The evolution of blockchain: Where it started and where it’s going

[00:00:08] Savannah Fortis: Blockchain has evolved since the nascent days of the decentralized space, from its heavy use case as the backbone of decentralized finance to its myriad of use cases we see today, ranging from NFTs and decentralized IDs to artificial intelligence and so much more. Keeping up with all of these developments can be hectic, but that’s why we have the Decentralize with Cointelegraph podcast to dive deep into these topics with some of the leading voices in the space, so you know exactly where to turn.

On today’s episode, I’m bringing you a guest who has experience in many of these areas I mentioned, working with some of the leading developers and names in the industry. Bart Wyatt is the CTO of the EOS Network Foundation. Bart has been in the space since its early days, watching the technology evolve, and has a lot to say on the matter, from starting up some of the industry’s legacy projects, such as Omni protocol and the EOS network, to developing NFT initiatives for well-known personalities like Gary Vee, and now trying to troubleshoot blockchain’s utility in the face of AI. Bart, welcome to the show.

[00:01:10] Bart Wyatt: Thank you so much, Savannah. I’m excited to be here.

[00:01:12] Savannah Fortis: We’re really excited to have you today and to talk about all of your experience in this space. You’ve been in the blockchain space for over a decade, from the very early days, like I mentioned, developing Omni protocol. I would like to start off with understanding kind of your entry into the blockchain space and what drew you into the space in its early days, and how that shaped your involvement launching some really big products and projects that went on to be kind of legacy names in our industry.

[00:01:44] Bart Wyatt: Yeah, sure thing. As most people’s origin story with blockchain, mine begins with a friend. I had a friend who was even older in blockchain than I am and very interested from the very beginning, got very deep into the technology, and would constantly bring it up anytime he had a chance to talk about it with me. I was his kind of a doughty friend in that I understood at the baseline what the technology could do, but the finance side of it was not something that I really found appealing. I’ve never had a head for finance. I’ve always had a head for technology. And over time, he would continue to have these conversations and continue to pull me into small toys and small side projects that he was developing. So, my entry was almost accidental. I was doubtful that the financial side of blockchain would ever pan out. And I think, as the record shows, I was incredibly wrong about that. But the technology itself was always so fascinating, and the side projects that my friend had were always so interesting that I just kept doing it until, at one point, I looked backwards, and I was a professional blockchain engineer, getting my salary from it and everything. And at that point, there was nothing to do but kind of push forward into bigger technologies.

[00:02:54] Savannah Fortis: Yeah, and I think it’s funny because a lot of people enter the space with doubts, no matter what angle they come from, and kind of no matter how bullish they are. This is a really volatile space, and I think that leads to having some maybe second thoughts about what this is. It’s also so new, and so many aspects of this have never been done before. So, I think it’s almost natural. And I hear it a lot as a component to a lot of people’s entry into this space of having some doubt, or at least letting that doubt lead to curiosity. And, like you said, it led to you having a career in the blockchain industry and actually running really hard with it.

[00:03:33] Bart Wyatt: Well, between my friend and I, we don’t really like to do things that are, you know, not running at full speed. So, a part of that is just my personality trait. I like to be a part of a lot of experiments. I’d like to run a lot of tests. And yeah, like you said, the doubt drives curiosity. Where other people were very confident, a certain aspect of blockchain, if I found myself doubting it, that was a point to dive in, to understand, try to really dig in and figure out why they were so sure of it. And several times, I was able to get to that nugget of truth in the inside. And sometimes, it just became a situation where we had a difference of opinion. And I think one of the great things that I’ve come to recognize about the blockchain space over the entire time I’ve been in there, it is an amazing technology innovation that happens to also be an amazing social movement. A lot of what this inspires people to do is dream about technologies that can provide a different level of interaction between people. But then, in turn, they dream about those interactions between the people, and so they end up conceiving of things like DAOs, or they conceive of things like NFT-gated communities, and that drives the social interaction. And all the value comes from the people and the diversity of their conversation. So, you won’t find at the bottom of it a specific algorithm. And as an engineer, I was always looking for that part and kind of in the search for those parts. Over time, I came to realize that, like, maybe it’s not important to find the actual machine underneath the people. Like, maybe the important thing was finding the people.

[00:05:01] Savannah Fortis: Exactly, exactly. And that’s why, which we’ll get into later, but when we talk about these projects that are outside of the hype, because they actually have utility that’s useful to people and the things that people are trying to do to communicate with each other and make systems work in the world. So, it’s a really spot-on analysis, in my perspective, and I think in a lot of people’s perspectives and in the perspective of a lot of people who are trying to build things that are lasting, that carry the space onward and will be the ones to build things that, like, are integrating this space into the everyday, where it’s not really known that you’re even working with something that’s in the, quote, Web3 or decentralized space. I think that’s the goal for most people.

From your experience that you’ve already told me about, one of those moments for you was playing a role in working on the Omni protocol, which is known for its role in launching Tether, one of the industry’s leading stablecoins, and something that has a lot of utility for a lot of people all around the world and had very significant impact on the crypto space. So, I’m curious, what did working on that project so early on teach you about the broader potential of all of this?

