Sam and Maceo

Transcript

0:02 I promise, I have no explosive materials. Do you want to see it? Who talks to me? If I want to add an extra bag, how much is that? What's the heck? 150 bucks? No, I'm good. Don't force me to put the bag on. Here's my timeline. We on? Let's go. I kind of wanted, like, I'll just have this ready. Yeah, you can do it, everyone. Alright, cool. What's up, everybody, and we'll... What's up everybody, welcome to another episode of Lead of Niggas. We're out here at ECC this week here in Brussels, Belgium. How have you been finding Brussels this week? Are you a fan of the city?

1:24 I like Brussels. It's not my favorite European city, but it's really cool. This is your first time here? It's my first time in Brussels, yeah. And how have you been finding the conference overall? Overall, really good. I feel like ETC is one of those conferences where you don't have to go to main event at all. There's so much value here. There's so many really amazing people. You can see my friends. That's beautiful. And can you introduce yourself to my audience? I'm here today with Sam, everybody. Sam's a founder. He's a software engineer, developer in this space. I actually met Sam last year at East Denver, one of the first five people I met at that conference.

1:59 And we weren't able to keep in touch, but we reconnected today here at the Region Village, here at the Commons Hub of Brussels. Yeah, I'm Sam, Sam Baffa. I'm the founder of TinyCloud, which is a protocol for people to be able to control their data, like they control their crypto, which we'll dive into. Yeah, I'm an engineer, been an electrical engineer for a long time, software engineer for a long time, done some stuff in AI, crypto, like to download new technologies. And so this is a really great place to build new stuff that can ideally change the world. Ideally change the world. And so how did you actually get into the crypto space?

2:43 To come to be a believer that this technology can change the world or enable that? I actually first heard about like Bitcoin in like 2012 in a computer lab when I was in college someone was talking about it and I was just like overhearing I was like really listening I was like this sounds interesting and I kind of googled it and it was too hard to like I didn't know how to get anything I just dropped it and then there was like a massive run up in the price in like 2013 and I remember just thinking I was like oh I'm an 80 I can't believe

3:17 I didn't like buy this. And I like, I think I bought the very top of that. Maybe it was like $1,000 or something and it crashed. But after that, I like mined Dogecoin with my roommate at the time. We had some GPUs in our house and we had free electricity. So yeah, I kind of got involved in like crypto kind of just like it was really exploratory. But then I kind of just forgot about it. I didn't look at crypto. I didn't get back into it to me like 2018 after like ICO boom. after Ethereum released, and I think it was, for me, just kind of, I really saw the vision

3:54 of, like, these kind of, like, decentralized, like, assets, like, Bitcoin is, like, this kind of store value, and just, like, learning more about Ethereum, looking at, like, doing things with smart contracts, like, like, loans and stuff like this, like, Aave, or at the time, like, I think it was, like, EathLend, so it's kind of just, like, it was, like, really interesting technology to me. And so I just was a dabbler in crypto for a long time until in 2020 and 2021, I did a research residency at OpenAI. That's cool. Yeah, it was really awesome. I never even heard of OpenAI in that year. Yeah, no, I was really interested in AI and what

4:44 What It Could Be And Do, Just Really Thinking Deeply On It, And OpenAI Was Like A Leader, I Used GPT-2 At The Time, I Was Working On Another Startup And I Was Like Holy Crap, Like I Want To Use This And Understand How It Works, And So While I Was There, I Read This Book Called Super Intelligence, Which Is About Like The Risks Of AI Basically, And It Really Made Me Actually Concerned, I Was Like Oh Shit, Like Hold On, Hold On, What Are We Doing Here, How Do We Stop This, There's No Actual Stopping What I kind of came to a conclusion about, and thinking about the best solutions, really

5:22 there were cryptographic solutions, right? How do you know what's real on the internet? How do you know, yeah, that being like one of the biggest problems that was like apparent to me at the time. Yeah. So I was kind of interested in crypto from like a, how can we use cryptography? I didn't know that much about it. And so after opening, I was still doing some, like, I was still working as a research engineer, but I was at East Denver in 2022, and I ran into Wayne, Wayne Chang, the founder of Spruce, one of the co-founders of Spruce. And what's Spruce? Spruce ID is a company that focuses on digital identity.

