Hicetnunc AMA Transcript

52 min readJul 5, 2021

I have tried to do my best to make this both readable and as close to the actual recording as possible, in this vein I have deleted most duplicated sentance starts, and words. I’ve also added speaker: when the speaker changes, and added the onscreen comments in <> where relevant. I’ve gone through to fix my own spelling mistakes, but not done any editing further than that. Because of this there may well be mistakes but I have done my best to keep them to a minimum, please to take this, edit it to repost it elsewhere if you want to.
I hope that this serves to be useful to people in some capacity over time.
— Xander Merricks (@xanderhizome)

AMA Transcript:

Edgar: First of all thank you for Rafael to join and agree, to do a public q&a /ama, thank you to pixel, vertical, and gonras, and thank you to everyone who pulled this together in two days, and many people who asked questions.

So The structure will be as follows, this will last a couple of hours, we hope to fit it into two hours, so pretty saturated. Basically I will be asking questions sent in, I grouped them into topics to discuss, for about an hour and 15 minutes. Then the last 45 minutes will be questions collected right now.

The reason it’s been done like this is to pool the most popular questions together, to have some moderation to this whole thing

So, Rafael hello

Rafael: Good Morning, good to

Edgar: Morning, so I would like to start with a sort of statement as to why the q&a is here. And the reason for this q&a is not to attack or to accuse, but to listen and to understand the platforms creator. Another reason is also to give clarity to artists and collectors who have invested their time in this beautiful platform that rafael has built, this group is thankful to the core, but also concerned at times.

Hundreds of people are earning because of what rafael has created, and hundreds finally have for the first time found their community, which I think is a very important part of this conversation

so hence we are here this Sunday trying to understand in very simple terms, where we are and what’s to come and what’s the future. Especially the first part of this conversation I want to understand who Rafael is and what is his philosophy, and how does this philosophy integrate into a working NFT platform. So Rafael I want to start with asking you:

When you created this, four months ago (1st of March lets say), what did you imagine hic would be in four months? And is it what you thought it would be, looking at it now?

Rafael: Yes, so. The decentralisation aspect that some people like to discuss on twitter, about how this is decentralisation. I don’t know I wouldn’t be interacting with blockchain if it didn’t have some of these values, and I think it’s choosing the place of development, and decentralisation means not only decentralised power, but decentralised knowledge, economies, and also geographically. For example hicetnunc wallet in tezos blockchain that is one year old, in blockchain time, I don’t know, I don’t know for example who has a bitcoin wallet which is ten years old. It is something you have to take care of, there are many security concerns you have to take into account. There are many security measures indeed. The hicetnunc wallet, you can see the history, and you can see the deployments of the smart contracts which originated hicetnunc. For the first time it came online, it was not an easy integration. You have to integrate the ipfs, you have to integrate the smart contracts, and the api’s. It was… I thought that… I wanted to experiment, to see if it would be capable.

Edgar: and you’re talking about early march, the very beginning of hic? Or even earlier?

Rafael: Yes, of course, the hicetnunc has a history, we have developed the smart contracts and it is something important to notice. The hicetnunc, I had the idea that we were going to deploy this. And there are core values, because of media, because you’re dealing with media, with ipfs, it’s a media economy. You’re exchanging media somehow, but also it has a… It has something indeed, which content we want to bring into the chain, which content we want to promote. You can see some of the early OBJKTs I have shared, it was a ‘are you going to save this this short film’ because I want to have it, store it on chain. Or to have another storage system that is related to blockchain. I try to keep it [nice??], the possibilities of using this system.

Edgar: Is it because you felt limited by say Ethereum platforms, or rather why the reason to create your own completely separate platform?

Rafael: Yes, Blockchains, I have experimented in Ethereum, and it is costly in.. like, you can’t… it was not sustainable for my situation at that time, to have a system…

Edgar: you mean purely financially?

Rafael: yes, I have hosted servers already, joining Ethereum services, and since it wouldn’t have returns. I just felt comfortable on tezos to keep deploying as many contracts as possible until I felt safe with it. There is a plan for hicetnunc to be a smart contract laboratory, and that is very important for the overall future of hicetnunc. Because here in Brazil, there are other laboratories, but we are independent laboratory and I feel it is important for us to have sovereignty, of course we can collaborate with other services, but there is a need to respect sovereignty.

Edgar: Is it more of a statement you want to be separate from them, or is there a technical reason you want sovereignity from them?

Rafael: It is a techno-political reason.

Edgar: Techno-political reason?

Rafael: Yes, and it’s important to understand, I have seen this repeated over and over again ‘this should be like that’, but many people who give advise ignore all the principles and ignore the development process, and ignore the techno-political vision, so it is important to say this. We have a laboratory, and it is important for us to have a pace of development, and people should try to contribute with it.

Edgar: Can I ask then in that vein, do you feel then that the hic is a non-profit organisation being a laboratory, or is still a for-profit organisation eventually?

Rafael: Yes, this is a difficult question because at this stage we don’t have a working app, but I don’t feel safe to name myself a non-profit thing because it can just run out of funds eventually, or we can wait for partnerships etc. you can be optimistic maybe. Actually I hope this can be a crypto economy somehow.

Edgar: but in broad terms, for it to be stable, is it important for you, or is it more about experimentation, a part of the fact that it’s unstable and living and it stops working and it starts working. It is almost somewhere in the whole dna of the whole platform. That somewhere deep inside you kind of fine if it goes through these cycles?

Rafael: Yes, this cycle has been good, to be off, and maybe to ready to find the way we are going to work on communications. And this non-profit thing is a bit dreamy, from my perspective because as I mentioned I already had infrastructures that went off. So I am working for hicetnunc to last the most it can. So it can transform itself and fulfill a part of it at least. So a part of the idea can be transmitted at least, before, I don’t know, everyone decides forking or whatever.

Edgar: But do you feel it will become, like some say, it has to start to be run like a start-up, but the way this kind of complicated structure with so many people on it will eventually have to be run as a start-up. Is this kind of true, or are you trying to avoid it as much as possible?

Rafael: I try to see it as a laboratory right for smart contracts, so other smart contracts would be something I find interesting in developing. And also to bring people who want to develop, at the same pace as the laboratory, and with the same values, they are welcome to build with us. We were trying to do this in an open way, and etc. and if the recent instability issues, maybe your concerns like a start-up, maybe it makes sense in an organisational level. people were putting their noses…

Edgar: Can you expand on that, so you mean, you feel people are attacking the structure itself, they were not seeing it as a laboratory, and you feel someone is coming in and attacking it and putting their noses where they shouldn’t, that’s what you mean?

Rafael: Wait a second, do you hear a voice? wait a second.

Edgar: I don’t hear a voice, I hear your voice raf.

Rafael: I had an interruption on the sound here.

Rafael: I was having a lot of issues with the commons idea.

Edgar: Commons, commons idea?

Rafael: yes, people are entitled to…people sometimes make interventions on the development for hicetnunc, and this…

Edgar: but do you think they do it because they don’t know what the flow of development

Rafael: Yes

Edgar: do you think there is a bit of a gap there potentially, that they do it not to be nasty or whatever, that they just don’t know where the platform is going?

