gonna talk about design yeah let's talk about design because um yeah i think
a lot of things have changed in the last couple of years and now we not only vibe coding with vibe
designing as well i see it everywhere yeah and i'm sure you have opinions i have opinions so tell me
your opinions where do we stand in terms of bitcoin design design in the nostril space all those kind
of things let's go so i'll start with what i've been learning i've been seeing that i i no longer need
to call myself a ux designer i can instead call myself an artist i'm going to be totally down with
you and be like an artist is someone who creates an artist is someone who creates their life an artist is
someone who creates in the ecosystem right now my role has changed in the ecosystem and i am creating
designing using ai in the bitcoin ecosystem as well as in the nostril ecosystem all right so your plan
for the next one or two years is to be really poor
gg that's what artists are no like no one ever want any bread being an artist or have things changed
no i mean you know i don't even know who said it but but it's like artists you know i believe alex
glassine said it on stage as well or one of the other speakers said it's like everyone is an artist
but everyone is living life is art living life is art yeah and so for me i see design outside of the
narrow spectrum of what we think design is i see design as the moment the person actually sees the
thing in the app store i see design as the moment you tell your friend about the thing and you're like
referring them to it that's design something hooks you and it hooks you enough that you want to tell your
friends about it yeah and the thing that i i was saying to jeff the other day i was like hey
if you can explain in one sentence to a five-year-old or a ten-year-old what your thing is that you're
building and what problem it solves well then you've got something good yeah and i think we need to get
a lot of the the applications that we're building in the bitcoin ecosystem and the nostril ecosystem to
that point yeah can you really explain what you're doing like what problem does it solve in people's lives
i can't my my family doesn't even know what i'm doing so i obviously can't explain what i'm doing
so before i even start with the design process i kind of i try to get the developers that i'm working
with to narrow it down to what problem are you solving and for who and you ask people that most of the
time they don't know yeah and i've been listening to a lot of jack's podcasts as well and jack keeps on
coming back with one thing he's like can you say it with one word what is that thing that you do like
is it communication is it data is it i don't know you can say it with one word really so it's about
narrowing down the scope of what you're building and bringing it to one profound action that solves a
profound problem in a user's life okay and it might be education it might be whatever assets
in the bitcoin world or what have you and then you move into design yeah i see then you think
about like okay so like what do they need to do like what's the steps you know we're walking on
this beautiful river right now like next to this beautiful river it's like what are the steps that
they need to take to solve that problem and that's like your user experience right that's like all
the clicks they're going to take that's the road you're walking them on so the experience of the
person starts before they even start looking at the interface yeah yeah yeah yeah i see i see it's
it's it's about pain and i think we need to know more about what what pain point are you solving what
pain are we solving and the design that's just one part of it but we have like um in the netherlands
there's this app it's called tiki it's become a household name it does one thing the only thing it does
is it if we go it's basically going to be like i send you like a like a link and you just pay half
yeah it's so easy yeah right that's where we need to get to get mainstream adoption of bitcoin and
nostril applications we need it to become like a we need to become a a word that people just use they
don't even call it it becomes an adjective really yeah you know i think the issue with that is that bitcoin
solves like i i love the phrase bitcoin is different things to different people like that's been my go
to thing for the last 10 years or whatever and what this translates to in that framework is like
bitcoin solves different pain points for different people right it's like because if you live
through hyperinflation then i don't need to explain bitcoin to you like at least not that aspect of
bitcoin if you get debanked all the time i don't need to explain bitcoin totally like the
permissionless aspect of it to you and so on so how are you thinking about all of that like the various use cases
in the like app and services ecosystem which you've been very close to for a long time i'm i'm on it
okay so i'm gonna come back to jack again i have been obsessed with the most recent podcast that he
recorded every single company in the world is becoming a mini agi all right did you hear that
podcast no i don't listen to podcasts i just kidnap people and talk into a microphone i have listened to
that podcast three times guess who got me to listen to the podcast jeff because every single time jeff
sends me a message i end up going down like a rabbit hole that i didn't expect to go down and then
three hours later i come out of the rabbit hole i'm like jeff what did you say so so i went down the
rabbit hole as i was coming here i was listening to the podcast so the thesis is just to summarize
intelligence at the center okay of every business super simple so that's what block did yeah that's what
block is doing yeah so block that's what allowed them to slash like 40 percent of their workforce
right and if a million dollar company like block is using an intelligence layer to build its product
and to move its product forward in the market and to find more market products well hey we need to be
we as the ecosystem need to be listening to that so here's what i think i think that the way that
design is moving forward in the future is that if we can have a mini agi in the nostril ecosystem we have
a mini agi in bitcoin ecosystem the mini agi is essentially as simple as this there's data in the agi
the developers talk to the data they found the information that they need and they build solutions
based on the data that they're so if you understand you correctly what you're describing is basically
the bitcoin design initiative but automated yes so it's going to go in two directions the bitcoin
design guide one of my roles right now in the ecosystem is basically turning the bitcoin design
guide essentially into a skill file yeah and then developers basically just popping that skill file
into the development process yeah i see and building wallets yeah and then the other part of my role that
i'm doing this year is i'm collecting user stories from all over the world about how people are using
bitcoin how people are using ai i'm gonna pop that into a skill file developers can do it so we're
moving we're walking next to the developers in their process we're not saying hey go read this like
60 page article while you're building your wallet as a solo founder it's not going to work
we need to be in time so here's what i think i believe every single company in the world
is going to have the smart companies are going to have a mini agi layer everyone's going to talk to
the layer and as jack said they're going to find they're going to let the users determine the