6:02 There we go. That's why I'm on the Silence Eagle. Yeah, they focus on digital identity. And at the time, Barry's building really cool technology. I feel like I have heard of Spruce. Is there like a, what are the co-founders, is a co-founder too? Yeah, so there's Wayne and Rocco, they're the two co-founders. I think I have heard of them for some reason, but continue. They're both great people, I really enjoy working with both of them actually. Um, and, um, yeah, while it's Bruce, um, I was working on an NFT project at the time, it was like, uh, a NTV scavenger hunt, um, basically I had these tungsten cubes, um, and I basically

6:50 wanted to hide them, like, around the country, um, and then if you meant to NFT, you would get the location to one of the cubes, and then if you found one of the cubes, it'd have a QR code on it, you could type in the QR code, and then you would basically be able I was really trying to figure out how you control this data in a decentralized way. Like, how do I put the data for where the cube location is so that an NFT holder could access it? And I was trying to figure that out, went to this Filecoin booth, and I ran to Wayne.

7:45 And we were just chatting about this, and he was telling me about the system that they're working on, that they're thinking about at Spruce, and I was like, holy crap, how do I use this right now? And he's like, oh, well, it's not quite ready yet. But we just had a really great conversation and there was a need for some of my skills and I got an offer to work at Spruce the next day and yeah, I just joined. I was really excited about how they're using cryptography. It was non-financial. I was just like, I never was interested in DeFi, casino, aspects of crypto. So this was like, yeah, it really was, yeah, I don't know, it was really exciting.

8:25 And so, yeah, while at Spruce, I worked on a lot of our, like, experimental Web3 stuff, including a system called Kepler, which is, like, which is kind of what led to me working on TinyCloud. Kepler is a system for being able to, like, permission who has access to your data using a sign-in with Ethereum. And so, yeah, did a lot of standard stuff, wrote like EIP that extended signing with Ethereum And also worked a little bit on our California DMV projects What's that? At Spruce, we had a pilot with the state of California to issue a digital driver's license to individuals on their phones So the state of California would have like basically private keys

9:15 They'd sign a credential with their private keys and saying, hey, you can drive That's pretty progressive Oh yeah, they're actually, I think the information technology and stuff at California, like the D&B, they're actually really trying to push things forward and also trying to do it in a way that's beneficial for people. Like privacy preserving ways, so you could prove over the age of 21 that the state says so Yeah, without having to know your birthday Exactly, and without knowing your address, right? Like, if you go and buy, like, a drink or something, like, let's say even online, like, you're not being tracked forever because you showed, like, you also showed your address, right?

9:54 So this, we, so basically, Spruce kind of had the pilot go really well in California and started talking to other states and other governments, and that was, like, a really, really good market. Yeah, that sounds really cool, to be honest. I feel like I haven't really seen a lot of states pick up this technology for application in that way. Yeah, yeah, no. It sounds like a very pioneering project. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it was really awesome to be part of that team and to really help to build that technology. But for me, I was really interested in the user-owners aspect of data.

10:37 It's kind of one of the reasons I joined Spruce. and I think there was kind of a real focus from a startup perspective of like, this thing is working, we found a good market, let's double down on this. And for me, working on the, there we go, working on the, yeah, it wasn't like the most exciting I think for me, my motivation, I kind of, if I'm inspired by my work and what it unlocks, I can really do it. And also if I feel like if someone else can do it, it's not as exciting. I feel like if I'm uniquely able to do this because of some insight I have or if I feel some sense of uniqueness to my work, then it's so much more motivating.

11:37 And I felt like the project, the digital driver's license project, I felt like, ah, other people can do this. This is great. And so, yeah, there were just challenges I had there. And I really wanted to focus on owning your data. And so, on January, I left Spruce and started working on TinyCloud. And so, TinyCloud is Congrats Yeah, thanks Oh, I'm like so excited So excited to work on it How's the founder lifestyle treating you?

12:14 It's mixed I mean, you're taking on a lot of You're just taking on a lot It would be nice just to work on the problem that you see But I think you have to really build a container You have to build relationships yeah you can't like you have to multitask in like myriad ways and there are things that maybe seem irrelevant that actually are pressing that you have to take care of so it's I mean it's I think if I didn't feel like if I saw someone else doing like exactly what I want to do I would join them but because I don't it means like okay let me let me just I really

12:58 to me, this is critical to see in the world. I think the paradigm of your data is held by someone else, I think it's just a crippling paradigm. It maybe sounds crazy, but I think we're technologically crippled in ways that we can't even feel. And as an engineer that builds this stuff and thinks about how it looks, I can see the decisions that product Managers are making that are crippling. If I use Instagram, I use Instagram for messaging. If I use Instagram, I want the first thing to show up to be messages. Instead, I get the feed, and in the corner, kind of tucked away, is messages. The first thing is going

13:41 to be some guy riding a mountain bike downhill super fast. For me, it gets my attention.