[00:06:10] Bart Wyatt: Sure. In retrospect, it certainly taught me that I could be the person sitting at a very small table talking about this random idea, and I don’t know if this is going to work, but yeah, I can write that code for you, and we can get the technology of it working. And then that be the spark that ends up becoming something as large as Tether. I mean, when you see the impact, the positive, the negative, the debate, the engagement that Tether has had, like it had such small beginnings. And on one side of the table, you had someone who saw the whole thing all the way to the end. And then, on the other side of the table, you had me saying, I’m not so sure about that, but I do know how to build this. And it kind of takes all kinds. So, to set the stage for that, this was the Omni protocol on Bitcoin. And at the time, there were multiple blockchains, but they were all essentially forks of Bitcoin. Litecoin. You had Feathercoin. Dogecoin had recently launched, and everyone thought that was ridiculous. And you know, Dogecoin is still alive.

[00:07:06] Savannah Fortis: Look at it now, yeah.

[00:07:08] Bart Wyatt: Look at it now, where our children have ended up.

[00:07:10] Savannah Fortis: Exactly.

[00:07:11] Bart Wyatt: But we were developing this at the same time that other protocols, like Counterparty, were also trying to just have anything on the Bitcoin blockchain that wasn’t transfer of Bitcoin. And the big debate at that time, and tell me if this sounds familiar to you, is whether or not you should use the Bitcoin ledger to store anything other than Bitcoin transactions. They had just launched the fork of Bitcoin that added the OP_RETURN command, which was a way of a concession to store data on the blockchain. And this is before SegWit and all these other changes that would come in later and make it even more accessible to things like Ordinals and inscriptions. But the gist of what we were doing with Omni protocol is exactly what they were doing with like inscriptions and like the BRC-20 standards. It’s using that blockchain as a secure way to exchange messages. And if you look at those messages and you know the over-the-top protocol, then you could understand people’s token balances. So, this was before the ICO boom and everything. Ethereum would launch a year later. And, you know, it would be a while before Ethereum understood its own role in the ICO boom and NFTs and things like that.

So, these are early times. And I personally had never seen anything like it, but it took someone with the vision, and then it took someone like me who was willing to dive into the Bitcoin code and hack around until we got it working in a secure way. And then it went live, and I went on to other Bitcoin projects and wished everyone well and watched from the sidelines as it became, I think it was originally Real Coin and then Tether and then, you know, it kind of escaped the exchange ecosystem into like what it is today and bloomed out. And there are so many stories like that in the blockchain world where someone has this idea of, like, it could be better, and then someone also has the ability to make a small change, and the foundation has been laid to where if that is a good change, if it works, so to speak, if it provides value, it can catch fire really fast. And that’s what happened.

[00:09:00] Savannah Fortis: Exactly. You’ve been in this space for a while now, and you’ve also been involved, from what you’ve told me before, in some early days of big names that we know in the space. Or even if they’re not projects itself, you know, helping launch things for other people that have become big-name projects. And one that’s really cool because it just shows that you are kind of like a boots-on-the-ground type of guy watching this evolve and being a force to help build it, which is really cool. You were in the early days as a technical lead for the EOS network, and I’m curious how it was like guiding yet another project’s early development and some of the challenges that you faced when you did that at such an early stage. Because, you know, I think people come in with these grand ideas and see the end product of what they would like these projects, these networks, these protocols to be eventually. But, you know, it’s another thing to actually start them from scratch and then also have to deal with where the technology is in that moment or where the developments are in that moment. And I’m certain this is laden with challenges.

[00:10:04] Bart Wyatt: Yes. There are so many challenges to launching a new blockchain technology and then also being there to support communities as they launch chains on it.

[00:10:13] Savannah Fortis: Exactly.

[00:10:14] Bart Wyatt: So, that story is going to rhyme with the other story, in that I happen to be in a place where I was in between projects. Dan Larimer, who was the initial visionary for the EOS.IO chain, he had come off of Steemit, which was another blockchain project that he launched. You know, Steemit is a very particular product in the blockchain space. It was kind of a Reddit-like blogging platform, and he wanted to do more blockchain experiments and he didn’t know what they would be. And so, you know, Ethereum had established itself at that point. But Ethereum and Solidity, especially during that time, was not something where you could really let your imagination go wild with it, because it just, the amount of expressiveness of Solidity and the amount of horsepower you had onchain was limited. And Dan wanted to try some big swings. And so he conceived of this kind of technology platform called EOS.IO. And as was kind of the time and the place was perfect for it, it caught fire as an idea without an implementation. And so they went on to form a company called Block.one. There was a huge ICO over the entire course of a year. It was the first ICO that I can remember at least. Didn’t just happen, like, kind of in an instant flash. It took an entire year. And while they were out there talking about what the platform could be and getting people interested in ICO and things like that, they were fully booked and someone needed to build the technology.

