Julien Klepatch is the CEO and founder of EatTheBlocks. He joins the show to talk about Web3. He begins by sharing his past experiences and how he became a Software Developer. Additionally, he explains the reasons why developers should get into the Web3 world, its advantages, building web applications with Web3, its connection to Blockchain, and many more!

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Steve (00:01.007)

Hello everybody. Welcome back to JavaScript's Jabber, the podcast about JavaScript. And we Jabber about it. My name is Steve Edwards, the host with the face for radio and the voice for being a mime, but I'm still your host and flying with me today on our panel. We have the lovely and erudite Mr. AJ. How you doing, AJ?

 

AJ (00:22.018)

I don't know what areodite means.

 

Steve (00:23.991)

I forgot what it means too, but it sounded really good. I'll have to look it up. No, no, it's a good thing, I think. Yeah.

 

AJ (00:26.198)

Well, I hope it's not like racist or something. Gosh. It's a good thing. Okay, great. Wait, that's not character for you, Steve. Anyway, yo come at you live from pioneer back pain.

 

Steve (00:37.471)

I know, I'm a rebel.

 

Steve (00:42.159)

Pioneer back pain, that means AJ hurt his back and he doesn't know how he did it, so it's very pioneering.

 

AJ (00:47.082)

Well, it's pioneer day. Oh yeah. You wouldn't know about pioneer day cause it's a Utah thing. So it's pioneer day. And yesterday I was, I was doing some work on my trailer. And I think that when I was, maybe when I was lifting the front of it to, to prop it up so that I could get underneath of it or I don't know, but then I got, then I got back pain, I woke up this morning and it just hurts. So hence pioneer back pain. Cause it tra, trailer's like a cart. It's like a hand cart or a carriage.

 

Steve (00:48.848)

Oh, no, yeah.

 

Steve (01:12.655)

Yeah, I was.

 

Steve (01:17.931)

Okay, I'll take your word for it. Yeah, AJ was reminding me of something about knowing about being old. I'm not sure why he was referencing that with me. But yeah, I was standing in my bedroom yesterday stretching a little bit and felt my back go. So yeah, that was fun. Anyway, moving on from back pain. Let's welcome our guest, Mr. Julian. How do you say that? Clay patch?

 

Julien (01:39.995)

Yeah, yeah, congrats. Yeah, it's very hot. Yeah.

 

Steve (01:43.063)

All right, so Julian is French calling us from Taiwan. So we, as I like to say, we are truly an international podcast. So shout out Julian, wanted to give us a little background about what you do, who you are, why you're famous, and we'll go from there.

 

Julien (02:01.927)

All right, so yes, Julian from HittoBlox. Some of you may know me already. So I have a YouTube channel about web street development. So I teach things like Solidity, Ethereum, smart contract programming, that sort of thing. And yeah, I've started my career in finance and I became a dev and then in...

 

In 2017, I caught the crypto bug and started my YouTube channel at that time. And I switched to teaching Web3 full-time a few years later. And yeah, so this is what I do.

 

Steve (02:50.863)

So you were telling us before we started recording a little more detail about your history. So you said you started in Hong Kong in finance, is that right? Which is, that's pretty, that was a world real, probably still is a real world financial center, right? One of the places to be if you want to work in international finance.

 

Julien (03:03.54)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, yeah, that was just an internship at first and yeah, I extended it and I ended up staying three years there Uh, yeah, well was really amazing. Uh at that time like that place was Uh, it's just so active. It was like just amazing And yeah, I got a little bit tired of finance and so Decided to come here to taiwan. I just wanted to learn chinese. He didn't really know what I wanted to do after and uh And at that time I met some

 

a bunch of interesting guys, including some so-called digital nomads. I mean, at that time, that was something new. And it basically sold me the dream. And this is how I decided to just give up on finance and just start to learn software dev. And so I started like everybody else with a shitty customer. I was with PHP and WordPress. And so...

 

First few years were not easy, but fortunately for me, I counter crypto in 2017 and that's when everything changed.

 

AJ (04:20.342)

All right, tell us more. Why did it change?