direction of the product and that flattens this hierarchy right because then you're so close to
the ceo before you walk into a meeting with the ceo the truth the data is already very accessible for
everyone yeah and if we can create a mini agi at the ecosystem level for bitcoin and for nostr dude
so what you're saying is you're in favor of mob rule what's that mob rule being ruled by the mob
if the users can decide what kind of features they're gonna have in the product i don't totally want
them to decide but it's like okay let's say you're like you you have a nostr app yeah let's say you
have a nostr app and all your users file things like you can like build stuff based on what they're
saying so the customer is always right no no i like that was a quick no you also got to listen to your
own like vision as the person who's building so there's a balance to be found somewhere there needs to be a
balance but i am properly bullish on the mini agi concept in fact at the hackathon that we were just
in i kind of built a simplistic version of that on nostr relays dope tell me more about that we built
how how was the experience for you going through the hackathon and i ended up with a nostr developer
as are we allowed to name names um maybe not let's just let's just keep it anonymous secret
and another developer and he helped me now forgive me i don't know about all the bips and the nips and
all the things yeah but anyway he we basically built the flow where it analyzes all the different bitcoin
wallets you pull in like the top on-chain bitcoin walls you pull the repos in you check what the users
are saying like hey this is not working or this is not working and then we split the data into
protocol stuff or ux stuff this is dope now because now we know in the wallet ecosystem like
is it stuff more in the protocol layer or is it like a quick fix in the ux layer right so we sorted
through the data we pulled it in we wrote the data onto nostr relays we use some nostr nip or bip
to do the labeling because it already exists and it's now public like the repo's there i just need
to clone the repo and tweak the labeling structure and then i build the same thing for bitcoin and i
build the same thing for nostr and then we have like super useful information so i'm i'm very i'm
proper bullish on this mini agi thing and data thing okay and i know it's not like design but i believe that
that's how we're gonna like move into design and how does that move into design so imagine this
and i'm i'm like going full full go go i'm going full stream that's the reason why we go like you
just go full stream futuristic now yeah okay imagine imagine there's a startup let's just for instance
take a nostr application that has for some reason like they got like hundreds and thousands of users
you got your developers you got ux design is going to see okay
the mini agi operates at the center it's going to pull in all of the data
then when it pulls in all of the data it's going to be like okay this is related to the settings okay
this is related to the privacy okay this is related to the onboarding okay this is related to send this
this is related to messages it's going to just link it link it link it link it and then the developer
the team opens it up and they're like yo we've had like 80 of our complaints coming from privacy in the
last six months let's just work on our privacy so it's like this this data layer is going to like
save them so much of time they're not going to need to look at individual like ux issues because i know
how the the the developers in the bitcoin space and the north space struggle to like what do you
prioritize and i'd love to hear that from you as well like how do you decide what you want to prioritize
when you're building something because you're usually just the people just walk up and you're like yeah
vibes pure vibes you know if you can just build that cool thing i'll be so happy just build it you know
it's a hard problem it's it's a very hard problem and and i i kind of wanna wanna get you talking on
kind of the problem space itself like why is it so hard to design for bitcoin in the first place like
why is bitcoin design a thing can't you just like hire any design agency and you're just off to the races
no absolutely not why we have a major psychological barrier why is it so hard aren't people with like
just experts at holding keys and stuff like talk me through it like what are the issues why is why
why is bitcoin why is bitcoin so hard to design for we're so okay let me just put it in like super
simple terms we're saying to people hey we have like this magic internet money like don't worry you
can't hold it in your hand but just don't worry like it's on your phone come use it don't worry it's
okay if you lose your phone if you lose your phone you lose everything oh and by the way like put your
savings into it yeah you know here's the 12 words and here's the 12 words just put your savings into it
like seriously yeah and then we want people to use it from all over the world yeah like don't take a picture
afterwards don't ever press copy write it in hand writing okay step it into steel like tech tech people yeah sure we know how to
we know how to set up our hardware whatever hardware wallet we know how to do our tech stacks and all that
but like a normal everyday person like you know so the biggest barrier why is it so hard to design for bitcoin
it's because our users have psychological barriers to using this technology that we're building
and i don't honestly think that we're addressing those psychological barriers
enough in the design process so like one of the things i did yesterday in my vibe design session
i pretty much i created the skill file that you can basically just hand over like it's my brain i'll
tell you how i made the skill file by the way it's my brain like dumped as a skill like as a skill file
you basically take the skill file you run it through it's specifically made for bitcoin and lightning
wallets by the way it's based i guess on the work you did on bitcoin design there is like with all the
how do you present the seed phrase how do you onboard a user to a bitcoin wallet uh how do you show a
balance you know what is a set and like all that it's like it's all those like and then within that
i baked in all of these psychological barriers that i've come across yeah having speaking to like so
many like people why do i need to store the backup if my wallet is empty right so it's like so the way
design is moving now we are going to have design on steroids we are going to have agentic design
and we're just at the beginning of it and here's here's what i think it's going to look like i like
how bullish you are okay here's what i think so i i'm just one step away i just need to i just need
to vibe code the flow in n8n so here's what i'm going to be playing around with my new playground
i'm going to go to cloud code i'm going to ask you to build the agentic flow for me i'm going to
copy paste the code into n8n i'm going to build an agentic flow here's what vibe design is going to
look like in the bitcoin ecosystem you take the screenshots of the wallets you upload it into my
skill file on cloud as the developer you can ask it to prepare the design in the code of your code base
so if your code base is in react native hey prepare prepare the design suggestions using react native
okay vibe design on steroids and flow skill files baked in ux designer takes screenshots uploads the
screenshots into it says execute at 12 o'clock when i'm sleeping can run in the cloud yeah okay okay
it executes me i go in i review i review the ux suggestions i yay or nay i delete yeah i ask my