So, I was in between projects. I happened to get a meeting with them, and again, I said, Dan, I can’t tell you if this is going to work or not. Like, I don’t really understand everything that you want to do on the financial side of this. That’s great. But I can build this for you. I’m pretty sure I can build this for you. And, you know, he kind of honestly looked at his situation and realized he would be spending so much time on the other aspects of that business that he wouldn’t have time to actually beat the boots on the ground leading and building the team. And so he agreed. And that was maybe October that I got engaged. And then, the next June is when the first stable version of the software came out and networks began to launch on it. And in the beginning, we had two or three launch on it. But that short period of time was like a super-fast race. We went through at least three different versions of top to bottom, what the capabilities of the chain would be. We were working really hard to understand how people were using Ethereum but finding it limiting, and trying to work those use cases in.

Like the whole point of it was to try to leave Ethereum kind of on its pedestal, so to speak, as the most well-researched, fewest-compromise version of like a world computer. And then we were going to take a more practical angle and say, but if you can’t have everything right now and you want more than Ethereum can offer, we are going to take as few compromises as we can. For instance, we moved to proof-of-stake when Ethereum was still proof-of-work because proof-of-stake at that time was seen as a compromise. But it enabled us to do all these things. And so we just started building and working with community, launching it. And then, when you get to the launch of a blockchain, from the outside looking in, if it goes well, it just looks like it turns on one day, and everyone starts using it. But from the inside, looking out, it is nonstop attacks.

So, you had people who had a vested interest in trying to destabilize this technology, and they would poke holes on it every which way they could. And so, for several months after that, we were kind of on this rotating watch. And it happened like I saw this. I tell this story a lot. I saw it go around the team. Every person on the team, at one point or another, in that first six months had code that they wrote go wrong. And it was kind of a rite of passage on the team because the team was always there, and we were watching all the networks. We kept all the networks up. Like they never actually had downtime, but something would light up on the network that we were looking at, and we’d say, oh no, oh no, like, this is not good. And then you would just watch it, like someone’s face would drop, and you’d go over, and you’d say, like, you know, don’t worry about it. Like we’ve all, you’ve seen it go around the entire room. We’ve all been there. Now is the time when we need to figure out how we make sure the network stays up and stays alive and we fix this. It was beautiful in that, like, the entire team would go through that really fast and then come up and just focus completely on this idea of, like, we can make progress going forward. And so, you know, we did that. I think, to date, the uptime for the EOS network is essentially spotless, and it’s a testament to the community, and it’s a testament to the team of engineers who just were vigilant, watching everything and making sure that it stayed up.

[00:14:34] Savannah Fortis: Yeah, I imagine that, as you said, you came into this space also kind of learning. You mentioned already a couple of times that when people presented you with these ideas, you’d say, I don’t know how this is going to work, but let’s try it. Let’s take a crack at it. And I can imagine in instances like that, these are just massive learning moments for you technically, even like as your skill and as your craft working and troubleshooting problems like this. And I imagine that’s really rewarding in a personal way, even to the greater good of the industry aside, which obviously it’s very rewarding that, you know, troubleshooting these problems in the network actually keep it running and functioning for all of its users, but also as an engineer, someone working on it and kind of going through this process over and over and over again. I can imagine that can also be very personally fulfilling. No one really talks about that side of working on blockchain, but it just kind of dawned on me in the way you described this story and also talked about kind of the teamwork behind it.

[00:15:30] Bart Wyatt: Absolutely. Yeah. You can’t be in this industry even today, you know, this is now 10, 12 years later, without being learning all the time. Yeah, learning is key to it. There’s not many industries right now where no one has ever done the thing that you’re about to try to do. You could break it down into like a combination of a couple of things that, like, well, I saw this over here, saw this over here. We’re going to kind of put those concepts together and see if they work. Maybe they don’t, but sometimes they do. I mean, the whole joke is that for a long time, you’d just go out and pitch your startup as the Uber of something else. Yeah. In that kind of carbon-copy world, it’s not to say that there aren’t engineering problems or anything like that, but they are not always novel problems. And in blockchain, you’re just never looking at a problem that is well documented or solved a couple of ways. Like you’re always at that cusp. So, it is truly fulfilling as an engineer to have that wealth of problems to solve.

But if I’m being completely honest, like the journey over my decade long or whatever has been realizing that while I enjoy solving those problems at that scale, it is that camaraderie, is that teamwork. It’s understanding how to build an organization that can also live at that edge, because that’s a hard place to live as an organization. You have people on marketing, you have people in PR, you have people in comms, you have technical writers and stuff like that waiting to understand how they do their part of this job. And you can’t tell them because, again, you don’t know, right? You know, six months before something launches, like, it’s just a big question mark, a big fuzzy question mark. And building an organization that can live in that uncertainty, be comfortable, trust each other as soon as that information, that clarity arrives, it will get to where it needs to go, that’s a different type of organization as well. And so, at least lately, for sure, that has been the more fascinating problem for me to dig into and try to help build solutions for.