 

Julien (04:24.843)

So good question. I think I thought I really struggled a lot to get started in my career as a software dev at the beginning. Especially when you're a generalist and you work in web dev, you are competing against so many different people. And there are just so many different ways, so many kinds of expertise. And there are a lot of people who are already senior. And so ideally, what you want to find

 

there aren't a lot of senior people so that basically if you specialize in this, it's easier to stand out. And that was really the case with crypto. And I also really fell in love with the concept. So I thought, well, that's a good fit. And so what I did at that time is that instead of just learning a new technical thing, I also created my YouTube channel. And thanks to that, everything changed because I got

 

Basically, I built my personal brand and I find my first remote job very, very fast. So that was really the main thing that changed.

 

Steve (05:37.423)

So for the topic today, the way you were putting it was, was it how to get into Web3 or why to get into Web3 or all of the above? I guess the question for me is considering the state of crypto and where things have been over the past few months, why? Just for a little bit of recap, we've had the whole collapse of FTX with Sam Bakeman Freed and we've seen some other coins really tank just because, I mean,

 

crypto is basically very speculative, right? It's been what's the value sort of like a stock market. And you know, bitcoins that were worth a ton of money have lost value. So I guess my question would be, is it sort of like, you know, if you think about the stock market where you want to get in when it's low, because you can't really go any lower, and the only way it can go is up? Is that the reason? Or maybe there's other purposes that haven't been, how we say explored or investigated yet? What's that?

 

What would you tell somebody if they said, why should I get into the Web3 world?

 

Julien (06:42.323)

Yeah, yes, good question. So I would generally say like, of course the earlier you're getting, the easier it is. So the more you wait, the harder it will get. But yes, crypto on top of this crypto is very cyclical. So when I started, it was just before a big bubble. So actually my timing was perfect. And for me, it was quite easy to getting. And I don't think that to set the expectation clear, I don't think that a newbie would...

 

would find a job as easily as I did. The market is a little bit more difficult now. But we are between two cycle and we are probably at the end of a bear market or more or closer to the end than the beginning. And so you wanna get in before the next bull market because when there is a bull market, everything happened just so fast and you cannot just come in and say, oh yeah, by the way, I was always a big fan of Webstreet.

 

You need to show that you've done something before. So that requires a leap of faith, that's true. But I think we've been really tested this year and last year. We've been tested like crazy, like you said, like FTX and all the bad stuff that happened and the SEC trying to get after crypto. And I think what's really interesting is that we had this accumulation of bad news, but at some point...

 

the market stopped to tink. And so, you know, there is a saying, like if you wanna know where is the top of the bull market is when you have more good news that accumulate and the price stopped to go up. And the bottom of the bear market is when you have more bad news and it stopped to go down. And I think it's what's happening now. And I started to see some rebound, like not only on the market, but also in terms of developer interest. I see like it's coming back. So that's a good thing.

 

But I would say another thing very important to understand is to also separate this cycle from the actual cycle of the developer who built things because these things aren't entirely correlated. And so during this Bell Market, we had a lot of activity on the developer side, especially when it comes to infrastructure. And you know, like one of the main technical challenges in Webster is to...

 

Julien (09:07.279)

make this blockchain scalable. And there was a lot of work that was done. And I think that either by the end of this year or by next year, in WebSuite, we will solve the problem of scalability and that's huge.

 

AJ (09:23.97)

So how is this not an MLM? Because you're, no, because you're not saying, you're not saying, hey, this is what's gonna make it usable. You're out of the gate, you're not saying, hey, this is how we're gonna solve an economic problem. Out of the gate, you're saying, if you wanna make the money, you gotta get in now. And that's just an MLM. So like, where's the utility?

 

Julien (09:28.787)

Ha ha ha!

 

Steve (09:30.387)

And MLM is what? You wanted to find that?

 

Julien (09:51.196)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Charles Max Wood (09:51.423)

Ugh. So you're not asking how it's not an MLM in the sense that, hey, I gotta sell the downline to all my friends. You're saying MLM is in the sense that, you know, you kinda have to talk fast and sell easy to get people in while it's still not really a business. Is that what you're asking?

 

Steve (10:09.243)

Hold on, time out. Before we go on, let's define MLM. Can we define MLM before we go on and everybody gets confused like me?

 

AJ (10:10.582)

No, by MLM.