Rafael: No, this interferes… I feel this disrespects the points I have mentioned. The sovereignty, it doesn’t respect individual aspects. Integral, individual integrity, this type of value, they are not going into at all. There are many possible things that I possibly failing discovering trying to govern a commons also of course, but the organisational level is that we try to keep it open. This development, we expose ourselves for it trying to create it in such a way. Many bottlenecks, like software, it is a development process is incremental, we have developed the first version of it in February, and if I weren’t patient we wouldn’t even be here, I don’t know, hicetnunc could’ve broken a million times indeed. We have to patient, and of course part of the community inspires us in this way. I am sorry about the wording that I used earlier actually about [internal issues?].

Edgar: I think it is fair what you that people interrupt, to some extent, but as we are discussing now, people aren’t doing it out of malpractice or anything like that they might just not understand the full picture?

Rafael: yes, but it is a full picture because, Tezos for example, I’ve been in Tezos for one year, how many of you are here for one year on Tezos, I don’t know anyone here from before. So, it is a bunch of assumptions, like ‘we want to govern our own chain’ but we can’t collaborate with others, of course people from the Tezos ecosystem to build it, but why this governance can’t be built from hicetnunclab, why we can’t suggest it. Why other laboratories deserve trust on building this governance. This is a flaw in this argument, we want to build governance, but we don’t want hicetnunc, but we were presenting this ecosystem…

Edgar: but, do you think the Tezos ecosystem almost by now, four months later, sort of depends on you a little bit, that hic is such a big part of tezos itself, in terms of even amount of transactions?

Rafael: It was, we are not, we are offline right now, but I feel that we had a role in this blockchain. Let’s see how it goes actually, because… I feel that, yes, like, DeFi etc. there are a bunch of farms, and everyone loves farms, but they don’t want to discuss decentralised finance here so there’s something that maybe we can discuss decentralised finance here, but I don’t know, if people are, we can loose the opportunity to discuss decentralised finance, but every starter product, but the term people like to use for it, I like to use laboratory. The ecosystem will simply be taken by laboratories the north-hemisphere, and okay, but that’s a philosophy, it’s a techno-political concern, that’s what you believe in the end you know. So when you want to collaborate with hicetnunc, you have to try to enable it, you have to… because what are the values being proposed here. You have your own management of your assets, you can use it how you wish but…. it is a decentralised protocol in this sense. I can’t burn anyone, I can’t burn you from the chain, that’s simple, like the first step to think decentralisation, the laboratory is also a techno-political experiment, that people should try to understand and contribute to as that.

Edgar: but can I ask, sorry, when you say laboratory, you say hiclaboratory, in your head what do you imagine, is it a group of people, what are we talking about in a real world sense. What is it apart from being an idea. Is it like a company, where you have 5 people who ‘run’ the laboratory where people can apply, or what is that laboratory?

Rafael: Yes, like, it is something I am trying to build you see. But everything has its steps, it is always started as research and we are trying to see the best structure for it, on blockchain everything is distributed. Everything I have made on blockchain I have distributed, there are people from ukraine, people from I don’t know, people from everywhere. So collaborations are… you have to be distributed, you have to be open somehow, to see what is, with who you can collaborate. For example here in Brazil, it doesn’t even make sense to have a laboratory, because of simply connections. But regarding technology, because of governments and stuff, it doesn’t have the same distributed logic but. But, for connections, it’s interesting to think the same distributed connections in the… like many people… yes, I am trying to have this structure that has this core values, and it’s. That enables people to join the blockchain space and learning about it.

Edgar: Sure, can I bring it back to the question of structure, and the team to an extent, having collected the questions. I am trying to add more and more from what people have been asking before. One big question was ‘can you explain in terms, not specific governance, but even just say devs, how does that work, how big is that hic team. How many people are we talking, how are you structuring that at the moment. not in the future but literally today.

Rafael: It is distributed as I mentioned, it couldn’t be possible even in the first place if it wasn’t distributed. and, it doesn’t make se… You can try to organise but for example, imagine, you have an organisational structure, and then you have the exploit and… it is too unstable, you’re in a crypto market also so people have to experiment the crypto market and understand how the technology works.

Edgar: Sorry, Rafa I’ll have to bring you back to the question, because people will grill me if I don’t ask specifics. Is there a team, even if in your mind, is there a team, and how many people are we talking, in terms of for example, we all know hic is more or less down for seven days now, so what is the structure for problem solving there. How does that work in terms of the team?

Rafael: Yes, if I am the lead engineer, and many things are developed by me, even if slowly, sometimes it is a difficult experience, because as I mentioned we have this vision of a smart contract laboratory, and at the same time I have to do some fixes here and there which are absolute. Anyway, I manage the twitter, I have some.. I find it interesting actually, the crypto twitter, it is interesting to go through there, their algorithms. Anyway the team. I am the lead developer, I talk[? taught?] through many laboratories in the tezos ecosystem, I know people from, I was located a bit also from the telegram.. You have to read the proposals, blockchain, a lot of it is open source. Contributors are distributed you know. So, there are many services which we use and they have their own comms, for example, we have integrated temple wallet, kukai wallet, etc. so this is all distributed, but who integrated, it was me. For example, the api, which we are using now, it was made by martinsquare[?] we integrated it.

Edgar: And deciding to integrate is down to singularly you is that correct? It doesn’t go to some voting process amongst the devs?

Rafael: Yes, but we are thinking on restructuring this more in the sovereignty sense, having it as our own infrastructure, and try to focus this, because of security issues, because of personal and commons issues actually.

Edgar: Makes sense, do you enjoy the managing of hic, or would you rather not deal with that side of things?

Rafael: Umm, I find it is interesting, but we are not…people should not…they don’t understand [algorithic] hic[?]

Edgar: What you mean in general? people don’t understand hic?

Rafael: Yes, like the Dao idea that people get confused, that they want to vote, and they say voting is a slow process, it doesn’t…also giving voice to hicetnunc, we could be more comfortable, there was indeed…me as a public figure is a bit difficult, because I am also an easy target for attack. and those attacks happened. if the protocol were hacked, you can also believe people would also try to attack me. The most problem is to give the direction of it, as we are usually, we can’t stop the development of hic at the same time. I am actually hopeful people will rejoin the development of it.

Edgar: So I guess out of that, being tired of being attacked, and having a lot on your plate. A lot of people have asked, ‘why not delagate?’ why not have a CTO, I collected the line by ox10 who offered to be said CTO (Chief Technology Officer), would you take an offer like that from him?

Rafael: Yes, well that’s the sovereignty problem. There are many problems in here. The structure of hic is transparent, believe it or not, and you can easily do the math. Like roles on this thing, it can rotate, and we have experienced four months of rotations. And it was not trivial to do these rotations also. It’s not easy, like let’s bring someone… you’re not… it would be…maybe it is something to discuss with 0x10 but.

Edgar: But would you be open to the idea of spreading it a little bit. So you stay the head and the wizard, and there are people who do their parts of it, so you don’t have to do all of it. Do you see a link potentially between hic being down for seven days, and no real delegation?

Rafael: yes, yes, right, I find it interesting it would be, but we are not busy bakers, we have to build it without [xxx]. You just have to build it, and that’s our direction, we can provide services possibly situals can help with this to bring more income, but until then I don’t know, people have to put more into the table, to bring solutions. Because you should not do this like that. We have plenty of plans to do, we are going to finish that plan, and maybe we are going to do other plans later. But, if people don’t propose something, I can’t also, there are many security issues, any protocol can dive in into our conversations and try to, it’s not the healthiest also, space blockchain actually.