agent to create a github submission yeah in the same code base on front-end code base as the wallet
click filed yeah done yeah i think that's where it's trending i mean that's basically how i've been
working the last couple months i just create github issues and i will add screenshots if necessary and so on
and i just have cron jobs running every night like pick any open github issue and fix it and so
basically you just delay your prompts in some sense this is literally ux design on steroids i'm
not saying that we can eliminate the ux designer because you need to have the human review at certain
points in the process because otherwise it's clear you're you're leading into my next question which is
like you you're aware of the word of the year oh no no no no it's slop oh oh yeah so so if you know a
little bit about writing you'll spit you'll spot uh written slop instantly if you know a little bit
about photography you will know gen you'll know this generated photography those kind of things oh yeah
and if you know a little bit about design you'll notice design slop instantly like for example for
whatever reason uh claude opus really likes like these pills like if there's pills everywhere yeah
then it's just like okay there was like opus 4.7 or whatever or whatever we have now and like there's
like every model has their like favorite kind of ui thingies and i just take a look and it's like okay
yeah like that that was gpt 5.4 or whatever okay how to eliminate ai slops exactly address two areas
what are you gonna do about the sloppy pasta one is copy right because copy is design yeah okay one is
actual like so you tell the i don't write like an ai so here's what i do i'm gonna speak from personal
like personal thing yeah i have a sub stack which has like my human writing yeah which i've been doing
for over two years now i ask ai to reference all of my sub stack posts yeah which i human write in your
voice and it writes it in my voice it does a pretty amazing job okay step number one so that's copy
that's how you reduce ai slop like as me as a ux designer you know producing these this is not a
lightning wallet it's a revolution oh my god ai hallucinates big time dude okay so that's the first
thing so then so we we we went through copy then we're going to go into design there's a website
called mobbin.com it's a paid website it's actually for best it's they basically save screenshots of
some of like the best in class applications in the world oh okay that have hundreds and thousands of
users cash app is there revolute is there wise is there i mean how does it go good designers copy great
designer steal right copy yo there's no need to reinvent the wheel so here's what you do
you grab screenshots you like the design of that you sign up for mobbin what it's ten twelve dollars a
month and that's what my skill file includes by the way my skill file asks them to like check in mobbin
for for for like things that inspire them you just grab it you screenshot it you ask ai hey can you please
extract the best design practices from this from a ui perspective for me please extracts it next prompt
hey can you apply these best in design practices to the thing i'm building right now bob's your uncle
you will be surprised at what it comes up with yeah and it's it's it gets better every week basically
i've given two developer workshops where i'm training like new developers on how to like do this agentic flow
and we're like sitting there behind a computer we're like oh we can't wait to see what comes out because
it's just like it's so cool yeah what it's very empowering right like besides like the old way of
you exercise like and then you move it around in figma and it was a painful pixel push yeah yeah it was
it's it's do you think that's because that's on the programming side as well programming like coding
itself writing lines of code is very painful it's a very painful process yeah and this is basically like
ai is completely eliminated for like 99.9 of coders it has completely eliminated
this part of the job basically you think for designers it's similar or the same yeah like pixel
pushing is not a thing anymore i'm gonna be honest with you i've been in the design ecosystem now for
four years for five years mostly in the bitcoin ecosystem i can count the number of times i've actually
worked in a figma file because i i have colleagues like christoph arno who have been designers for like
10 years yeah who just create absolutely beautiful designs i'm like yo can you send me the figma file
please he just sends me the figma file i do my own tweaks yeah i see and you focus on one level higher
basically i have always you have always focused on a higher level i always focus on the like zoomed out
so my role now in the ecosystem is like where i'm at is what skill files do i create yeah to turn
developers of every single bitcoin wallet into having like a ux designer how do i turn nostre developers
into designers too yeah it's like hey here's a skill file for you hey here's a skill file for you bob's your
uncle yeah right i told you about how sound will just magically appear there it is yeah there it is
no but i love i love i'm loving this conversation because it's like what we're talking about is
agentic flows ux design bitcoin and data data at the center of everything i want to switch to nostre in
a minute but before we do um obviously we haven't managed to solve all the ux issues around bitcoin
if you could wave a magic wand and fix like one issue in the bitcoin design space oh can i say two
please you can do your top three if you want to do top three like let's go okay there's no rules to
this but you have a magic wand you can wave it which one would you solve okay i have them there
like literally just exploded here into the front of my brain i have them okay i'm going to say them
out loud and they go through each copy is number one number two is um area messages number three is
fees okay oh really oh you've been working on lightning wallets let me
let me let me dive into each one i'm surprised by these answers they're very biased they're very
lightning biased i can already tell okay yeah i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah we're working on lightning
wallets yeah yeah exactly okay cool so number one copy guys people don't know what tor is just use
human speak human like do you want a nor do you want a more privacy for your wallet or would you
like to use this or even similar do would you like to use the recommended settings they don't need to
know tours under that would you like to use the recommended settings or would you like to use
the i don't know regular settings or something i don't know but just keep the complexity
i know you have to reveal certain things in terms of information but like keep the language simple
if we want global adoption if we want people in africa if you want people in south america who are
non-native english speakers to use bitcoin and lightning wallets guys guys speak human all right copy
your biggest your biggest issue is copy copy is number one number two fees i recently used a wallet i'm not
going to mention the name of the wallet because this exists across many of us this is the the nicest
dialogue ever recorded in no solutions usually we mention all the names and we just shit on people
all the time i'm polite yeah i'm so polite okay it's a nice change okay check it out so i use the wallet i'm about to click send
it says the fee it shows me the amount i'm sending on the interface and then it shows me the fee in small
the fees like always like in like 10 times smaller size font than the than the like the the ascend amount