[00:17:17] Savannah Fortis: Absolutely. And it’s also kind of a testimony to how long you’ve been in this space, and how your role in it and your position in it is just kind of building off of everything that you’ve done. But, you know, circling back to how you came into the space, which was from a tech point of view. You know, you mentioned that you were and always have been and are probably still really interested in blockchain from the technology side rather than what it can do sort of in a financial aspect, which is always an interesting point of view because, you know, the crypto space is really heavy on the finances and also what it provides for people in terms of decentralized finance. But I’m curious just to hear from you, now that you have been in this space for so long and your role has evolved so much, what technical innovations of blockchain are you finding the most exciting right now, 2024 blockchain space?

[00:18:10] Bart Wyatt: So, in the 2024 space, you know, I have over time warmed to some of the financial technologies. I’m still on the outside of those things. I think I would be less fulfilled but more wealthy if I was deeper into the finance side of blockchain, for sure. I do think there is still an opportunity for blockchain to really revolutionize gaming. I know in 2024, that’s a bit of a dated take, because GameFi was really a big thing about a year ago. But keeping up with my lack of being into the finance side of this, it’s not the GameFi aspect of it. I actually think the real gaming aspect is something that can be revolutionized by blockchain. I don’t think it’s going to be one of those things that drops into games that exist. Like, I think this is largely why the gaming population is soured against blockchain, because people try to just kind of shove blockchain into Call of Duty or blockchain into Fortnite or, you know, Minecraft or like here, you want some blockchain too? And it never really made sense to the gamer. But I do actually think that, especially as some of these technologies get lower latency, they get faster, there are unique opportunities in gaming that haven’t really been fully explored. Whether those will be $1 trillion industry or something, I couldn’t tell you, but I know it’s there.

And, a little bit of a spoiler, before I got into blockchain, I was making triple-A video games, so I’ve been a game dev for a long time before I got to blockchain. This is why it kind of has a little place in the back of my heart. But also, it means I came from the side that is currently the, you know, the enemy of blockchain adoption. And I understand what they’re saying. In the game dev world, the 100% focus, the only focus was how to create a fun, compelling experience. And if you were not aligned to that goal, you were the problem. And so, blockchain is coming in and talking about owning your stuff and financing this and making your revenue or making a living and stuff like that. Putting up a hard wall, saying, I’m sorry, that doesn’t sound like you were saying, we’re going to make a fun experience. It sounded like you wanted something else. And until I think blockchain has a message that aligns to that goal, it’s not really going to get through that wall with the game devs. They’re a very passionate, very particular breed, and they do their job really well. So, once blockchain starts to help, I think that will work out fabulously.

[00:20:21] Savannah Fortis: Yeah, and you know, I would say that GameFi, even though you mentioned like maybe it’s an outdated take, it certainly was like the hot take maybe like two years ago, let’s say. But I think it’s something that won’t ever really go away, also, just because people have also talked about for a long time that maybe it’s not integrating it into known games, like you said of Call of Duty. And I think probably looking at like it’s the wrong way to approach it. But a lot of people see gaming, in general, as a means to adopting various aspects of this industry. And people have long said that gaming was going to be an entryway for people into GameFi, crypto, blockchain, and maybe having some, grasping it in one way or another. Because entering, playing a game or entering actually, in my opinion, with any sort of like cultural aspect into something that otherwise can be really heavily shrouded in like tech or lingo that you might feel alienated from, I think when you can combine it with something fun, or with something approachable, or with something that overlaps with something that people do all the time. I always see music and the music industry as a really cool way that people get into the space. So, you know, gaming, you’re right, it’s not about pushing it into games that we know, but I think the accessibility of gaming also will be the thing that does help bring more people into the space, or at least bring the technology to a larger audience if they choose to pick it up.

Also, we’re seeing now this year the resurgence of interest in this with the game, have you heard of this game Hamster Kombat? It’s like all the rage. It’s one of those clicker games that’s inside of Telegram. And you know, this is kind of making waves and making people again think about GameFi, and you know, has new projects that are modeling itself off of Hamster Kombat. Whether you think the game is of any quality at all, it was doing something right because it’s really picked up extremely large user base, and it ran with it and is now, you know, has plans 2025 to launch its own Web3 gaming platform. You know, and that just started from a really simple game. So, all these cycles in the Web3 space, you know, they come back, they reemerge as something else.

[00:22:37] Bart Wyatt: They do.

[00:22:38] Savannah Fortis: And one of the things that I wanted to make sure I had you talk about, which, you know, you could also say was kind of an older fad, but I’m really curious to see how it will rear its head, is NFTs. And I know you’ve had some involvement in the past with helping developing NFTs, and you’re a really strong advocate for fully onchain NFTs. So, I was really curious about your experience there and how you differ from the, as you said, halfway-done NFTs and why this actually matters in the future of blockchain.