 

AJ (10:16.138)

Okay. So MLM, so MLM is where you create, uh, an entity that the government will allow. That does not have a product that anyone wants to buy, but you buy the product as part of becoming a manager.

 

Charles Max Wood (10:16.225)

Yeah, so traditionally, go ahead.

 

AJ (10:40.338)

so that you can then make the money off of other people who buy the product to become a manager. So the product is basically a scapegoat. There is no product. It's like granola bars that cost $10 a box that you can get for $3 a box at Walmart that are name brand granola bars for $3 a box, right? But the MLM granola bars are $10 a box. And you don't buy the granola bars because you're going to eat the granola bars or sell the granola bars. You buy the granola bars to become a manager. And when you're a manager,

 

then other people who buy the granola bars, you get a percentage of their revenue. And that models the quote unquote, crypto space for quote unquote, investors, is that investors, especially on Ethereum, they get some Ethereum and then they make a coin, and then they get other people into the coin, and then they can make another coin, and they get people into that coin by trading the first coin. And so it's the same thing as the granola bars. You've got a bunch of quote unquote, coins,

 

Nobody wants them, nobody can use them, but you buy them so that you can then trade them for another coin in somebody else who's in the management group of that coin. And so you just have a bunch of coins where there's no value, no one's trading the coins for granola bars, no one's trading the coins for a house payment or groceries or fast food. Nobody's actually using the website BitRefill.

 

which is a coin, that's a website that you actually can use to actually spend a cryptocurrency rather than quote invest in a cryptocurrency. But like when I think of cryptocurrency in the, you know, the Satoshi Nakamoto sense, that's let me create something that we can spend, that we can create value by creating economy versus the quote unquote investment. So this is where you're gonna invest in it so that you can be at the top of the coin hype.

 

And then you can go create another coin to be at the top of that coin.

 

Charles Max Wood (12:39.985)

I just wanna throw something in here real quick. I have seen MLMs actually work and actually sell products that people wanted to buy. But yes, most of them it was you got in fast so you could get the biggest downline you could get so that you could sell more stuff to other people. So I just wanna say the characterization fits a lot of them but not all of them. Anyway, go ahead.

 

Julien (13:02.279)

Yeah, yeah, no, it's a fair question. So, okay, so let me recap. When I first got into crypto, the thing that really appealed to me is Ethereum on the landing page was written, we're building the world, a decentralized computer. I found that was really awesome. And actually, yeah, like I saw that and that really what convinced me to get into it. And

 

Charles Max Wood (13:24.63)

Yeah, that's a cool idea.

 

Julien (13:30.115)

Actually, it's funny because for many years, I was so innocent. I was the only crypto developer that didn't buy any crypto. For a long time, it's ridiculous. I could have gotten really rich because I was really early, but I didn't buy any ether or something like this. And the first time I started to own some crypto is because people bought my courses with crypto. So that's how I ended up owning crypto. But for a long time, I...

 

I didn't play this game. And, and at some point after spending several years in the industry, it appears to me, I'm like, Hey Julian, like maybe you're a little bit naive. And maybe there are like many people get in the space and who just want to make money and have no, no interest at all for the value of Web3. And so, and yeah, it pisses me off at some point, but I just want to live with it. Like, I just think like.

 

whenever you have some new innovation, something like this, it will always attract many different people who may or may not share the same value as you. And also, I don't want to be too judgmental on that because for many people, it's not one thing or the other. It can embrace the fact that we have different motivation and it's cool if you say, okay, I share some value of Webstreet, but I also want to make money. It's fine.

 

It's you don't have to be like pure and just go in one of these other, one of these two directions. And talking of like the MLM and like selling dreams, but I want to say that isn't it what the software industry is doing even outside of Web3? For example, when you have a founder that's trying to raise money from

 

Charles Max Wood (15:21.934)

Here we go!

 

Julien (15:23.159)

No, I mean from VC. And I know it very well because I was approached, actually I had an investor. So at the peak of my business during the bull market, there was an investor that invested in my company. And so that guy, he was very well connected and introduced me to some VC. And he helped me to write a story that would prove that my business would like go up like crazy. And...

 

And that's completely accepted in the business world. So I just want people to not be naive and understand like a large part of the business world works like this, like people who sell stories. So selling a story in itself, I don't think it's bad, but you have to really believe in the story, of course.