but then it doesn't add those two amounts together it waits the wallet will wait until i click send and
then it says it will say error 40132ab and i'm like but sometimes if you're lucky the wallet will say
let's say you want to send basically your whole balance and you have to make room for fees and you
don't really know what the fees are that's what you're describing it's a simple calculation just show
the users yeah believe me it's not simple in combination with the fees okay fee estimation is
not it's not simple show them the final calculation once it's done and then confirm with them that
they have sufficient balance in their wallets yeah to send this don't error message it yeah right which
brings me to my third point error messages don't you like error codes what's wrong with error codes
please it's painful man you know it's copy paste it posted to get up so firstly we say we want global
adoption yeah but then and then we give people these bitcoin and lightning wallets and we're like yeah
no don't worry you put your savings in here and you can you can save in here but you know when you
click send and there's some error you just get this like developer code which comes back to like
error 3015x oh yeah okay so put error messages in like inform the user what went down that's it so
simple because they want to feel safe when they're sending their thing you know that's the main issue
that i encounter i've onboarded a lot of people to bitcoin and and like you know over the years and and
watch them and you know like basically watch them grow up and so on yeah and kind of the nervousness
that's there yeah every time you interact with bitcoin um that that it just as it is still now it
usually takes a long while to for it to go away because you're always afraid that you click something
wrong do something wrong and everything is gone and like rightly so like because it can happen i mean i had
had an experience with the wallet where it was splitting the uxtos like some of the wallet splits
it right but then guess what happened let's say you have your balance
and you're doing a send transaction this particular wallet we're not gonna name names i sent a small
amount but you know what it does as it was splitting the uxto it cleared the whole balance
so i'm staring oh yeah yeah you look at the zero yeah dude but that's just how it works technically
can you imagine yeah i mean what i felt in my stomach in that moment when i saw that zero on the
screen i'm like okay it's all gone it's gone there's nothing so we still have ux issues that's what you're
trying to say we have ux issues okay we and these are not ux issues we don't even have to use the word
ux we just call them human this is just humans big human so i feel like all the time i mean we have
human issues as well i feel like we just need to speak human and if we all just speak human a little
bit more i think we'll get a get a lot further and and paradoxically you think that ai is gonna help
you it's gonna help us with that if you inject the right copy review into ai we did it with the app
revive design session that we did yesterday we're like produce the copy for the level of a 15 year
old this is built for a non-native english speaker living in africa yeah pretty sweet nice nice pretty
sweet when it's able to do you know yeah i mean a super easy task could be just grab a few wallets
run it through like a copy review yeah file issues that's pretty low lift yeah i think that'll already
have have pretty massive impact i know it seems like a small thing but i think that in itself will
have massive impact all right um yeah i think there's a lot of flowing fruits i mean obviously
like even more so on the nostril side you know like it's it's it's still younger it's still still more
experimental even though we are out of you know like nostril is not an infant anymore it's been
around for a couple of years now yeah but i i still think when it comes to communicating with normal
humans in terms of i don't know like just talking about endpups and insects and saps and not so
while i connect and and whatever it's just there's still a long way to go yeah i think it's fair to
say that most people that get onboarded into nostril have to work through a couple weeks of confusion
i onboarded lots of people in nostril as well and what i what are you noticing
very similar issues as with the bitcoin onboarding uh way less risk um but mostly uh like usually you
onboard people and it doesn't matter how you repeat the you know private key stuff and such stuff like
put it in your password manager and it's on people usually don't and then they lose their phone and
then they're like oh yeah i'm on nostril and um and then they'll just you know like maybe they find
their endpub again because it's public and then they paste it into a nostril client and they think
they're back on nostril because it actually works but it's like a read-only use right oh man and so i
encountered that a bit yeah yeah where it's just like no your account is actually gone you can't do
anything no one can help you but you can still view your thing
um i know oh we'll turn around soon enough as you know
too many bitcoins around here yeah yeah too many
what are the chances yeah you think you think we're going in the because we just heard we're
going in the wrong direction little do they know that we're always going in the right direction we're
always going everyone else is actually wrong and you know just with what you said seriously i do
honestly think that the bitcoin and the nostril ecosystem is going in the right direction all right
good all things said i do believe it is going in the right direction i believe that we have enough
people in the ecosystem who genuinely care about human freedom enough to ensure that this gets to a good
level yeah so i i feel so you remain bullish i remain optimistic yeah i do i honestly do like when i look
at what people are building i mean i know someone right now in the nostril ecosystem who's building a
google drive clone oh yeah marty mommy let's go he's killing it marty is a shizzles man yeah if you think you're
using a lot of tokens you haven't seen what marty is doing i mean if marty is not sitting behind
his computer he's actually walking around with his computer in hand he just he's his computer
it needs to be attached to his hands and then he has everything he needs one of those things you
know there's things so you can strap around like your your belly basically and you you have a
standing desk with you at all times i was like i was trying to help him out with the with the ux of uh
what's what's the nostril um app that he built i forget the name uh iris iris i was trying to help
him out with the ux of that he helped me to clone the repo and everything but he just he's just
building so many things so far he's rebuilding his whole software stack everything that he needs to
use uh from scratch and building it on nostril like he built nostril vpn i actually kidnapped him
and went on a walk with him in madera and we talked about it and so i love what he's i love
what he's doing yeah what he's doing is very unique because he's looking at it from the perspective of
like and that's the that's a very good perspective because it's like okay what are like the mainstream
applications that people are using every day oh cool let's just build on top of nostril and he's
building it for himself basically like nostril double ratchet is basically signal you know like the
music thing he's building is basically spotify the document thing you mentioned is basically google docs