Edgar: No, I totally agree, hence my question of delegation. because it’s not just about platform, but also about your wellbeing as well, and it leads to this extra question we had when you said ‘we have plans’ people asked in a way, who is we, and when you say that do you mean I have plans, more than we? Because there is no team as such right?

Rafael: yes like, we are trying, I am trying to bring. Yes it is a bit of a collective, I don’t know, image that I use in my mind. But which considers, which would consider a ‘we’ not as an individual statement maybe, but.. There are things I am thinking to bring more people on that might be healthy for the hic community, to bring a more stable communication. But yeah, people need to be patient, and also, understand we need to develop other things. Like the source of… Try to find other areas for hic to also engage in, and connecting. Because actually, indeed like, there are many things that are concentrated in me, and we don’t have the possibility even of discussing ideas properly, we don’t have spaces for these, even artists to discuss their ideas properly.

Edgar: Because it brings, it brings that point from yesterday I saw being discussed, or people asking right now, the kind of ‘The bus problem’ this bus accident idea, that there’s only one of you, and you hold the top level keys to most of it. People are worried having built this ship, in case something happens to you. even on a technical level if passwords are forgotten, a lot of devs are pushing for this idea to have that protection, to increase it least by several members. So I think that, I hope a message from some of the people to pass, hopefully to spread the idea that everything is held by one person I guess. Because that goes in the issue, we can go back to decentralisation vs centralisation idea. I would like to talk, bringing it back to the team a little bit, the questions of how the project has changed from early days/weeks when devs were building it was a volunteer sort of endeavor, everyone was fighting for it. But of course I have to bring it to the money side of things, money starts to come in there’s 2.5% here and there, and there are questions in regards to payments to devs, is it, how are these calculated first of all? and is it more on the spur of the moment, and if there is a plan to structurise it a bit, so that people are getting paid for their work as devs on the platform.

Rafael: First on the bus thing, it is a security issue, but how to work it, I’ve never seen anyone propose a good solution for it.

Edgar: I can ask the guys to comment after this, but I think I’ve seen some proposals in regards to smart contract that checks on you every three months or something, and if you don’t respond it can transfer the smart contract privileges just in case. Would you be open to have more people in case.

Rafael: yes, in the long run right, the idea would be.. I feel that the more funds are distributed the more we are safe. The thing is to, a circular economy would be its own chain, a lot of things would happen on chain. The developments towards… I don’t know, I usually try to see, for example hicetnunc. It has, 2.5% from fees which we collected around 40k tezos. And for example I believe I have distributed 10% of it. And that is something I try to keep. I don’t know if that makes sense, but right now we are dao, and there is somethings that are not continuated, and so we, I don’t know, blockchain to us seems to be a coherent thing right now. A mode of distributing.

Edgar: but would you, that out of 50'000xtz collected as income, the main dev who did the most work statistically received about 700tez is it, do you see that criticism? That after four months devs are a bit unhappy, is it then a volunteering platform or is there a profit platform?

Rafael: Yes I think that someone should value the trades that happen on blockchain, because for example I don’t know if anyone has ever received crypto in exchange for work. But I value these rewards, it’s not trivial, for example for my first year working on chain, I got 1000tezos or more and it is not something…. I don’t know, that people should not be speculative on sometimes, it’s not healthy. Development, I don’t know, you should trust in this case I believe, but…

Edgar: But this is a question from current and past developers, is there, because I guess the feeling is they’re not entirely sure how it was decided for example. maybe you can clarify to them, how are these payments decided, who gets what, and how often. Because I guess, that’s where the question arises whether there is a link between that sort of slightly moveable structure of payments to devs and that hic is down for a week. Do you see potentially there’s a space for improvement there?

Rafael: I don’t know, there is a problem, and there was, I don’t think so. But, it can protect us also from.. I don’t know, I really think the developers, foreign developers do these comments which you’re sharing. I tend to go back to the perspective of sovereignty of our laboratory, and to develop this from all… only thoughts… and

Edgar: So if….

Rafael: For example to have these infrastructures etc. from… because I actually I feel kind of [something] of some foreign developers, so I don’t know, that’s something to consider.

Edgar: As you mean, in because their salaries are so much higher? In that sense

Rafael: There is a huge difference in development pay checks in other countries, and, I don’t know, of course we want to meet a basic standard for people to contribute don’t be stressed with hic but, right now, I am, for example I am stressed, and I don’t. we can try to achieve this in a way. We have to find our way to achieve this, like to have a working space that is creative and etc. but, and economically also healthy. But, these are expectations, a bit, that maybe they don’t offer a solution for this healthier, for a healthier space, because of the size of hicetnunc, I don’t know, but ,we have some proposals like, for example, if you want to stake in the, and have a distribution of tokens, for it to be. You know, to have more tokenomics around it because it is complicated, like if you’re going to have a metaverse, we stake, and parts of these funds are distributed. And tokens are distributed for who is staking for this project.

Edgar: When you say tokens, can you clarify, when you say tokens, you mean almost paying people in shares right, in hDao, like to pay with that you mean? What do you mean by token distribution?

Rafael: yes, like, we, for example, we have hdao, and it can be used, we intend to use more of it. But, for example, other workforces, for example metaverse, if you want to be in the metaverse you need funds for it. We can only try to bring this project like the design of it, part of the, what are the basic. We can try to contribute with other teams, for to bootstrap this, or to have a haggler, or for it to be sustainable, it needs a tokeneconomics on chain. Like, for example, hic could have each workforce with, or anyone for a matter of fact. To stake their funds and you, and what does stake mean? You stake your funds and for a project, and in return you receive token distribution for the project, and this would make sense for hic also, for, maybe for these foreigners, more workforce. But also locally because that’s something actually we trying to bring people into this space with this logic also.

But I don’t know, this concern it’s, that’s a bit of, digital labour, that’s, for example, that’s something that has to be discussed really seriously. You have to invite people, we can have a talk about digital labour etc. but to attribute things to hicetnunc, it doesn’t consider all these techno-political things it’s really complicated in my opinion.

Edgar: But can I, I just want to finish discussing the devs and their payments because they’re are other topics to discuss. And I really appreciate Micol and Gonas are collecting questions, I am sorry I am not mentioning names of questions of who has asked, because some of them are combinations of questions that, I will try to if there are specifics. But there was one comment I wanted to sum up that topic of devs and payments, and in a way a philosophy of hic. Someone said “he can use all 100% of income and no one should complain, as on other platforms, the only difference is his promises and our expectations, many people work for free here because of these expectations.” I wanted to ask to that comment, when people say expectations here, what do you think that they mean? What was, or is promised to them in the hic environment.

Rafael: I don’t know honestly, because, I am working like, nonstop for, since the beginning of the year, so I am not sure really, because I don’t see those contributions sometimes like, sometimes, other contributions from the Tezo…maybe there are [two?] that are helpful but, I don’t, I don’t know, people have to be honest, because…can you repeat the question please.

Edgar: So the statement was: “he can use all 100% of income and no one should complain, as on other platforms, the only difference is his promises and our expectations, many people work for free here because of these expectations.”