13:48 It's to improve the metrics for someone, for the company, to increase profitability. It's not for me. I've connected with my friends on Instagram. It's my network of people. Yet, I don't own anything about it. I don't even get to have say on how the technology I use looks. To me, it's really important that the technology we use is like the clothes we wear. My clothes fit differently. My style is different than your style. Technology should be like this. If I have a to-do app, maybe it's really important that if something's urgent, it's bigger in the interface. That's just how I operate. I know that's how I operate. I'll be better if things are like that, right? But everything's standard, and so I don't get to have this interface work for me.

14:40 And so you can wait for some companies to kind of catch up and build stuff for you But we have really powerful AIs that can rewrite the interface for you And it's like, what does the future of technology look like? What does interfaces look like in 10 years? I hope it's not what it is today Because maybe people don't feel this pain, I feel this pain I'm just like, this is so bad It could be so much better To me, it's like, when I look at how does it become possible to have a different experience It comes down to actually having power over your data

15:24 And what the interface on top of that data looks like And so that's why, yeah, that's one of the reasons that I think this is one of the most important problems I could work on Because I think it's like looking at the future and the future that we live in And like is it just a future where we're controlled? One second That's okay Is it just a future where we're told? No, where we're like just kind of steered by like Nudges? Yeah, like technological nudges that maybe are having huge effects in society But we're just like, oh yeah, no, I saw this ad, I saw this ad, right?

16:02 But maybe it's like steering people to vote in one way versus another or, you know, like, so I don't know. I just think a lot about, like, how do we use technology in a way that's, like, personal. And, like, when I was a kid, I had a Game Boy. Yeah. When I played the Game Boy, the Game Boy didn't play me back. I get, like, right? I was just playing. You're just like, oh, yeah, I'm, like, playing Pokemon, walking around. I like that. The Game Boy didn't play me back. No, but every time you use, like, every time you're using, like, anything. Social media, my cell phone, my maps.

16:34 Automatically, it's like, oh, that's what you like, okay, oh, that, alright, well I'm gonna, everything's like shifting underneath you How many cookies can we have, please, please, may I have some more? Yeah, exactly Oliver, twist with my data, stop playing with them Yeah, and it's like, that's, I think that's like, it's sneaky, and like, for me it's just, it's just something like, I just want a different relationship with technology This is like a, like, you're in a relationship with someone and you didn't even realize it It's not a tool you're using like oh yeah I'm using this hammer it's like no it's a relationship and I think

17:11 yeah I just think it's important to like own that and like to build differently right it's like Elon Musk building electric cars like you can have like an impact on the climate by like trying to change policy and stuff right we can pass laws for companies to operate differently but actually I think you just have to build something that's different and that's better And that's how you win, I think Like, you can't just let I mean, you could try to change past laws But I don't know, I don't have faith in that Not that I don't have faith in that, but like It's just a different effort, it's not my game

17:45 Yeah, I get that You want the code committed, not everything in the law Yeah, yeah And I think that's like, I mean, the law doesn't make it real You know, you're making it real by doing the work I think it's cool that you're thinking about these questions And like you said, you've looked and you don't see anybody else Who play in the field to solve these problems and address them in a way that you feel is compelling or has any momentum. So I'm excited if there's a black man behind this issue and really thinking about it. Because I think it's so cool to be here in Brussels and meeting so many black people I don't really see a lot at conferences in the U.S.

18:14 I don't know how that's been for you. But it's nice to meet people from different parts of Africa, countries I haven't really seen as much, represented in the immigrant communities I've seen in the States. And it's just really cool to hear people are working on it. I feel like it's a whole different environment, obviously, being in Europe right now, being here in Belgium, but normally it's in Paris as well, and so I met people that are here from Brussels that wouldn't have been there, and it's interesting to see what communities are present here. I've seen Pakistani communities. I've seen, I think, some Algerian communities here.

18:44 I've seen a pretty strong Moroccan community here in Brussels, and so it's cool and interesting to see what the lasting footprint will be of having a conference here, and people working on things like you, showing up here and getting to meet local people. I think even coming to this space, this is a local part of this community, this building now. So I hope that people in Regent Village continue to come back here and check it out in the commons. Yeah, even I met these two guys, Maxwell and Manu, they're both Ghanaian. Yeah, I met Manu. Oh yeah. He's at Oxford, yeah? Doing the NBA? I believe so, yeah.