that's it yeah and so he's building it for himself which comes back to again the mob rule like letting
the community side versus you know having a vision and direction and and being the benevolent dictator
that just pushes the project forward because you know like linux for example had a very benevolent
dictator yeah mechanic and went very very far and is still going far oh there we go and other uh you
know other projects had a different approach maybe wikipedia would be an example uh in the early days it
was very very like communal and democratic and everyone could edit and everyone could do everything
yeah and they got really far as well so i think both approaches can absolutely i admire i admire both
approaches you know because once again i listen to a lot of podcasts i listen to another podcast of jack and
he was just like just build stuff just build things like like when you see some of the most successful
applications on the market you they often fall into two categories we have a unicorn i call it the
unicorn category and then the other category is the category which marty is building for you so i'm
going to split into two like niche niche uh use cases yeah so the unicorn category is like oh like i need
this thing so i'm going to build it for myself and i don't know if other people are going to use it but
it's going to make my life super okay unicorn in the sense that's a very special rare thing not in the
venture capital sense there we go and then the other track in the road is like building stuff like
what marty's doing is building the nostra version of spotify building nostra version of google drive okay
which is what china is doing for absolutely everything there we go no offense marty i don't mean it in that way
you know so so and there is no right or wrong way yeah because i don't know like who you know i think a
lot of people have this thing like oh like if there was more better distribution then there would be more
nostril adoption if there was better um like a user experience it would be more nostril version i don't
think there is one answer okay and i don't think anyone knows the answer and i think if we even
think we know the answer then we're like it's hubris we're just trying to like brainwash ourselves
yeah yeah you think the normies have a chance you think method option is coming on either the
bitcoin or the nostril side anytime soon next 10 years if i look at vine at what um rabble built
yeah yo that went viral in a super short space before it was life it went viral already through
distribution and i was like chatting with rabble the other day and i was like hey yeah rabble like
how did you where did it even come up to build this he was like yeah i know i was just like doing my
podcast and then a bunch of people just mentioned vine and how nice it was and how much they miss it
and he's like i never used vine before but i thought okay well i guess i can try and build it
i mean he has all the archives that's what he got going for him as well he that's the first thing he
did right like bring back all the old vines because he just has access to the archive and that's coming
back to your question it's like do i think nostril or bitcoin will go will go like you know global
adoption if we get a few more unicorns like well vine is not a unicorn because vine is built based on
based on previously but if we get more things like vine that has like nostril and bitcoin under the hood
we don't need to explain that the technology is under the hood it just needs to provide
it needs to provide a solution to people it needs to solve a problem it needs to be fun
yeah it needs to have that you know i think the fun part is the big one the fun part is the big one and
i think that's also what on the ai side i think um and we heard people talk about this yesterday i think
um the nostril crowd can bring to the table because there is something to be said about
using there was actually josh's point using ai in uh in an innocent way which if you're surveilled is
very hard to do yeah you know like if you if someone is looking at your shoulder at all times it's very
hard to experiment and and be playful and innocent and so on and and so since the nostril crowd cares
about privacy and we already have nostril projects that allow very easy access to private ai systems
i think you know they're having fun with it part like you can ask this thing anything yeah and there
won't be any like consequences for you in terms of your accounts being frozen or whatever like doesn't
matter how weird it is or whatever you know people type weird things into search bars and into chat tbd all
the time of course and i want to ask you that question what do you think that the nostril ecosystem
needs in terms of its user experience you're a lot deeper in that rabbit hole than i am i'm only just
getting my toe in yeah to me it's very similar to bitcoin and i think in general um i think both things just
mostly need time i think on the nostril side on the bitcoin side it's also it's very easy like more
people will get uh de-platformed from things and debanked and like their accounts will be frozen like
the bank accounts and you know like kyc will bring more friction and i think bitcoin will just get better
and better and better and more friction less and so so like not everyone makes the switch just because
their neobank got suspended because of suspicious activity or whatever yeah um like the the pain
tolerance of people is very different but if it happens like a second time and a third time and the
fourth time then you'll run into bitcoin eventually and you'll some of them might stick around and that's
what happened historically and i think for noster it's similar that like if your content is just edgy
enough you'll just be demonetized or de-platformed yeah and noster will be there for you there we go
so that's kind of that has been my take on the whole situation for a very long time i kind of
you know like i don't believe in the mass adoption at all costs
thing i think it's fine if it's a niche i use i use linux a lot as uh as an example where it's just like
linux was completely laughed at like you know 30 40 years ago like it's like completely like it was
not a serious thing and it was not a serious thing for a very very long time but it was always there
and it's they always stayed pure yeah and eventually turned itself into a serious thing yeah and so in
some sense i care about purity more than about mass adoption and because if you water down
and that's where it comes back to ux and i always make this example
if like if you abstract away a private key on the bitcoin side and turn it into like i forgot my
password thing yes that is not bitcoin anymore you're building coinbase right and so so there is a
there is a level of abstraction that you you you must not break and i use a different example sometimes
which is comparing the post office to email right i did this in the past and it actually works you
know if you know a guy in a country and you know the bar he frequents and you don't even know his name
you can write a postcard and you can make this work that the postcard actually reaches the guy you
know it's like it's to whatever mike he's always at this bar on friday and the bar is here and there
and so on and like the post office will figure it out it will land at the bar and
mike comes and he'll get the postcard and he'll be happy yeah with email this will never work
so that's fundamentally different email you need an email address you can't do the thing like you
know like the post office will figure it out kind of thing and and i i view i view like you know