[00:23:09] Bart Wyatt: Yeah. So, in between my time at the beginning of the EOS network and where I am now, back at the EOS network, I did take a little trip into what I call the more fun side of blockchain, which was NFTs. I joined up with a company called NFT42, and we set out to build a kind of a top-level platform for generating and launching NFT projects. And we did have this focus on being as onchain as possible. And at the beginning of our time, that was more focused on getting the metadata for an NFT onto the chain so that no matter what happened in the future, at least that information level was safe and secure. And what we talked about a lot was longevity, because we felt this was the kind of key differentiation at a technology level of the collectible side of NFT from just any other collectible you would have, is that this is a forever collectible. If done correctly, it should never go away. And some of the vulnerabilities to that with some of the other projects that launched is the metadata would be stored on an S3 bucket in Amazon somewhere, and maybe it would be accessible through IPFS, but you never really know if the data is going to stay on IPFS unless you use a different technology that its alignment is to store data forever. So, technologies like Filecoin’s, technology like Storage, like Arweave, those are perfect layers to make sure that all the important bits of your NFTs were there forever.

Over time, we were helping innovate and lead the way to getting even more of the NFT data online, and, I’m very jealous of them, I think it’s an amazing product, but Cryptowalkers was, I think, the peak during the NFT collections when I was involved of getting all of that beautiful vector artwork onchain. It was tricks that we were exploring too. We were not involved in that project, like I said, but that is a completely onchain NFT. And when you look at those NFTs, they don’t suffer at all from it, like they’re beautiful. And again, they’re there forever. That was why we were focused on the onchain thing. We thought that was a good differentiator from regular collectibles.

But where I really was interested in NFTs was that they could be kind of like their own living collectible. So, you know, if you collect a Pokémon card, the best you get is like maybe a telegraphic, or it’s got foil on it, you preserve that. You know, those are cool. Like they’re good collectibles. But some of like the lesser-known NFT projects that wish they had gotten a lot more traction were the ones where the NFTs had a life of their own. One of the co-founders of NFT42, who went on to do his own NFT projects, he had one called ChainFaces. And it started out with just these kind of goofy emoji faces that were randomly generated. Very fun, very cool. But he eventually made an arena project where you could put your ChainFace into battle with other ones, and they would earn scars over time, and they would win, and they would lose. And so, this was a situation where, in addition to this being a collectible, there was like this whole little universe going on of those NFTs.

[00:26:06] Savannah Fortis: Yeah, that’s cool.

[00:26:06] Bart Wyatt: And the NFTs themselves would show the history of having been part of that. That’s something you couldn’t really do with any other type of collectible, and that was a level of interaction and a level of history, a level of novelty, that really kind of like started to blur between collectible and, again, gaming. Now, I don’t see as many of those NFT projects today. Nate is still out there making amazing projects. You know, look him up on Twitter. His things are really cool, and there are plenty of other generative art and fully onchain NFT projects that, if you search for them, you can find them. But you know, when the kind of NFT heyday went away, unfortunately, a lot of those kind of fringe discovery projects [went away] with it, and I think this is the thing that will eventually, tying it back to like GameFi and gaming and bringing in that culture, I think the more of these experiments that people run, the more likely it is you’ll find the one that actually has something underneath it, you know, that captures a culture, that captures a connection. And then, if you can figure it out, then that leads into an entire another wing of blockchain technologies. Everything seems to rhyme. Back in the day, like there were no stablecoins, and we were just talking at a table about how to create something like a stablecoin. And then, you look at today, stablecoins are everywhere, and they’re a big part of the fabric of blockchain.

[00:27:20] Savannah Fortis: Oh yeah.

[00:27:21] Bart Wyatt: And such big things can come from these like little small experiments and these little small innovations. And so, the NFT space was so awesome because it inspired a whole different generation, a whole different set of people to play, to play with blockchain. Not for DeFi games, not for arbitrage. They weren’t building an exchange or a DEX or anything like that. They were literally playing, trying to relive some of their nostalgic days with playing with toys in their bedroom and things like that in a blockchain form. I jumped over there because I really wanted to be part of that in hopes that it hit, and I think we had an explosion of interest. I think the interest is still there. It’s just that there’s a little bit of a hangover because you’re not seeing people buy NFTs for millions of dollars anymore. And in a way, that’s good because I think now, they will be properly valued based on whether or not they produce that feeling of nostalgia. And so I hope those builders get there.

[00:28:16] Savannah Fortis: Or at least they should.

[00:28:18] Bart Wyatt: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, you know, as someone who never understood the finance side, I can say that at least they should.

[00:28:23] Savannah Fortis: Exactly. You’re totally right. Play, and I also do like how some NFTs were and are these gatekeepers to community, too. And not necessarily gatekeepers in a bad way, but gatekeepers to like communities that either existed and they now have this whole new aspect to them, or they didn’t exist, and now NFTs were like the thing that made them possible. And I feel like everything needs this disclaimer. You know, there was a lot of hype around a lot of those things like, yeah, be a part of this community. It’s like, well, where is it now? But definitely, the intersection of culture and these emerging technologies is like my sweet spot. And so I’ve had the opportunity of interviewing a lot of people who have used NFTs for exactly that. And one cool one that I really loved because it has to do with music, which is like my thing. The thrash metal band Megadeth is like really hardcore into NFTs and the metaverse. And the lead singer of Megadeth actually was one of the first people to build a website for a band and has long had like a lasting internet connection, a community, because of that website. And so, he jumped on to the NFT and metaverse thing and made this whole world with NFTs that actually, like, truly unlock things for the fans in that community. And since he had actually a really strong online community because of the website for years, that community ate that up.

