Eyal Hertzog on deWeb’s decentralized web ecosystem

0:01i'm ashton addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and fintech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have a al herzog the ceo of dweb hey al welcome to the show and it's a pleasure to have you here today thank you very much you're very welcome i know you've been around the tech in the blockchain space for a little while now so

0:19i thought we could kick off the interview by hearing a little bit from you on your background and how that led up to you starting uh with your team on dweb so uh yeah i did start pretty early 2011 got into bitcoin and you know started to think what i want to do i've been the entrepreneur for over 20 years now so you know immediately figure out that i want to

0:43build something in that space i started a company called appcoin in 2012 that did uh user generated currencies was not even over a blockchain just just over a platform that allows that and we we did a lot of local currencies here in israel it was very interesting um uh project and then what we saw that happened is is that ethereum actually started to

1:09rise uh 2015 six and one of the key challenges that we had with those user-generated currencies is the ability to resize that is the ability to provide liquidity for those currencies uh for user generated currencies and in order to provide liquidity um you know they had to be listed on exchanges

1:35and that just wouldn't wouldn't work for us because you know if you let anyone create a currency how can it be liquid and we had to find a solution for that and that solution was bancore it was the you know what we all know today as the amn that everyone's using uh that formula i i actually built it on on my excel myself i had to discover it it didn't exist

2:02before or at least you know not anywhere i can find it and and we launched the bank war in 2017 it was a big hit uh you know then the whole concept of tokens became like almost like a you know a bad thing all of a sudden tokens were bad in 2018 and 19 they seem to be coming back to fall back into fashion right now but but there was like a

2:30pretty long dark period there and um you know we've been building all this time a lot of kind of infrastructure levels so the bank or network as well as a bridge to eos blockchain as well as you know new forms of of uh um you know interfaces and uh integration with wallets all of those

2:57things and so we've been working on that uh for quite some time and and in the you know last year i would say we really got into the user generated tokens again um and this time you know with the liquidity framework that it was so desperately needed and but one one thing that we figure out very fast is that in order to deliver an

3:25application that you you you really target kind of mass adoption uh with that application then it even if if everyone is using it from your own domain that's too centralized that's if all the user knows to come to your domain it's already giving some single you know central entity too much power over the network and and that sort of thinking kind of one thing led

3:54to another and and it let let me and the team to think about d-web as as a new concept as a decentralized web and in that in that decentralized web we kind of took what we know you know i've been building online services for 20 years and it's always the same it's always the same that you have you have those who build the product that design it program it test it and you

4:23building great code and then you have those who kind of host the the product and provision the service those are the devops they they don't care about building the product they just care about it you know being scalable working and you know functioning big good uptight and and and and those are you know completely different group of people and then you have

4:42another very different group of people which are the people that should deliver and sell this product to the end you know customer or user there's like the marketing people the product market fit kind of people that that work on on on on the sales people all those people are are kind of the front line to the customer and today they are in a single company always

5:08and we figure out that kind of the one of the most basic thing that needs to be done and can be done for the first time ever is to to kind of you know break down this this this this link this molecule molecule and say you know what you can have products that many can build modules for and many can operate and many can market but there's only one thing you need for that

5:37and that's a public database that all of them can use you need a public database for that and we never had a public database now we have a pretty advanced one you know at this time you can actually provide free services on public databases because blockchain technology have come so far in within a decade but we didn't have that just like we didn't have a public

6:00network before the internet we had a lot of private networks we didn't have a public network guess what you know after decades of private networks here comes the public network and you couldn't recognize the world after 20 years public database is a much stronger premise we need to understand that that when you build application on on on public database they're not

6:25built like today with a centralized monolith like facebook or amazon they're built like open source software by an ecosystem it doesn't mean that they have to be open source it can be a lot of closed source modules but it's an ecosystem that build that not as specific entity and it's it's ecosystem that operates them and it's an ecosystem that market

6:46provides support sells them price them just like you know the from all the online services that we use today which which is the most important thing is online service from all the online services there's only one online service which is public you know what this one is what is it it's email email it's the only public online service in existence everything else is fully owned fully

7:13proprietary fully centralized it's the only one and the reason is the only one that is survived and barely survived uh with without a public database without using a database at all it's and this is why it has spam and phishing and all the bad things in email it's because it doesn't have if it would have a database even of users you wouldn't have facebook today but it

7:41doesn't have it so so um that's how we think about it in d-web and then you know and i believe that's that's the future we're heading for so very excited to do that yeah well that's really interesting all and as so as a part of this new framework you know you mentioned there's the different groups there's the devops people there's the product people there's the marketers and

8:02there's the end users and normally in a company you have to get those first three and they have to work together to get the end users but you sort of you know decompartmentalizing or like decentralizing any of these groups and you could have like a devops group that could make a product for different businesses and you know really work with anybody around the

8:22world is this sort of like a a whole shift in the way that companies may be able to cooperate as well so you know some people say that the reason that you even have corporations is because transaction costs i mean at least that was they teach you in business school now that i've been to business school but you know friends of my mind been to business you know at least they told me

8:45that yeah corporation exists because of transaction cost so you know what happens when transaction cost goes to zero because of blockchain technology that's a very interesting question that's cooperation even makes sense anymore maybe something that makes more sense is a lot of independent teams that can you know work together and and you know maybe

9:06maybe work together for a decade you know i i know in the other industry like my friends in the music industry working with some you know uh some pa company and you know they can work in for a whole decade with with that team of of six people and it would you know be like a company but it's two separate companies that just keep choosing to work together maybe