 

Charles Max Wood (15:53.541)

Mm-hmm.

 

Charles Max Wood (16:09.829)

All right, so what I'm curious about, because it feels like we're talking about investing in cryptocurrencies, and I'm not a financial expert, I'm not an investment expert. I think the whole idea behind a lot of this stuff is fascinating, and I think it's interesting how it became an investment class rather than a currency is also fascinating. But what I wanna understand is Web3, right? Because you're talking about like blockchain technologies.

 

as the successor to web technologies or used in conjunction with web technologies or something like that. And I don't completely understand what the story is with web three. So, I mean, maybe the crypto investment has something to do with it. Maybe it doesn't, but how does what we're talking about tie into what web three is like? Where is this all going?

 

Julien (17:00.039)

Yeah, yeah, so it's a good question. So crypto has a special place in Webstreet because that's the main use case of Webstreet right now, but it doesn't mean it's gonna be the only use case. And I don't think that... Okay, so...

 

AJ (17:13.954)

Find web three then.

 

Charles Max Wood (17:16.181)

Yeah, that's what we need first, I think.

 

AJ (17:18.346)

Yeah. Because I mean, I was thinking web three cryptocurrency is web three, but you're saying there's web three and cryptocurrency is a use case. So yeah, what's, what's the dealio.

 

Julien (17:19.497)

Yeah.

 

Julien (17:29.511)

Okay, so Web3 is the idea of building decentralized applications. So applications that nobody in particular controls. The idea of decentralization is really probably like the main idea of crypto. And the main component of a Web3 app is the blockchain layer, but not only. You can also use projects like IPFS, which are decentralized storage networks. They are decentralized, but they are not blockchain.

 

But the core of it is, does it help my app to be more decentralized or not? So that's that's.

 

Charles Max Wood (18:07.501)

And just to clarify, when people say DAPPS, D-A-P-P-S, that's the decentralized app idea we're talking about, right?

 

Julien (18:14.259)

Yeah, yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah. And so with Web3,

 

Charles Max Wood (18:16.344)

Okay.

 

AJ (18:20.829)

Does that apply to things like Mastodon?

 

Charles Max Wood (18:24.697)

Hahaha

 

Julien (18:25.081)

So must... I think musterland... I think they claim...

 

AJ (18:28.81)

or Matrix.

 

Charles Max Wood (18:31.321)

Yeah, because they're federated, they're not.

 

Julien (18:34.683)

I don't think a lot of Web3 people would consider this a real Web3 app. And also, I think the admin have way too much power. So it's maybe an attempt in this direction. But yeah. But yeah, so with Web3, of course, the main use case was to create all these cryptocurrencies. But it's so much more than this. And for example, social media. We had all these problems with censorship in the past.

 

Charles Max Wood (18:45.315)

Okay.

 

Julien (19:03.379)

So that's an area where WebSuite can have. Actually, this year, so one of the few area of WebSuite that has traction is social media. So there are a few of them that you may not have heard, like Lance, for example, that are basically attempt to build new social media on the blockchain. But what's really interesting is, when you do something in WebSuite, the paradigm change a little bit. It's not just you take an app and you make it in WebSuite, it's more like you build,

 

Charles Max Wood (19:04.985)

Mm-hmm.

 

Julien (19:32.691)

this layer that can be viewed as a common good. And you can use this layer to build different social media. So the paradigm is a little bit different.

 

Charles Max Wood (19:45.729)

So just to clarify that a little bit, how does the paradigm different? So is the social good like the collection of posts or tweets or whatever you wanna call them? And that way nobody has total control and so they can't censor it? Is that kind of the way you're heading there?

 

Julien (20:01.999)

Yeah, you have this layer, this protocol where people post content and then you'll have different ways to access them. So it will be a different app. You will have maybe a Twitter that can be built on this, a Facebook or something else. But at no point will there be someone who controls the API and says, all right, I'm not sharing the data anymore or now you have to pay this much per month.

 

Charles Max Wood (20:16.15)

Right.

 

Charles Max Wood (20:26.369)

Right, so the app that I would build that is centralized, that consumes this common good, there I could say, hey, I don't want porn, I don't want swear words or whatever, right? And then how I display it is how it goes. But if somebody wants the porn and the swear words, they can go to somebody who will put that up.