So, you know, NFTs, I was able to talk to, like, all the community managers for this project who work directly with him. We had a great conversation, and it was so exciting to see those actually work. I mean, this is extremely niche because you literally have to be a fan of that band and/or, you know, are a collector and want to take part in this particular thing, but otherwise, it’s really niche. But for this niche, it works so well, like so, so well. And those people are really engaged and riled up behind NFTs.

[00:30:30] Bart Wyatt: Absolutely.

[00:30:31] Savannah Fortis: That was a really cool thing for me to see. And, you know, we don’t need to all become Megadeth fans to participate in that in a certain way.

[00:30:40] Bart Wyatt: But maybe we should.

[00:30:40] Savannah Fortis: Maybe we should. Maybe we’re missing out. But, you know, it was a great moment to see that for me because I’m like, ah, here it’s working. And you know, it’s not hype. It’s like actually something that’s so useful to this community that they love. And it’s like what they need. Like they existed already, and now Web3, as it should be, is adding this other layer of utility and connectivity to what already exists. That’s a huge part of it. So, you know, this was a cool use case. And this is why I’m always advocating, at least in some part, for these projects and these utilities that aren’t hyped, but they are more focused on like culture and people because that is where you see it working, and that’s where you’ll see adoption. You know, if Taylor Swift did that, oh my God.

[00:31:27] Bart Wyatt: For sure.

[00:31:27] Savannah Fortis: You know, it would be mass adoption ASAP. That would be maybe an idea for her team to consider.

[00:31:36] Bart Wyatt: Yeah. And Taylor, if you’re listening and you want to issue NFT friendship bracelets, give me a call. I can help you achieve that.

[00:31:43] Savannah Fortis: Exactly, exactly. You’re the guy. You’re the guy.

[00:31:48] Bart Wyatt: The fascinating thing for me is I’ve been at this technology forever. I could not point to the part of the technology that makes that possible. It is something about the alchemy between that fan base and the technology, and then the belief that somehow you get when you mix those two things together, that makes you feel more connected to that community. Observationally, you can’t deny it. The data is there, the numbers are there. But it’s one of those fascinating things about blockchain. Like, I can’t show you in the yellow paper, like here it is in the yellow paper where, you know, you create Megadeth attachment, you know. So, it’s fascinating to watch these things happen.

[00:32:23] Savannah Fortis: Yeah. Another thing that I know you’ve watched kind of evolve earlier in the space, you told me in our previous conversation that the world wasn’t ready for it then, is decentralized IDs. And I think this is a way more relevant topic today because we are seeing a lot of projects trying to troubleshoot decentralized IDs and not just in this blockchain space, but I know for certain that like the European Union, for example, is implementing regulations for its member states to have some sort of scheme in order to provide their citizens with a digital ID. And, well, at least a couple of blockchain developers have been a part of the EU’s sandbox for digital ID development, and they were working on decentralized protocols for that. So, I’m just curious what’s changed in today’s landscape that is making this something that people are, not only developers are looking at but like larger, let’s say, governments are even looking at.

[00:33:23] Bart Wyatt: Yeah, I was involved with the decentralized ID before I started at EOS. There was a series of startups, and that’s when I think it was too soon. But people just getting introduced to the concepts of Web3. I don’t even think we called it Web3 at that point. But it was too early to try to explain how far we could press into this. But in the meanwhile, you have seen governments take interest. I think there’s a lot of reasons why places like the EU have become interested, and why you might see more support from corporations like Microsoft with their DID standards, and the W3C has its own standard out and things like that. It’s obviously a developing platform.

I think you see mixed value propositions here. And part of that, I think, is actually why it’s going a little slowly. I think we have people who are willing to start the experiment with DID because they say, okay, I can understand how this might be promising, but we haven’t actually found that like real true value proposition that makes sense and sticks. From a government point of view, it makes a lot of sense to try to upgrade government identity because most of that is stuck in the paper age, and we live in a digital age. Most of your banking and things like that can happen on your phone. It makes a lot of sense that the things that the government would issue and interact with would move on to that same digital platform. And then there’s a question of like, how do we get that done in a secure way that people can trust? And I think that’s where the decentralized aspect tends to start coming in.

Because the other side of the value proposition is that I do think, you know, slowly but surely, people are waking up to the idea that they didn’t really, quote, own their identity in the Web1 and the Web2 days. And in the Web3 days, they have finally accepted that there is this notion that they could own their identity. I think the missing thing is, like, while they are hearing that message and they’re starting to open up to the idea that like that would be beneficial to them, I think we still don’t have the thing that that makes them want to have sovereignty over their own identity. I think it’s coming across as like, okay, you’re so passionate about this. I understand that like there might be something here, but I also don’t see a whole lot of kind of your average people lining up at the App Store, so to speak, to be like, all right, how can I own my identity today? It’s kind of like... This is emerging. It was way too early when I started trying to work with it like six years ago. Now, you finally got people that are curious, and that curiosity is great. That’s the baseline. And I think now it’s kind of like, you know, ours to lose. And that if we can figure out how to feed that curiosity before people lose interest or before regulation comes through that digitizes an ID, but does it in a way that it’s still locked behind walled gardens or in a different control and not really yours, then we will succeed in our kind of mission to revolutionize that part of the world.