Rafael: Who is working for free? Like some, that’s complicated really, I think people, if you want to work, you should indeed value, and try to. I value my work, and I don’t want anyone to do this, but you have to coordinate, and the lack of work towards hic, it’s something impressive so maybe. Some works are going through the wrong direction because there is lack of work on hic, and there is an excessive, you know, you were commenting this, there is an excess of work, and responsibilities over me. So these kinds of things, it’s complicated, you have to… It would be interesting to have more coordination, but, for example there are two, I had my many of my builders, for example, there are some people who built batch tools, that’s great, I like to see people developing tools with blockchain and I hope they keep developing, but the responsibility of us, is, we have to take care of hicetnunc. But, if you want, if we need more power to deal with commons aspects, and, you know maybe you shouldn’t be trying to.. I feel that people should help actually, hic, in, also in diplomacy etc. but, because there are many parts. Honestly. For example this batch tool, we are having this migration, we have built a batch tool for cancelling, I have, I implemented the swap, the new marketplace, and then I have to review the cancelling batch tool, to reconfigure to the new contract. So you know you won’t have to cancel all your listings, and have to reconfigure all of that, you can do this automatically. But someone might’ve seen this down the road, but who is going to implement this you know. So I don’t know, it’s, it has to be coherent, it has to be a [gyo?] you know, really. Instead of, even when we receive invites for collaboration, as in the case of objkt.bid, ummm. There is a, maybe there is a communicational problem, but, there is then this sovereignty thing which I was mentioning.

Edgar: We will discuss the objkt a little bit later, I just want to come back a little bit to the fees and the money idea, just to put peoples mind at ease, because obviously it has been asked and unfortunately people still don’t get, and would like to get an answer. You’ve mentioned 10% of fees being distributed to devs, fair enough. So I guess the big question is, say one week ago before the hic went down, “what were the main expenses of running the hic other than https hosting, were there any expenses at this stage if, from what I understand correctly most of it has been put on free.

Rafael: There is server expenses, for example every time, someone.. Like, people broke the hicetnunc many times and we tried to fix it, and to optimise it, and great many stress tests, but there are server costs. We are paying server costs, so I don’t understand many of the things people are complaining about.

Edgar: But would you be fine, explaining, just in clear lines, in terms of the expenses, what are they? for example like hosting for example this, because I think some confusion comes from that, it was never listed openly, so what is the money spent on?

Rafael: Well, this excess of transparency that we should go back to the sovereignty aspect, and think that hicetnunc should [trief?] and not be hunted.

Edgar: But would you be able to mention some of these expenses?

Rafael: Yes, uh, we use Amazon, and we host it on Amplify, and we had also costs with api’s with [servers?] but we caught a lot of these costs, and these were transferred to the hicdex. But the main costs for us, is amplify, and we are looking into optimising this costs, and making it as low as possible for hicetnunc to last and that’s what we’re focussed here. And it’s not trivial you know, really, it’s something that for example yesterday someone was asking this question on discord about our expenses on server and etc. at the same time the person was screaming, at the same time I was paying the expenses you know. And it is like, a, I don’t know, I find it really disrespectful in some sense that we’re working and people don’t value this.

Edgar: No, Raf, I think it’s not that they’re devaluing, they could answer to you while maybe that it’s disrespectful that they’re building mini-economies, you know, artists, whole families and couples, and then the system goes down but there’s still fees need to be paid, there’s still 2.5% coming in, so there’s a budget in the system.

Rafael: Of course,

Edgar: So I think it goes both ways, they want to know, they want to understand what this 2.5% is spent on, and if it’s out of money, maybe it’s time to discuss raising the fee, or if there is money, then I guess most people want to understand if there is money why hic is going down. because I think the link is kind of clear there, there are several layers as to why it can go down. I mean I am obviously simplifying, but I think there is that thirst to understand it, otherwise people will just come up with their own structures as to what the money is spent on.

Rafael: Yes, like, we are growing right, so when we started, we ‘why are we going down’ I don’t know, in the beginning we didn’t have a situ or.. I don’t know, the idea is to optimise hic, to leave it a protocol which is technically it is […..] managed this, because IPFS sometimes really seems to be stressed also. But, the hope is to optimise it as an app, and possibly bring more features, smart contract features.

Edgar: And you mean that would be the money spent on?

Rafael: Yes. It is a focussed development of a technology and we have to be resilient I think, and if there is a… and we can invest, but we are currently down so invest is the, there is risks also involved in investing on.. but, we have basic…

Edgar: Is there a risk investing in people?

Rafael: In People?

Edgar: mm

Rafael: No, yes, like the basic distribution which are, or work forces, and the basic, like we use a lot of this to purchase NFTs from artists, to distribute it to development teams but, I don’t know maybe that’s something, that’s important to discuss these expectations. People want to leave from a protocol sometimes, and you have to build it to be indeed sustainable, it has, you have technological bottlenecks, you have to reduce costs from servers, I am not comfortable with the server costs still, which was like more then $2500 for example every month it’s this or more.

Edgar: you mean in Tezos or Dollars?

Rafael: In dollars

Edgar: In dollars, so $2500 goes on the server?

Rafael: Yes, but, yes the hope is to reduce this. It’s not trivial you know, I think, but yes, the amount of people who use it, and who, to make it, for us to find the most optimised solution, it has been an interesting experiment so far, like an engineering experiment, even if a bit, but, I don’t know, I worry about also these costs and, but yes, the idea would be to keep developing, let’s see how we can build this, find a comfortable way to build this development team. We hope to have still a distributed team, I like the mood of contribution actually but people have to, they are being introduced into this space, so people have to be patient also.

Edgar: When I ask in the same topic, because you mentioned one line I want to zoom a little bit, you mentioned this kind of fear you have for transparency, and I think it’s a very important moment to clarify, that transparency might lead to loss of sovereignty, can you explain that, because obviously that would go in conflict with decentralisation which should lead to transparency, because people need to know, you know, are devs paid, where is the money going, what is the general plan for the platform, not just money, just generally, so can you elaborate on this fear that if you are too transparent then it is also bad.

Rafael: Well, I honestly feel that it’s a hostage almost situation, where people are, and like this… We can have directions but we have to define them then, because, I don’t see why there is a doubt on transparency and everyone can peek indeed the parts that are open for like that are, the parts that are difficult for hicetnunc or for the development, people can pick up but, and, I don’t know, I just don’t feel there is much coherence, our side, we are four months, we are live for four months, we don’t have a forum and, this, transparency concerns are not welcoming in this, I have suggested this already, I appreciate these inputs, but sometimes you have to question yourself if this has good intentions on it and uhh.

Edgar: So you think the risks basically outweigh the gain if you become too transparent, that’s what I am hearing right? Because it’s such a young platform?

Rafael: Umm, sometimes, I don’t know, I feel we are really open and it gave the opportunity for the system to develop itself so some of this kind of question is, I don’t know if it makes a lot of coherence, I think the coherence should be built, and should be looked for in the wider ecosystem now. So people can, for example there are people, for example who received rewards from Tezos commons, and I felt relieved with that actually, like good that our community is being recognised on the Tezos ecosystem etc., but we can’t keep this discussion, we have to develop our organisation, people demand an organisation, and I do not disagree with that, but that is not the word to use, ‘transparency’ I don’t know, it is bad, it is a bad word for online, for a blockchain civilian in this case I think it is a bit out of….

Edgar: Okay, Thanks Rafa, I am seeing we are 1hr 6mins in so I think we have about 10 minutes of these last questions, then we’ll open the floor to AMA, and Micol and Gonras will be feeding some questions which haven’t been answered yet, and sorry if I have not asked your question yet, we have been compiling from over a hundred questions into sort of groups. I am going to finish this part of q&a with the elephant in the room in a way, it’s the objkt.bid situation.