bitcoin private keys and also private keys under the same light like you destroy a fundamental thing
of bitcoin yeah if you remove that abstraction layer and make it easy and make the ux amazing which
is of course like i'm describing coinbase not that the coinbase ux is amazing but you got my point
it's like you make it super easy you're allowed to forget your password you can recover at any time
and so on but it means that all the self-sovereignty flies out the window because you're not holding bitcoin
you're just you know you're holding paper bitcoin basically so that's that's just what we're looking
at and same for same for noster you know like if you there is no way around shifting the burden of
responsibility towards the user if you want to empower users the other side of the empowerment
coin is responsibility absolutely absolutely and so that's why i'm not like and it's it's with other
technologies we're perfectly fine of doing that like kitchen knives yes cars yes it's not easy to drive
a car yes people need a lot of training it's a lot of responsibility but generally people manage they do and
we're also okay with people having car accidents so in a society we're living in it's we know that cars
kill so many people it's not even funny we still get in and we still drive and that's i think the right
framework to look at bitcoin and these kind of ux issues because it's just like yes you're gonna shoot
yourself in the foot and lose your private key or whatever yeah but maybe you do it once right and
then you learn hopefully the mistake isn't like you know like maybe hopefully the the lesson isn't that
expensive yeah and i i have another question for you like from you because you've been also in the
nostril ecosystem longer than i'm very interested to learn how you think because i'm exploring this with
jeff right now with white noise but you know how do you think developers and ux designers can work
together in the most efficient way like i'm all about efficiency and like we don't need to have meetings
we don't need to have half an hour one hour meetings we can get stuff done async we don't we now talk to
our computer we vibe code we don't need to type anymore we don't need meetings you know yeah
how do you think what do you think the the relationship looks like for ux designers and
developers in the future that's a good question i'm not sure if i have a good answer um stuff is
definitely shifting um maybe maybe maybe um hmm so just thinking like something you're building right
now and if you wanted some ux help like how would you want to work with that person you know just think
of something you're building or you built and maybe you want to improve the user experience
yeah i'm kind of i'm i'm trying to line up my thoughts correctly and line us up correctly as well
it's just like this um because the issue that i see right now it's it's a it's a very innocent
question but it's the transformation we're going through right now is very weird you you are right
in some sense but i feel like i feel like we're something is getting lost right now because people
don't even read stuff anymore they have their agents read stuff and summarize stuff and have their agents
respond absolutely and i think that's a massive issue um the main reason why i started sovereign
engineering is because i had this gut feeling that to solve actually hard problem you need to be in person
and that's not something i came up with myself that's basically kind of what the best cognitive science
research shows is that we have something that appears only in person more or less tapping into distributed
cognition that's the proper like for you cox science term okay which is basically if you have a deep
conversation the conversation is bigger than all the participants and the conversation will go where he
wants to go so there is a spirit just like yeah just like this and that's why i do this like and
sovereign engineering is purpose built it's engineered the whole program is engineered around this idea
how can you bring people in situations so that this happens and that's also the magic around
conferences for example you meet people that you you interact online a lot you kind of know each other
and then you you suddenly you have these unlocks and you suddenly it's like oh wow oh yeah and then it
just goes from one thing to the next and you're cooking and you're getting somewhere absolutely and
it's it's not a debate it's not a it's not it's there is like no goal in mind it's a complete
like let's just talk and let's just see what happens kind of thing absolutely yeah and there is a
certain energy um uh when once distributed cognition starts to happen and we know this
like the colloquial term for it would be like team spirit for example you know like i always use the
chicago pools you know there's a certain like if the team is really kind of getting into the groove the
team spirit appears and carries them over the finish line and they win the game and so fully on board
yeah and so everyone knows that this is true and everyone knows that this exists and there's like
you know a scientific framework that explains all that and so on and so forth and so basically all
highly complex problems can't be solved by a single person it only can be solved with distributed
cognition and i like that you mentioned copy actually as the first point yes because language is a
is a product of distributed cognition no single person is in charge of language and language is
smarter and wiser than every single individual like what does it mean to understand something
you're building a mental construct that you can stand under right yes like that is not brittle and
won't fall down and crush you yes and every single word is like that and works like that and so so
language is way like there's so much wisdom embedded in language and most people are unaware of that
wisdom but when you are using the right words and define the right terms and so on then you're tapping
into that wisdom and that also transfers you know in our case to the user and so absolutely yeah i'm
not sure what the question was but that's like thanks for coming to my ted talk no no no but you so
the question was and it's fine because your train of thought makes sense so i asked you the question
that i asked you was how does what how do you think the future of ux designers and developers look
collaboration so then i kind of got the answer so yeah yeah i think we'll we'll do a lot of stuff
obviously on nostr and don't get up on the on like nostr-based github systems that's on
collaboration is changing as well and on the open source side the issue is it's so easy right now
to create a pull request create an issue those kind of things uh open source projects are actually
closing down the doors they are i mean i was speaking i'm you know like i was uh who the
the payment system i forget it now the bitcoin one path pav next what is it called bdc pay server
he's like oh my god like being like managing the you're being crushed as a maintainer that's what's
happening absolutely crushed and we call these drive-by pull requests because it's like a drive-by
shooting right it's just like you window down clod gets out the uzi and it's like 50 new pull requests
and it takes you like hours to review this so there's another tool there's another solution to
be built is like a tool that basically analyzes whether sure you use fire to fight fire like you
you'll you use ai to deal with the ai slop and so on so what do you so you use the word collaboration
yeah and you went back to your in-person events yeah so so so i think what we're losing online is