9:28that's healthier than you know being forced to work together with with some people so so i think i think we're gonna see a lot of changes but it's going to happen in a very kind of practical and realistic way so you know if we if i tell you about you know how it works in d-web so you know we're building the software and we publish the software now you know uh all of our friends from the

9:50eos kind of the space you know the block producers they they they learned about it they can operate it they they play with it it's very easy it's very easy to set it up it's just that you know it's it's on google firebase so and and and and all of a sudden they have you know a service that they can market themselves but you know they're not really marketing people

10:13there they they they don't uh try to market to end users they're more like you know tech powerhouse but it's a nice demo that everyone can come and see what you can do with the platform and you know it's a it's essentially uh gives you again a decentralized reddit uh if you will uh where where each uh each marketer is is his own reddit his own a collection of uh message boards

10:41and and and so so for for the current set of operators it's you know it's it's it's great that they can demo it on on on their domain but but then we have youtubers that come to the operator and say hey i want to have my own discussion board that is kind of you know really mine working under my domain and you know and those youtubers there are the marketers all they need

11:06is just to own a domain or sub domain that's the only requirement for a marketer just have a domain and that's the most important thing because users go to a domain so everyone that goes through that domain whenever they want to kind of access the network is your users it's like an isp you know you're not the only gateway to the network but but you are a gateway and then you know

11:29if people are happy with with using your gateway so you know it's just using gmail it's not the only way to access email but it's it's a very popular way so you you encourage competition so so it's get very kind of you know practical in in in in in a way that you know the internet really allow those kind of things and we don't leverage them as much as we can

11:57in with the existing technologies with with with having for the first time a public database that basically all those developers can build for all those operators can work with writes to and read from and all those marketers can can benefit because no one owns their information i'm an influencer and i want to create my own community my own message board and i i i

12:25i don't need to you know to let ready to own that community or facebook own that community it can be mine it can be again mine to the extent that they come to but but i cannot even take it from from the user themselves because the data is on the blockchain so so it creates a whole different power dynamic and and you know one of one of the you know first one that we launched is

12:50juststable.com which is a discussion about stable coins and the nice thing because it's on the blockchain the way that that that it works is very different in terms of curation so yes you can post you can comment all the regular things that you can do at any message board but in terms of curation which is a very challenging subject because you know it's very easy

13:11to manipulate with botnets and all that so in terms of curation what we have is a very simple open bidding system essentially for every post in the system so every post has a banner if you will or add space and anyone can bid on that space and whenever you beat you you need to bid at least 30 more than the last one in order to be the sponsor and when you

13:36bid more than the last one the last one is getting kind of paid back plus you know some bonus if you want to encourage that so essentially by by letting the market price every ad spot in in in your essentially community based on you know every spot in in in every post you can actually find the interesting posts because you it's it's like the difference between

14:03you know newspaper commentary and prediction markets it's put your money where your mouth is you know if someone's willing to pay for that ad space that content is something to look at you know it's just an and it shouldn't be the only measurement but it's definitely something that helped you find the good stuff out of you know uh everything else which which is the

14:26whole idea of curation in especially in very very large groups uh so and and that is also just possible thanks to this blockchain technology that is not just a public database but by being a public database and that can be used as a public ledger it can be used to transfer dollars as easily as it is to transfer bits and so all of a sudden you can create

14:50those mechanisms when everyone you know whenever you you you you sponsor a content you know you actually you split the revenue to like six ways you know so uh and and this all happened in the background no one you know but but but it you know it provide revenue to the for the for the previous uh sponsor for the publisher of the post for the admin of the discussion board for the marketer

15:17for the operator that that is running the server for the developer that build the software and every time you you sponsor you actually split the revenue between all these parts which is again how you build online services that are public that are not just developed but also operated and marketed by an ecosystem rather than by a single entity and and

15:40we think that this is the future of online services just like just like open source is the future of software because it's been built by an ecosystem but with services it's different than open source you you know you cannot just build the services as open source and say you know it's a public service it doesn't work this way software is just intellectual property

16:02when we're talking about services we are essentially talking about uh something that needs to be operated need to be supported you know you have users they have problems you know it has costs so you need money to run in the system it's not like open source software which is just a set of ideas if you will it's actual operation it's it's like a blockchain

16:23right the blockchain needs miners it has needs money involved and incentives and the thing goes for public services just it's a different layer of public services well blockchain is like a infrastructure public service you know we're getting to the to the era of uh you know user level public services for the end user not just for uh for developers super interesting al

16:47and we're running out of time but i do have a last question for you you know what are the goals moving forward for dwab and for just stable right now are you guys looking for more strategic partners developers marketers and how can those groups of people find out more about the project yeah so you know uh just stable again being one of the first discussion boards

17:08some you know some some place that the people can uh can experience the platform see how it works uh when when people join right now we actually send them you know a couple of bucks to kind of try uh try out the system and and and upvote posts and we we're learning a lot from our users from you know from experiencing it ourselves and this is a place where

17:31anyone can kind of trade out and think you know maybe i want to you know have one one of these of you know of my own and very easy to contact us through our telegram group or our website at d web dot io always happy to help but this is the very first step of this public service which is you know one of the most basic services of the internet history which is a

17:54message board just doing it not not not as a proprietary service but the way that we think it should be very very cool the internet is turning into a whole new place uh so thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show i will leave those links in the description box below for the viewers all the best with d-web moving forward and let's follow up

18:17in the near future