Rafael: I really would like to also talk about exploits maybe.

Edgar: Yes, okay, let’s bring exploit first then, let’s hear your thoughts on the exploit, because that was more or less at the same time then objkt.bid happened. Yeah please, your thoughts on exploit, and potentially probably the key question from the audience ‘What led to it?’ ‘How did it happen?’ and ‘Why it’s taking relatively long to repair?’

Rafael: yes, the exploit was, it was a flaw in the smart contract, it was a, when I, I was the one that deployed it, there was an error, there wasn’t p2p reviews at that time, that’s something to consider, when this exploit happened, I feel it’s good because it pointed out these errors on the smart contract and we had a specific place already to look at. And, the changes on it, so it’s easier to feel safe with this new version, but, there are some changes that we added, to image, to stop, to try to stop bulk-buying because it has been a bit of behaviour not very welcoming sometimes but. So yes, the exploit it happened, I was taking a look here around, 52 or more OBJKTs were affected, it started on mid June, and we were tracking it and it, and looking at the behaviour of the exploiter, while also dealing with other development issues, and, I feel at the end it was a good solution, because, I don’t know, the timing of it all, it was really curious, like, the solution from the exploit to stop we only had on the 28th of June, when I changed, broke the contract from the marketplace so you had to change the administrator, and break, and everything would fail, and, only at that time I had this solution as a possibility, which was the only logical thing to do. I don’t know, I feel it was good actually to wait for the best solution.

Edgar: and structurally how was it made? You made sort of a separate room where some of the devs were trying to solve it as well, or how, for example, how was the structure stress tested basically?

Rafael: yes, like, the migration happened like okay, you have the exploit it is on the marketplace, you have to build a new marketplace, that’s the first step, we are developing the marketplace solution since then, it’s almost ready for deployment. But I am also having the sovereignty concerns.

Edgar: But is it a protocol, I am trying to get to the idea, it happens, it’s an attack let’s say. What’s the structure? Is it like a seperate room there are four developers with you and you go through some sort of check list, or is it more improvised the system?

Rafael: Uhh, the system for the..

Edgar: To solve it, to have a ‘we know there is the exploit’?

Rafael: Yes the management, we have a developers channel on discord, but I was trying to share the process, but…

Edgar: The post-mortem right, the post you made as well?

Rafael: yes, but the solution didn’t come from any of the emergency rooms, right, it came from the exploiter, explained the solution, and, we had it changed to also to, we were thinking why were we taking so long. We are currently, indeed people have to understand their OBJKTs are not exploitable anymore, and they need to change the marketplace and we are currently in this process, I feel it is a part of the process of migration, until we deploy it and build another tool for better migration for other one’s who haven’t been able to migrate still. But the idea is, indeed, to bring the basic information for the migration, we are trying to do it as best as we could, to bring this, and to not rush it, the first step is indeed, is the cancelling them.

Edgar: Okay, in summing up that situation that’s lasted almost 10 days now from the very first kind of hint. What are the lessons? Not specifically, I am not talking technical, I am talking maybe more the management, potential future attacks, you know, you’re talking about a platform that has valuable tokens. From the artists point of view there are two concerns: a) what if this happens again, like someone asked in the ama, what are the systems to check, and a third party will be potentially checking the v2 of the new contract, and how do we know if it will not happen again, sorry, and if it will happen again how do we solve it this time and will it differ from the way you solved it now.

Rafael: mm, I don’t know if, this third party thing, of, for formal verification of the contract, I would expect it to, it takes time, we will need to compare the contracts that are on chain, but yes like, I always mention this, and to have hicetnunc as a laboratory for, that, could develop those solutions and audit like, but we would need support for technical writing and reviews and testing, and we don’t have a lot of work force in this sense, but, I think that, with this experience actually it is a hard experience, and maybe we can, and still have this influence in this space. Right now I hope, yes, we have this review, to have tested, and it doesn’t change the behaviour compared to the last one much, so, there isn’t…

Edgar: and will it be tested by third party, just for potential issues as well.

Rafael: yes, I am trying to, I am a bit still, concerned but, that’s a thing, for example, how a third party would audit in this situation.

Edgar: Sorry, could you say that again?

Rafael: How a third party would audit in this situation, I think that we are going to deploy, and, it doesn’t affect the, the OBJKTs smart contract, so we are going to deploy, and we are going to test, and there are risks in it, but it doesn’t affect the main contract that mints assets so we can provide possibly an audit during some time frame, but…

Edgar: So the issue is basically time, that if you start adding third parties it will take forever to release v2?

Rafael: yes, a bit more, yes. I feel it is safer for us, and if there is a bug possibly, the downturn is not like, the assets wouldn’t be as vulnerable as they were before so.

Edgar: Okay, Rafa, Thank you so much, I’m going to ask one last question then we open it up to the ama part of it so people can add questions that haven’t been answered. How much is hicetnunc an NFT marketplace, or how much is it your personal social experiment.

Rafael: ….Ummm… yes like, it is an engineering experiment like for, to test, to optimise it, there is no dApp like, in proof of stake, it is a bit of, we are trying to build this infrastructures and. I hope, it is a software experiment indeed, and it is a important aspect of hic. That should be taken into account right, because people use it, it’s like public infra, if like, public spaces, people have to, I don’t know, understand also, how public spaces, and care about public spaces I guess.

Edgar: I think my emphasis in this question Rafa is Personal experiment, how much of it is, and will stay with you as a sole kind of controller of what’s going on.

Rafael: I don’t know, I find it interesting, the discoveries, that hicetnunc has allowed, let’s see, if it allows still some of this discoveries, and I think it has still a lot of, interesting things for us to explore, also at a personal level. But, it is difficult, I. This project, I don’t know, this personal view, I don’t know if it is. I try to take it a bit personal, try to take it sometimes, bring some of my personal spirit or values to it but, it is important to remain like that, other aspects from personality right, that are related to arts and, or, it has been really intuitive in my opinion, and…

Edgar: I think that’s a very good end to the Q&A side of things, I think it’s a good line to end on and continue AMA.

So what I would like to do, if the guys Micol and Gonras are okay, I feel we should have a two minute break just to decompress and gather thoughts and give rafa a tiny bit of breathing space. And then bring in the questions that have been collected that have not been answered, if you’re okay, and if Micol or Gonras could join back up that would be great.

Micol: yep

Edgar: Thank you Rafael.

Micol: Thank you Edgar.

Rafael: Thank you

Micol: , amazing Job interviewing I think, and thank you Rafa, we’ll take two minutes break and then we’ll be back.

Edgar: Yes, thank you, back at, let’s say 28 past.

End of Interview — AMA starting

Edgar: Hi guys, thank you for still being with us, I think we’ll get Micol and Gonras back, and we’ll continue with questions that came in live that have not been answered. If Rafael is back as well.

Micol: hey, hey. I have tried to compile a list of the questions that… feel free to ping more questions in this chat, or I am just trying to gather some questions from the discord, feel free to ping me if you have any more and I will pass them on.

Edgar: And I think it’s in your system Micol, you can line the questions up.

Micol: yeah, if you have any questions you were actually commenting on here, I can just pull them up.

Edgar: I will check in discord that….