like and don't get me wrong there is a hive mind you know like bitcoin twitter
um had this and still has this noster has it there is a like everyone knows the reddit hive mind for
example so you have distributed cognition as well in an online environment the issue is that it screws
the nature of how the online world is structured is not conducive necessarily to dialogue to healthy
dialogue 100 i mean everyone knows this like there's like flame wars on twitter this conversation
that we're having the spirit that you have it could never exist no no it's just like i would you know
like people aim at other things they aim at like ratioing other people for example on twitter you know
like it's you're not even trying to to do a proper rebuttal to the point you're just trying to ratio the
person because it's funny yeah and you know the the thing the thing as well is i just want to say coming
back to the term of communication when you for me as a ux designer when i communicate a pull request
or an issue on a bitcoin wallets repo or on a nostril repo they cannot hear my human tone yeah of course
it goes away that request it goes away yeah right and and i like that you use the word communication
and i want to point out also like again coming back to what's in the words we obviously have a bitcoin
community and we also have a nostril community right yeah and so that's why why i i i'm gonna use
this to push back a little bit on the kind of copy and like phrasing it for normies kind of yeah yeah
thought because what does it mean to be a community community it's like it's the word comes like if you
dissect the word it's like common unity that is right that is right and so what do bitcoiners have
in common they understand bitcoin and they have they have they have various reasons for being a
bitcoiner most like two of them it's like either hyperinflation or um the permissionless nature of
it which basically like they have been debanked or had those kind of issues that's usually that's the
big two there's others but that's the big two and so that's what they have in common and there's also a
common vocabulary and so like the common unity of bitcoin is this shared experience share shared
worldview yeah shared vocabulary and so on yeah we have this on us as well and in the linux community
for example you have this as well everyone knows what the shell is everyone knows what that's what
makes you stay in the community because they're speaking your vibe there's and that's also what
brings coherence and you need coherence to actually be able to tackle any problem like to any problem like
you if you if you if you don't have coherence is the starting point yeah yeah you have to define
the terms you have to define that defining the terms allows you to define the problem allows you
to you know wiggle your way towards a potential solution because there's you know no solution you're
you're making my brain spin so i'm going to come back to what the question again because i was like okay
how do you how does the ux designer and work together my honest answer is in person that's exactly
what i thought but but it's at events like this like it can be a sprint make it like a couple day sprint
and then shift to the online world and that's perfectly fine but but that's why i'm i'm very
bullish on like small in-person events and i know it's hard to do you know like it's travel and
family and stuff and so on but that's why sovereign engineering is a pure in-person event like it
wouldn't work otherwise it's like multi-week in person like take 21 insane people lock them up
and just we'll be in person for like many weeks and we'll just try to you know like hash it out
and see see if we can you know build cool stuff in the spirit of bitcoin that's the goal like it's
and i i can't say it in a better way it's like if you don't understand what i mean when i say in
the spirit of bitcoin then you're already like please don't sign up you know because you're just you're
not gonna get it but if i if i if i tell a nostra person that nostra is built in the spirit of bitcoin
they will nod along and agree because it's obviously true you know like it's like the
censorship resistant network and so i'm gonna challenge you on this one now and i'm gonna
there's two layers so like the one is the in-person thing and i am so on board like i was just in a
hackathon now yeah i wouldn't have had access to a nostril developer who i could feel the spirits
together with yeah i wouldn't have been able to build beansprout right this like intelligence layer on
bitcoin yeah you won an award right it's like i mean let's go it's amazing but like okay we're
we're based we're geographically distributed we have people living in india we have people living
in south america we have people living in africa yeah they don't have the financial means to come
fly over to an in-person event yeah we want to access the talent from all over the world yeah we want
bitcoin and australia to be built in a decentralized way yeah not only with people from the western world
yeah because if we tap into the the hive mind of the global ecosystem of the global intelligence
that's where we're going to be able to be like like oh cool that south american person has a really
unique angle that african was a really angle so how do we how do you think we achieve that like i fully
agree with you i fully agree with you that the in-person is the best yeah but because i'm
originally from south africa you know yeah i had to like make my way here into this like western world
we live in you know and i i very much stand very strongly and you know want to see more of the
international talent you know and what i've experienced is i've been giving online developer workshops
for online hackathons so all these developers who have these like hackathons or development communities
they're like yo mo we need you vibe design session let's go so i've been doing that as well but yeah
i'm just like i'm interested to learn from you because you it seems you have a model which works
like really well um you know in terms of like hacking and producing developers like i've spoken to at
least one person who's come actually the developer the nostril developer i worked with he came out of
your booty let's go sovereign engineering he came out of it he was like it was the best he was like it
was the best so how do you think we how do you think we bring the developers and the designers together
in an in-person way and in a non-in-person way yeah that makes it accessible for everyone it's it's and i
face this problem kind of as an early bitcoin i'm just like having no bitcoin community yeah and like
the question basically is how do you build out a community like how do you build out a community of
like-minded people how do you what is the common unity and how do you bring the people together yeah
and the best way i know how is to put a flag in the ground be very very clear what's on the flag okay
very clear okay like that might be cypherpunk we're back to the one word thing you know yeah
there we go that might be brilliant assets that might be whatever lightning that might be i don't
i don't care you know like mining it's whatever put the stake and and and i have this kind of
framework i mean i started the uh german-speaking bitcoin only community uh together with marcus
many years ago and that's kind of the framework we used and it works really well and it was actually
successfully replicated in some other countries and it's um so if someone's interested in that that's
still on 21 world like 21.world where i describe kind of how we did that yeah and i think you can do