19:19 Yeah, Maxwell as well. Yeah. I've been talking to people. I say, you're a black person I haven't met yet. Hello. Yeah, you're saying what's up. You're saying what's up. Love it. But even just like, yeah, even just like, like, like, like, yeah, they both got in. And it was funny because we, we met, we chatted, we hung out and we're both going to the same place. So I was like, oh, can I get a ride? And then it just came up in the car. We're just like, what? And it was just, it was just, it was really funny. But it's really cool to see like, yeah, people like that look like us, like that, like that from

19:50 I'm in the same place, just also pushing technology forward, thinking deeply about what the future looks like. I don't know, sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm just a weird guy, I'm just doing some random stuff that no one knows what I'm doing, but then it's like, oh no, you get it, you get it. And so, particularly even in the black community, it's nice to feel that sense of camaraderie. It's like, okay, cool. It's affirming. This is a legitimate undertaking. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I'm not just crazy doing some random stuff I'm not in a metallic cult Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly If I am, it's okay Yeah, it's like, oh, you're here too? Alright, alright

20:27 So we are building a future, right? Okay But yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, time here in Brussels has been really nice I was recently at Jesmerelda Oh, that's awesome Yeah, it was a pop-up village, pop-up community And I think that's really been, that was like a month-long experience, met a lot of amazing people, worked on some great technology. Yeah, would you explain what Edge Esmeralda is for my audience? Yeah, sure. Edge Esmeralda is a pop-up village, which is kind of like, almost like a campus that lands in a place where people come from all over, building in different things, like AI, crypto, longevity, like biotech, some hard tech stuff.

21:16 And they get together and live in the same place and have workshops. Anyone can host a workshop. And the caliber of people is generally really high. People posting workshops are like, wow, this person, like I've seen this person on Twitter. Like I've seen this person's work. I've used their work. And now I get to like sit in an intimate setting and have a dialogue. So it was really, and then, or just like have breakfast with them. or you just run to each other like in the middle of town. Yeah. So there is really special, magical experience to kind of live in community with like such

21:53 cool people and build like really nice bonds because even coming here in Brussels and running with the same people, you're like, oh, what's up? You know, because you're just, you basically spend a month together. Yeah. and so that's been really nice and it's also like was a really great place to work on the project that I'm working on now which at Esmeralda I held a couple workshops building these like AI pendants so there's a company called Base Hardware they make these pendants and they had a workshop which I found really interesting and I held a few more so people could have access to these devices but the idea of these pendants is they

22:33 You're listening to everything you're saying, and they're creating a transcript, and then you're able to search that transcript. So if it's like the last time, let's say I was talking to my friend, or I was talking to my friend last week, and he recommended a book, like, hey, what book did David recommend to me, right? I was trying to remember. It's kind of externalizing your memory in a way so that you can access it, right? Last time we spoke, like, what was the last time we, like, yeah, last time I spoke to Maceo, like, what was, like, yeah, what did we talk about? I want to, like, summary, because I don't remember.

23:09 It was, like, a year ago. And so that ability to have this external memory is really useful, but maybe I don't want the Facebook version of this pendant, right? I want to remember this stuff, but I don't want someone else to, like, actually be able to see everything I'm saying or remembering or think, or, like, you know? You want to use it, but it not use you. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, well, Sam said this this one time after he had a drink And so maybe, like, I'm going to influence him politically XYZ or something, right? Like, you have, like, there's an aspect of public privacy to this as well

23:44 That's worth thinking about and, like, the erosion of public privacy But that's, like, kind of also a bigger thing, a bigger topic But I think the private privacy, right, where the things that I have I keep private. I think that should still be preserved. That's one of the core things I'm working on in Titan Cloud. How do I have such a device, store this data in a privacy preserving way where I can use it with a whole suite of applications? Let's say I'm learning Spanish and I'm speaking Spanish and I make some mistakes. Maybe I have an AI that's able to say, hey Sam, these are mistakes you made. By the way, here's also some vocab that you

24:29 You Should Know because you try to use words like this, right? It's able to live on top of my data. I can give permission to that AI to do that. Maybe I have AI that, like, summarizes everything that happened since my last therapy session, right? For my therapist, and I give it to my therapist, right? Or, I don't know, AI that, like, I want to improve my manners. So it just tells me when I say, hey, Sam, you could have said thank you there, right? Or something like this, right? yeah that's really cool these are all like like apps like an app store and you could you could build this like Apple where you're like this is these these are how you interact with this data all this stuff but it's probably better to build it like email to build like a protocol where anybody can just like build on top of it without having to ask for permission from like like from like a company but they ask permission from the user they say hey we built this thing can we have access to your data to give you the service

25:22 Yeah, and I think that's a way better approach to like how we interact with data, how we interact with AI, having composability of this stuff. So that's like, to me, this is kind of like