Micol: just some nice comments for you guys in the mean time

Edgar: We are just quickly checking if anything we haven’t covered.

Micol: for the people who are asking, sorry just to add….

Edgar: Thanks guys, I mean, it’s a very interesting interviewee so.

Rafael: I think Micol, is…

Micol: Sorry guys, I don’t know why, but it kicked me out, for the people who are asking about the interview in Portuguese, we can definitely do it, Rafael I don’t know what you think about it, but I think Rafael’s English is perfect but we can definitely do one too.

Rafael: Yes, in discord it is possible to disc.,. I would like to talk with the Brazilian community, and spanis-american community possible

Micol: Edgar are you ready to start?

Edgar: Yep

Micol: Okay, I will mute.

Edgar: and you will light up some of the questions Micol, or Gonras?

Micol: yes, so I shared some of them with you on discord, because I have compiled them from the sheet, so if you could start with those three, and then I have, there are a few other that are coming up. I can write them here as well if you want.

Edgar: Got it, yes, I see them now. So question, and I don’t have who asked….

……….

Edgar: I’ll start with the second one, So the question is: “Why was so much energy spent during hicathon on adding new (unnecessary) features instead of working on security, who gets to decide what gets voted on?

Rafael: Yes, it was an open experiment, for the community to try to integrate it, to participate in the development flows, I find it personally interesting because it was, even if it… actually, for example hicdex came from the hicathon I believe, so it was a huge step for the infrastructure, also it is interesting to interact with some other work groups, and, but, yes like, I feel like we need more continuity on having some spaces for people to share their ideas, and as you people know we don’t have a huge team, and sharing for example tweets and stuff on hicetnunc it can be sometimes exhaustive and we still need to plan how it is the best way to transmitting information etc.

Edgar: Coming to the security aspect of it, do you feel it’s that no one thought there would be an attack or there is exploit.

Rafael: yes, information is also a matter of security, but the exploit, yes it will need review of contracts and we need more attention to it, the people who have experience with smart contracts, usually get a lot of also dispersion, or get dispersive with other [texts?] also so maybe we can come to reorganise it and, have people focus on, and focus on their aspects that they can contribute like security etc.

Edgar: Sure, well I ask Micol, I saw pixel10312 on discord asked if it was possible to pin here something to add about hicdex.

Pixel10312: Hi, so yeah, so this is how I sound, I did run into an issue with hicdex earlier, but that was to do with some bad code that I released, MarchingSquare was really really quick to pick up on it and he was very firm, it was a really quick fix, and everything was fine, it was a small stress test when we got 90'000 requests.

Edgar: When that happened, just to kind of help the audience pin the time?

Pixel10312: This happened, what two three weeks ago, I think, yeah, around then, it was a very short, it was like 1hr, I lagged the entire site, so, sorry, but it was a good stress test, so, yeah.

Edgar: Understood, thank you. There’s a question ‘What happens when we batch cancell all our swaps, will those be reintegrated with the new contract, what happens if we don’t cancel them?’

Rafael: If you batch cancel they will not be integrated immediately, as of now, but, we, possibly next week, the batch cancel will transition to the new version of the contract instead of only cancelling the swaps.

Edgar: So, to clarify, you in theory you don’t have to do anything, it will just migrate?

Rafael: yes, uhuh, yes, that’s the idea, to help everyone, so they don’t get confused. And I believe the community should have mucho support, mucho should be supporting in this direction you know.

Edgar: I am going to add a question from jesse-altman which appears on screen here, thanks Micol:

Rafael: Um, just curious, yes, there are many responsibilities, when people talk of transparency etc. that really gives me chills because it does not concern many responsibilities that you have. For example, ‘artists wo are making a living on hic’ like it is almost, as we are a, cultural institution built on crypto indeed. So I am trying to understand this inference that we have. Because it is a decentralised protocol which is enabling these people, I am hoping we can just provide these tools for people to build upon hic, and, but, there are many risks on blockchain, there are three or, basic statements on blockchain. Which are: ‘Don’t share your private keys’ ‘Not your keys not your money’ ‘don’t, you know you cannot risk that which you are not willing to lose’.

Edgar: But to rephrase it a little bit jesse’s question: do you feel responsible, do you feel that responsibility.

Rafael: yes, but there is a, I don’t know, I feel for example, if this was a government I don’t know, and funds should be distributed for programs also, what I try to do is to enable hic and for every artist to have their profile, and their assets secure, and that’s the best I can do for it, I think. But this responsibility is huge indeed, because it is a social matter, and, it’s like, we should develop programs based on social aspects, but there are too many risks still you know. And, and yes, I feel like, if people want to see hicetnunc as a social, as a social responsible entity, they should pressure in this sense, but they should not only pressure hicetnunc, because we have a bit of conscience on this, you know, but how to develop a social program inside crypto and be sustainable with all the software concerns, which are really important also….

Edgar: Well it is great to hear, it’s great to hear you do feel responsibility. It’s great to hear that vocalised.

Micol I saw a question come up?… [Over talking (can’t split the lines apart)

Micol: yeah I think that, we didn’t address the objkt.bid topic at all, so I think maybe lets prioritise that, because a few people are asking about it.

Edgar: Okay

Micol: I know Edgar you wanted to speak about it before, but we didn’t so yeah, I think , some questions are more around what happened there, is there a discrepancy between hicetnunc and objkt.bid why have the fees not been accepted by, for example.

Edgar: Mm, good. So, Raf, I’m gonna start, I just want to start kind of logically a little bit, so the objkt.bid in a way grew in a way out of a hicathon group, am I correct in that sense, the guys built possibility to have an auction. Is that correct, just so we’re on the same page?

Rafael: Umm, I’m not sure, I have seen this projects in hicathon related to this, but I am not sure if they are from the working group.

Edgar: From what I saw, and I spoke to the two guys prior to this interview, they told me that they did come to you with a proposal, but it kind of went silent they didn’t get any response, they tried to help integration this idea of an auction inside the hic. Is that correct, do you remember them coming to you, and do you remember kind of not answering them if that makes sense.

Rafael: No, I did answer, and I don’t feel that I have to answer people multiple times, like, and, like you… many concerns about integration I had, I have said it, there’s no problems to integrate on hic. And to have, for example in the case of the smart contract work, to have their own fees, for the work on integrating on hic, and if you are using hic, you split. They asked this, I told them there is this possibility of split. They, we were overly stressed here keeping doing our work, and we had to deal with the exploit, we didn’t have an alternative to a bid to a marketplace, we were developing it ourselves, and, so

Edgar: But they came before the exploit?

Rafael: yes, before the exploit. So this is, for example we are one week without service of trades inside hicetnunc. This collaboration, should be open, should be possible, one week would be possible for this integration, possibly you know. But in anyway there was no manifestation of this sense and, I have manifested myself before on this being a possibility, the integration, and, but the focus is to bring back hicetnunc, so.

Edgar: So, do you feel that sort of, obviously, vision of you quite pissed off in the discord chat and so on, does it come from the timing then? That you not happy with how objkt.bid was timed?

Rafael: No, it is because we are open for integrating it, and it is fair for you to have your shares, and people, we are in a difficult moment, and, people, couldn’t integrate, there is no sign of this integration on git, so, I don’t know magic I can do for people to be, you know, to have their own, their own [wheel?] I don’t know, I can’t do much about it I guess.