[00:36:00] Savannah Fortis: Right, or like these Big Tech firms like Microsoft coming in and just kind of swooping up all the opportunities for smaller developers to kind of have a say. I think you mentioned in our previous conversation that blockchain developers should also be in those meetings, should be in those seats, having a voice kind of in these spaces where decentralized identity or digital identity is being discussed because, yeah, Europe is pushing forward these ideas. And luckily, there are blockchain developers and people who are doing it through a decentralized way in those spaces, and I at least see... What the final implementation will look like in years to come, who knows? But it’s at least really good to see that there are developers from our space who have decentralized solutions there participating, in my opinion.

[00:36:51] Bart Wyatt: Yeah, I think it’s good to have the voice there. It is an obvious option as a solution for digital identity, and so I’m glad that it hasn’t been held aside for some sort of superficial reason. I still think it has to prove a value proposition in order to be there. Fundamentally, it’s a very different reception that people from the blockchain space are getting in that market than they would have gotten 10 years ago. So, that in itself is progress. And that shows you that, like, we’re on the right path, but the job’s not done yet.

[00:37:17] Savannah Fortis: Definitely. And as we kind of close out, I definitely don’t want to skip over one topic that everyone is talking about these days. And I know you have something to say about it, especially when it comes to the intersection of blockchain with this emerging technology. And that is AI. I think that AI, in general, just like the crypto space and the decentralized space, has a lot of hype. And we’ve talked a lot about these projects and, you know, movements in this space that are fueled by hype and that have their marketing just pumped with hype to get people excited but then have no real promise. And now, what’s interesting is that we see kind of an overlap with our industry and with the AI world. You know, even in our reporting, we cover not just have, but we actively cover AI as a beat now, and rightfully so, because there is so much overlap between the decentralized Web3 space and AI. So, I’m really curious about your take and what you think about this combination of blockchain and AI and what they can realistically achieve together compared to what’s marketed to the masses.

[00:38:31] Bart Wyatt: Yeah, I’m really excited about how AI and blockchain can overlap. It’s the very same situation that I found myself earlier in, where other people are so confident that there is a connection here, and their confidence is what drives my curiosity, because I want to find what’s at the root of their confidence. And the kind of sad state is that often I find that we’re not really there on the technology side as far as like making that overlap real and actually making that overlap valuable.

If you look at the real problems facing people who are really into AI and trying to make AI big, it’s not the type of problems that are easily solved with decentralization. The problems they have of scale are enormous. And I would love for there to be a magical solution that could do, like a zero-knowledge training of an AI, but all that’s going to come at a cost. And right now, the AI industry is so nascent that they can’t really suffer even a small cost to that training side and be competitive at the market. So, they just get crushed by those incumbents. That said, the flip side is that the passion is real, and a lot of it is motivated, again, we learned something in the Web2 days where if we’re not paying for it, then we’re the product. And I think a lot of people are very leery that their privacy is at stake, their creative output is at stake, if they don’t get involved. And so, the really positive thing, the thing that’s amazing to me, the thing that is, again, you know, it’s nice that governments are putting us at the table, is that people believe that blockchain will be that thing that empowers them. That is a feeling that you can’t give people. They just have to believe it. And that in itself will give us ample amount of like interest in trying to find these overlaps.

Now, the question is, how do you actually take that belief and make good with it so that they can actually have some amount of power, some amount of agency in the future AI world? And it’s so nascent on both sides that it’s hard to see all those overlaps. I know there’s experiments going on in terms of being able to control and license your personal data, control and license your professional content output, things like that. I know that there’s other projects going on where they try to distribute training over GPUs. Some of those things are the easier ones for me as an engineer to understand, but unfortunately, they’re the ones that are the farthest from practicality, because if you look at the scaling problems for AI, it’s going to be very hard to create a decentralized network of GPUs that can compete with a supercluster somewhere, being powered by Three Mile Island and Microsoft. So, that’s a hard barrier to overcome, even with massive adoption. But I think the empowering people’s control, the empowering people’s sovereignty, making sure that people have a voice in what happens next with AI, I think that is certainly in scope for blockchain. And at the very least, I think that’s where we need to attack it right now. And then if we find ways to kind of create some of these more amazing technology overlaps, all the better. Those can be improvements after we kind of start with the general notion of people should have a say, additional voice, a seat at the table when it comes to AI.