the the same thing for whatever special niche interests you because bitcoin definitely specialized
there isn't like a bitcoin space anymore you know like there's lightning oh yeah spark there's mining
there's like whatever stretch you know there's like all kinds of and so on the nostra side as well
like if you're really interested in we have lots of musicians on us if you're interested in kind
of reinventing music and your your flag might be anti-spotify you know and just like let's pay artists
again like let's let's let's pay artists their fair share and how can we make that you don't even
need to mention the n-word you know just like you shouldn't mention the b-word ever if you're
like try to get people into bitcoin never mention the b-word and and so i think that's how you can
do it and then you'll have to attract people locally at first and then you grow and that might
allow you to travel and then you take it from there but it's very hard there's no there's no silver
bullet and kind of the one thing like if anyone tries to do that my advice is always the same three
words very easy consistency consistency consistency you have to be willing to you know like literally
be alone for like 21 weeks i always go like do it for 21 weeks yeah and my other piece of advice is
like don't start it alone don't like you have to be two people find one other person you have to
collaborate you have to because alone alone and being two is very different it's very it makes it's
having like a gym body right going to the gym alone or having a gym body world of difference and don't
find people don't find co-founders who think exactly like you and who agree with you all the time yeah
i mean you also shouldn't hate each other you know it's like your co-founder is marriage yeah it's like
there should be a healthy amount of friction but it shouldn't be a carbon copy of course so so coming
back to my question you feel it's it's the in-person that's going to be the biggest because then there's
there's the spirit that exists to to work effectively with people you have to know them really well and
you have to trust them and i think the only way to really build up trust is in person that said we're
working on trustless technology and so on like you can get to know people online it absolutely works
it's just it's just a longer process yeah and a more arduous process and i think it's it's all about
kind of the middle way finding the balance between in person and um online collaboration yeah i mean
i'm just i'm just brain i'm just rainbowing it here right i'm just saying whatever's coming to my
mind so like based on the principle that you have you have these cohorts like what four times a year
um that's unclear between two and four times yeah all good all good yeah so we're still figuring it out
so there could be like an on and then they're like meeting they're hacking they're building they're
learning how to build it's all in madeira like a sovereign engineering is a very specific program
with a very strict structure yeah and it's in madeira for a reason reason number one i'm there okay
reason number two it's very hard to get to it's very hard to leave perfect you put them in a jail
dude yes you get them in the jail so 100 that's the reason it has to be something like that uh i
actually took inspiration from the bitcoin bush bash people they do that in the australian bush okay
those meetups and same idea it's very very hard to get there like you don't you don't drive for 15
hours and go through lots of pain and then you just leave again instantly you just don't do that no
you're running a marathon to get there yeah you know like in for a penny and for a pound kind of
situation like if you if you make the effort to come you're gonna stay and for sovereign engineering
that's crucial because like there will be periods where you want to leave it's it really sucks it's
like this you know this this hot yoga thing where like they lock themselves in yeah and it's like you
do like i don't know how many hours at like you know 80 or 100 degree fahrenheit and you just basically
die you want to leave always you know and so so they lock the door so you're not allowed to leave
and that's basically the idea but that's also in terms of you know like that really
like you can't wear a mask for such a prolonged period of time you really get to know people
and that's where like the really the real magic usually starts happening at like week two
that's what it's like end of week two that's where things kind of that's where the whole thing gets
is a mind of its own and it's just starting move started to move in one direction and it's just
everyone goes with the flow now i like where we're going with this because it's around this
philosophical way of you need to lock yourself in a room and focus on one thing yeah to go really
deep into that subject and we have this attention economy which our attention completely counter to that
which is the complete opposite to that so i think if we really want to get done
it's about similar to your your your boot camps that you have the sovereign engineering is you get
everyone together and it's like hey listen this is what's up there's no this there's no that there's
no let me just vibe on my project i'm building yo we're just focusing on this one thing and that's
what we're focusing on for this period and if you feel you can dedicate your time to doing that
in these few days great let's roll yeah and then you're gonna like really really make impact right
then you're gonna go yeah you if you're lucky you figure something out that's kind of new and
hopefully useful that's that's what we're that's what we're aiming at i have to be honest i've first
of all i've no idea where we are now i do not know where we are and second of all i'm kind of all out of
steam what about you i'm i'm i feel like we talked it all out all right any any last words any famous
last words builders keep on building freedom tech we freaking love you i actually have a last question
for you it's like how can people help you in your specific mission i'm going to be building a lot of
things in the next year because i've become a builder all right um developers i'm going to be reaching
out to you and asking you how are you building and how can we collaborate together in the most effective
effective way so if they can just reach out to me just slide into my nostril dms and be like yo mo
we want to learn how to work better together and i think that this is the best way to work together
just slide into my dms shoot whatever comes out of your brain and i'd love to just speak with them
awesome awesome that's it simple as that same for me slide into my dm send me all the stuff i'll never
read it i mean we're all we're all in this together yeah so like this is this is a community of builders
um and thank you to all of the builders who spend their time energy and pain building upon this
technology that's not always the easiest to build because i know sometimes it's not even
it's not easy it's not even like mathematically possible some of the stuff people are building
but at the end of it you know you're noticing happiness is shipping that's one of the sovereign
engineering just ship it and just do stuff just build stuff you can just do stuff just build stuff
that was great big hug yeah thanks so much for indulging me absolutely thank you for the questions
and for the walk this is so much better than a podcast yeah i'm telling everyone it's great right
it's like why do you you don't need to edit stuff and like edit out all the truth just keep everything
in just send it do it