Edgar: but why, I guess people were asking in such a way, why such a harsh reaction to them? So not having them here today for example, not really discussing with much on chatrooms on discord, why not try to have a dialogue?

Rafael: Because of this sovereignty question concerned. Like, because this, the way it was dealt, it produces sometimes fud, it produces fake statements, I don’t agree with many of that, and a software can generate this views and such disturbance on the discussions. Because for example, people are discussing ‘ah, this is a better twitter piece, this is a competition it works like that’ so maybe we shouldn’t talk about some things, and we have our own sovereignty and develop our things, and you can see what’s competition you know. but, it, we are open for, we stated, that we are open for it and people don’t have their own view, and what can I read from that. But my specific response to this is basically to the discourse generated by this, by their own. ‘Okay, you want to have it like this’…..

The NFT space, okay, we have many marketplaces on Tezos and other chains, but hicetnunc is starting to produce new marketplace around it and people can have their own minting of course, but I don’t know if this is a, the features or the smart contracts that you should develop, that should have given, that should have space..

Edgar: But I’m hearing almost, Raf, I’m almost hearing you felt they came with war or something, and you go ‘well you want war you gonna get war, I don’t need your money, I don’t need anything to do, I’m going to ban you everywhere.’ Is that almost kinda what’s going on inside your mind, that you just want to have nothing to do with them anymore in that sense, just because of timing and the way it’s done?

Rafael: Well, I find it. Look their actions have consequences. And the consequences is, ah, people want. How does this contribute to the ecosystem, and, many people reaction had the reaction of comparison, and I don’t agree with this. Isn’t this natural development of open source projects? the question of moon

for example, I heard some people, there are people that say, for example, no, the apps open source, the apps there made to be copied, I disagree with that, so, if that’s the idea of them, then maybe… and it’s not open source I steal right?

Edgar: Well the fact that you disagree, Raf, doesn’t mean it’s not going to get copied, just it is the nature of open source, that forks happen and so on. So is it, are you fighting an invisible battle where, kind of it’s not happening. It’s just how people are going to use hen and what you’ve created. It’s just something to almost live with and potentially prepare, that it is going to happen and dialogues will have to happen?

Rafael: Look, open source, we are developing, everything on the repository, like, we are trying to have an open source flux of contributions, so ideas can be public, and, I don’t know, it is a matter of process also. If you don’t agree with the process of our tezos project, I don’t know, there many things possible to discuss this, but I don’t know if that’s the best option for discussing it, I don’t know. because there are many values, are also related to open source, it’s related to sharing knowledge, and it is a educational process that we want to make public.

Edgar: But do you think also there’s a process of communication that maybe as an idea, having some form of core permanent, not staff, but it could be developers, communications officer and so on, that meets once a week with you, objkt.bid came and they want to offer this and so on, so it doesn’t have to overwhelm you. So it kind in a way goes back to this overall arching them of this conversation of delegation, why not create a permanent team where everyone knows clearly who does what, and they’re open about it. So if any ideas come, to competitors or someone wants to be integrated into hic they don’t have to knock on your door, you know.

Rafael: Yes, that’s the dream, yes, agree. But that’s not the case yet, we can go towards that, but that’s not the case yet. The structure is that, we have points of failure, of course, but, if you act, if you do an action it has consequences, even if it is, honestly, yes, some of the worst consequences for me were discourse consequences, and, I don’t know, I would, I have to intervene in discourse you know.

Edgar: You can’t, you do have to acknowledge right, 21st Century web3 and even web2, you’re not going to stop people discussing it, they’re will discuss design they will compare, because there is a [pool?] of an artist that’s not on the dev channel’s or is not maybe on discord, in a way they will not care, they will want to be a part of hic, and they will see objkt.bid as a part of hic in a way, and they’ll just keep using that, you’ll not be able really to stop it just because you silence discussions about it, you have to acknowledge right.

Rafael: Yes.

Edgar: Raf, there’s another question.

Rafael: Well hDAO is a token-economic around hicetnunc, it is also a strategy for it to be stronger.

Edgar: How, how is it a strategy to be stronger?

Rafael: Well, a token of course the value of it is a bit abstract but, the value of it brings a lot of, I don’t know, it gives a bit of alternatives for us, and for example this sovereignty, it is indeed like, we did indeed a token-economics proposal for it, it is in our interest to keep developing it, and for example, why, that question is precious actually. Because I said many times, for example, hDAO is a media dao

Edgar: Media DAO?

Rafael: yes, like, to govern media, like to, we haven’t really had the chance to develop this further, why people want to vote and [polls?]. And it’s a vicious thought this voting thoughts, and…

Edgar: Why, wait, Raf I have to stop you here, why do you think voting thoughts are vicious, because isn’t it just owners of the hDAO shares in a way, of, have a bit of a right, or at least a will to influence what’s going on, why vicious thoughts?

Rafael: mm, like you can sell also the hDAO, and, maybe it means it is a vote, a form of vote.

Edgar: On the price, sure, but in terms of voting on what’s going on in the future at the moment, correct me if I’m wrong, hDAO doesn’t really offer anything, it’s purely made up value if I may, it doesn’t give you any power of voting?

Rafael: No, because, yes because, I told at the first it is a media governance, you want to govern the directions of hic but this is a premature yet.

Edgar: Do you feel it will happen, just not yet?

Rafael: Mm, that’s a, we had some tests, but I disagree with, I don’t know if I agree with the direction of the tests we are going, the framework for voting, because, but it possibly, for example, some treasury can be decided to be distributed by a dao, but, I feel that as I’ve mentioned, some things are better, like security, it is a huge matter, it is complicated in crypto, and it’s not like we are going to vote, like if an exploit attacked hicetnunc, why do you not think exploiter would not attack our voting system, or for example, you are trying to distribute funds, but it is public and etc. so people can disturb this system.

Edgar: But if there is no voting there is no system at all if you see what I mean? You can invite exploiter to the team, or you can not open it to a vote just incase exploiter comes, surely there is a bit of a catch 22 here?

Rafael: Umm, no, I don’t know, there are other possible systems also, for us to build the security, this trust, the media governance for example, there many problems, copyminters etc. it would be interesting to transfer trust to users, it is not a matter of governance a lot, there are other aspects of trust on blockchain now, so, that are unsolved with discussions, for example the [entity and stuff?] and we are trying to solve this one, some of this points, to have decentralised names, through the entities, to better identify people, to build trust on the system, which is a matter, which is important for the platform, because a lot hackers there, but governance, but we keep this a bit, but yes, the sovereignty thing, why is it important, because of this, we tried to discuss media governance, but everyone wants to vote, but what about media governance, no one wants to discuss.

Edgar: Can I clarify, because the sovereignty has been a bit of a word of the day, when you say that, are you substituting the word centralisation here?

Rafael: No, I am talking about autonomy.

Edgar: Okay, to be seperated from most, but not in a governance side of things.

Rafael: To have your own voice, and, hicetnunc has its voice, neglected also, and this is a matter we will definitely consider in governance.

Edgar: Rafa, we have five minutes left, I just want to ask one more question I’ll just ask Micol to pull it up again, there was a question about Exploiter, and I think it’s a good one seeing it’s kind of…

Rafael: The collaboration yes

Edgar: now, yes, do you think, that’s a question from Michael Paul and Micol is passing it here: do you think it is a good idea to cooperate with @hen-exploiter and ask them for ideas on how to build your website? Don’t you think the general public will perceive this as a form of validation.