And again, rolling back like this is worlds different than what we would have gotten as a reception from people 10 years ago with blockchain. There would have been skepticism. There would have been no notion that, like, blockchain could have been the thing on your side, the thing helping you feel more comfortable and navigating AI without compromising yourself or some of your privacy and your rights. So, that is nice that, like over time, that message has seeped in. That message has gotten through. This is an enabling technology. It’s not just finance. It’s not just about Ponzi schemes or pump-and-dump schemes. All those things, they do exist on blockchain as well. We can’t separate the good and the bad, but blockchain is a really powerful technology for this other set of goods, and I think we can sometimes forget that when we go through these hype cycles, that message is also out there, and it is starting to resonate, and it is something that blockchain can do. So, I’m really excited about where those are going to go. Nothing that I can point to yet that I think is like really ready for that to happen. It’s still in the discovery phase where everyone’s trying to figure out exactly how this works in it, but very helpful for the future that we find something there that is like a really good fit for these people who think that this is the way to do it. Blockchain can be their champion here,

[00:42:37] Savannah Fortis: Definitely. And I think you’re the guy, or you’re certainly one of them, to be the champion of this story just because of, you know, your whole trajectory in the space and how you’ve been there on the front lines of the beginnings of so many things that people were doubting or skeptical about, or were so new that needed time to have experiments be done. And people say, okay, well, let’s go forward, but we’re going to have to see what happens and kind of be curious, built on doubt. And I think that has even kind of been the reoccurring theme throughout this whole conversation. And so, you know, to hear these things coming from you, I think it’s definitely something to keep in mind and be paying attention to, as we definitely see these things continue to overlap, for sure.

And that being said, before we wrap up here, you are back with EOS and taking charge on some other major upgrades and projects in the network and for its community. Just curious if, you know, as we close out today, what you’re up to? If you have the floor to talk about any projects you’re working on, or any cool news that you have encountered in the space lately. Updates.

[00:43:55] Bart Wyatt: Yeah, from the EOS side, I think we’ve just kind of recently, as in maybe a week ago, depending on when this airs, achieved what I consider to be a huge milestone. There has been a long story with EOS and the community and power struggles and things like that, but we finally, after a two-year process, were able to build and launch an upgrade to our, like the core algorithm for our consensus with the community’s help. So, this was something, a project conceived by the community, not by us. A lot of the engineering effort to prototype it came from the community. Again, not from the EOS Network Foundation. We came in having seen the progress they were making and supported and supplemented that and then, like, applied all of our engineering talent to get it over the line. And then, we had a moment of truth where the entire network came together and upgraded from the algorithm for finality that we had had six years ago when we launched that took around six minutes to guarantee that a transaction would never be reversed on the network down to one second. And so, it’s like a so many orders of magnitude difference and is the product of the community. And now we get to say, completely honestly, that the community is the thing that built and owns the core of the EOS network.

It’s no longer something that we wrote in a white paper years ago and then constructed inside of a corporation, and then just offered to the world. It is really, truly a joint effort with the community. And so I’m really happy with the results, and I’m really happy with how the process went. It’s nice also that this puts us in like the top tier of blockchains in terms of time to finality, which is where we started six years ago, but technology progressed alongside of us, and now we’re kind of back in that top tier. So, that’s fantastic. That’s called the Savannah update, if you look it up.

[00:45:38] Savannah Fortis: Nice!

[00:45:39] Bart Wyatt: I did not know we’d be having this conversation when we named it years ago, But happy coincidence.

[00:45:44] Savannah Fortis: You named it after me, and I know it.

[00:45:46] Bart Wyatt: Okay, fine. We can break that news here. We did, we did.

[00:45:49] Savannah Fortis: After this conversation. Boom. Savannah update.

[00:45:53] Bart Wyatt: It’s been the longest con ever, but yes.

[00:45:56] Savannah Fortis: That’s awesome. That’s really exciting. Yeah, congratulations to everyone who’s worked on that.

[00:46:01] Savannah Fortis: I’m sure a lot of work has gone into that, a lot of planning, and, like we said earlier, a lot of learning, I’m sure.

[00:46:08] Bart Wyatt: So, much, yes. And that’s as much about how to manage and hear and listen to a community as it is about managing and operating an internal team. So, so many fascinating ways to grow.

[00:46:19] Savannah Fortis: I bet. Any final advice you’d give to any developers or innovators, let’s say, who are trying to build in blockchain today? Before we go?

[00:46:27] Bart Wyatt: Well, the obvious take is be curious, but I think diving one level deeper into the motivation of that: Don’t take people’s doubts of you or people’s hype in something as fluff either way, and look for the nuggets of why is it that someone has this belief, and see if you can stay curious that way. And I think, at the very least, you’ll understand other people a little better, but sometimes you’ll find a little piece of technology that just really wants to be built. And if you’re a builder, then that’s where you find really golden opportunities.

[00:46:56] Savannah Fortis: Thank you so much for that. That was a great piece of advice. And thank you so much for joining us today, Bart. It was an absolute pleasure to hear your story and pick your brain about all things blockchain and beyond, basically.

[00:47:09] Bart Wyatt: And the pleasure was all mine. Thank you for the invite, and I would love to come back and talk again sometime.

[00:47:13] Savannah Fortis: Us too. Us too.

And that has been another episode of Decentralize with Cointelegraph. Thank you so much for joining us for yet another insightful conversation uncovering the decentralized and Web3 space. Also, check out one of the many articles we’ve published here on our site on the topics covered in today’s topic, and make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. We’ll catch you in the next one.