Rafael: Yes, I kind of appreciate the help that hen-exploiter gave me, when he told me how to fix the exploit, and no one had this insight, no one had this information, and he provided this, and this was literally the best decision we could’ve made, and I appreciate it. But, I don’t know, we are open for it, but we already had also some events not so good from him, in this crisis, in this recent crisis, that he, oiling, this discussion around objkt.bid and, literally saying, indeed, there are a lot of fud sometimes, and sometimes literally fake statements from people, and, honestly, we are after, we have four years of fake media, and…

Edgar: I know what you mean, I was, yeah, I saw it in the chat, there was a statement that may be technically be correct but [the whole of what he said was wrong?]

Rafael: yes, but fuds and other aspects, they are indeed, not helpful on how I see at least these things going. but maybe,

Edgar: and if it’s enough for you to not invite the person to be a part of a team to make the website better better would you say?

Rafael: yes, and that’s why I, also am very sceptical about fud in generally, I think it should be a [best] thing, and people should have a criticism of what happens and happened, but of course it doesn’t change from nope, you know.

Edgar: This is true, Rafael, thank you so much, and first of all guys thank you for running this and pixel and goras and micol and everyone who was a part of it, thank you so so much for organising, rafa, thank you for, you know, for trusting us to ask you questions and I hope the trust continues throughout everyone for making the platform better.

Rafael: It’s great to talk a bit, sorry if I’m a bit, a lot, under a lot of stress, from the exploit and the migration, but it was great to hopefully somethings have clarified a few, that somethings were, as I said, it’s still, this transparency in discourse, I don’t feel it as well, I’m okay to, I feel it’s a bit to. But hopefully we can still work, and fall in with some basic values, we can still contribute to the NFT and the blockchain space.

Edgar: For sure, Thanks for your time, thanks for the platform obviously, thanks for micol for running this technically.

Rafael: Thanks everyone

Edgar: and thanks for everyone on the background, thanks for two hours of your time.

Rafael: Thank you everyone for the events, and helping organise this, to great the stuff.

Micol: Hey Edgar, I think there is one last question to address, sorry guys my connection dropped, it was about the banning of discord, a few people, quite a few members of the community have raised this concern, the banning of people from discord?

Edgar: Ahh, I see the question here, can you put it on the screen, it’s from Juuschichi17 So Raf, I guess we can, it’s a bit of a bonus question, a bit of a curveball bonus question. There’s several people that’ve been banned in recent days, the biker, mescalina, others too they say, I guess, I don’t even have a question, I would like to hear why you, why ban them? why not open it for dialogue and let people speak if you don’t think it makes things actually worth because it means people can’t express their opinions which leads to mass miss….

Rafael: I can answer of course, and in some aspects I mentioned about autonomy and having our voices also, and like, there are simply, the conduct that, that also disrespects, that doesn’t take into account the mental health of… there is a point of failure,

Edgar: You mean your mental health to be clear?

Rafael: Yes, and you can’t attack other people and sorry if they think, I don’t know what I think, it’s difficult when times are, but…

Edgar: So, just to understand clearly, because of the stressful times as it is, you felt that people who are criticising openly and inflating conversation was basically a bit too much for you personally so you removed them from the discord, and there are some bans on twitter, am I reading this correctly?

Rafael: Yes, but there are other aspects, that, there is a sort of ready discourse that people just copy and paste, and you see it reproduced by different people.

Edgar: And by discourse you mean when people say, I don’t know, certain website is better, or what’s going on with dao, is it too centralised, do you mean that?

Rafael: yes, this comparison of course, I’ve stated this, it affects the economy of hicetnunc the comparison between apps and not only this, but there are other negative things in this discourse, which affects simply the autonomy of hicetnunc, and, that’s not a very, I could try to say it but, of course everyone doesn’t assume this, but…

Edgar: Do you think there’s a change that these people do it for the better of the platform, that they’re just trying to improve it, okay maybe framing sometimes too harshly, but they’re not saying oh guys let’s leave, they’re saying, hey guys we need improvement, we’re maybe not heard, that that’s actually the issue, that removing these voices even from hics discord channel, they don’t disappear right, we all understand, we all understand what’s going to happen, people are still going to think these thoughts you’re just clearing the channel of them.

Rafael: Yes, but it doesn’t take into account some information’s, and I try to elucidate them where it’s possible, and it’s like that, and most parts of, sometimes people intervene, and don’t have, aren’t conscious of many valuables in the game, or lacks parts of other information, and starts fuding and somehow, sometimes, it is not, sometimes it is person attacks possibly, because people criticise me, for example, imagine, people are saying the same thing thirty times, and you’ve heard it, and why the person, sometimes people insist on it, and, some times it doesn’t make sense, if not trying to affect also me, emotionally, and stuff like.. So [talking over]

Edgar: [talking over] so having extra person would help filter you a little bit, so it doesn’t have to be you personally going through all of it, that partially again we go back to the question about should there just be a communications sort of person going through, summarising it and showing it to you once a week, maybe then you will not, all the bad comments stick more than the positive one.

Rafael: The problem is that I am also participating in building this, and, with time you can try to find the best way, but we are building it, and, I don’t know, this, sometimes this, it is needed to stop discussions or, because they are not feeding, because sometimes they are feeding just confusion, and maybe confusion is good, but, sometimes it is disrespect for think with the work, that are being, that we are trying to build. I actually, we try to make it as public as possible, try to organise it for, and document things and, so I don’t think many of these, chooser, because, it is indeed concerned with better common sometimes…

Edgar: Okay

Rafael: It’s complicated, I really felt a lot of hate, and, sometimes this hate, you don’t know the origin of it, and maybe you, some people also want to speak, and it has speak, but it has parts of this hate, but you don’t know the origin, so, people should also, keep it, keep their mind open, if they bring hate to the discourse what’s the origin of it, and if, I can’t presume anything, I, from what I have experienced so far so. There are many sorts of assaults that are, so I really think that people should be careful in this, I am trying to boost you, but I am also trying to voice some things that are important too. It is risky actually for me to do this, but, still.

Edgar: Rafa thank you for responding to it, I think it’s important to understand more sides and understand the guys for being sad for being banned entirely from discord or twitter, but also great to hear your side of the taking side. Thank you once again, thank you for this extra bonus question for feeding it in Micol, I think we’re good, Thank you Rafael.

Rafael: Thank you Edgar, thank you [others?]

Micol: Thank you Edgar so so much for this, really really beautiful way to [inaudible] this, so I really appreciate the way this has been dealt with thank you Rafael for taking the time, and also, on another note, I know, I think from a personal perspective, Rafael has been under a lot of stress, so let’s also keep this in mind when we make attacks, when we make comments, when we make thoughts, things can really go into a vacuum and we don’t realise sometimes that we need to take a bit of a step back and look at things from a wider perspective, so let’s just keep that in mind. Crypto twitter, discord twitter, crypto in general can take a very negative tone sometimes, just wanted to say that. So thank you all, thank you to gonras and pixel who have worked behind the scenes as always to put this out, so hopefully some answers have been given, and yea, thanks a lot.

Edgar: thank you, goodbye

Rafael: see you on hic.

Hicetnunc AMA Transcript

AMA Transcript:

End of Interview — AMA starting

Written by Xander Merricks