 

Julien (20:44.499)

Yeah, exactly. So introduces a lot of flexibility. And on the finance side, it's the same thing. So you have apps like Uniswap, which are basically decentralized exchange. You can see them are like some sort of decentralized stock market. And there, they provide an infrastructure, a base layer. And on top of this, we have many other projects that are being built. So it's really a different way to build software.

 

It's much more open, much more transparent, and you don't need anybody authorization.

 

Charles Max Wood (21:21.017)

All right, so sorry, I feel like I got on and hogged the mic, but no, go ahead, AJ.

 

AJ (21:22.798)

Alright.

 

I was I was just going to ask. So are there any examples that you can give of a Web 3 app that somebody would know? Like, for example, Mastodon is fully decentralized. It's completely federated. So I that at least fills that criteria. But or at least the way I understand that it is. But what's.

 

Charles Max Wood (21:46.305)

Right, but each Mastodon server has an admin that can, and you can turn off federation between instances and stuff like that. So it's not a common good that you're consuming as far as the posts go.

 

AJ (21:51.946)

Well, right, and that's...

 

AJ (22:00.306)

It's not, it's not 100%. It's not centralized. It's not, it's not centralized into a single node. It's decentralized such that each node can have its own set of rules, operate independently and scale efficiently. But, but anyway, my point is so most people don't know about mastodon. If I were to ask my wife, if she's got a mastodon account, she might not even know what mastodon means in the normal sense. Right. Um,

 

Charles Max Wood (22:07.691)

Right.

 

AJ (22:30.594)

But, but within a crowd, people know what mastodon is. It's like quote unquote, Twitter decentralized. Is there some sort of app in web three where there's some sort of analogy? This is like X, but decentralized, something where people could go to see it or download a thing to experience it, to have a sense of what that is.

 

Julien (22:56.753)

Yeah, so I can give a few names. I think most people will have never heard of these things. The thing that got the most mainstream during the last bull market was more the financial assets that you can buy with crypto. So the tokens, the NFTs, for example. But in terms of app, some people might have heard of OpenSea, for example. It's a...

 

decentralized market to buy and sell NFTs. People might have heard of Uniswap where you can buy and sell crypto tokens.

 

AJ (23:32.958)

there anything for stuff that people already do? Like, like messaging is something people already do. It wasn't invented by, you know, it wasn't invented by web two, right? People were already messaging back when we had horse and buggies. But but not that I'm saying we need to go back that far because obviously technology provides new opportunities. But is there something that people already do that they would say, Oh, yeah.

 

Here's an app for something I already do. I could use this app instead.

 

Julien (24:04.339)

Yeah, so as I mentioned, there is this social media called Lens that I can explore. So I don't actually there are the Lens, L-E-N-S. That's the name of the protocol. Yeah, but to use it, yeah, you need to use some apps. So I'm not familiar with the most popular apps on Lens, but you can type Lens clients, and you'll find the different options. So that would be one example.

 

AJ (24:12.776)

ants.

 

Charles Max Wood (24:16.781)

lens.

 

AJ (24:18.774)

I'll check it out.

 

Julien (24:34.319)

Another example a little bit more old school is that Steemit is basically a decentralized medium. We can write articles and get paid for them. That's a bit old school, Nari. Steemit, S-T-E-E-M-I-T.

 

AJ (24:45.71)

What was that again?

 

AJ (24:51.854)

Okay, cool. I haven't heard of that one. So I haven't heard of either of these. I'm checking them out though, because that sounds interesting. That sounds like that's something I already do. I already blog. I already use social media. That fits my criteria perfectly.

 

Julien (24:56.123)

Yeah.

 

Julien (25:04.007)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the reason why I meant, so just to finish with Timmy, it's a bit old school, so it seems like the project is not going anywhere. But during the last boom market, it was quite active. And I think one of the success of this might be Lens, but with more features.

 

Charles Max Wood (25:04.749)

Yeah. So.

 

Charles Max Wood (25:10.211)

Uh-huh.

 

Charles Max Wood (25:22.157)

Right. So what I'm trying to figure out as far as this goes and as far as our audience goes is, you know, I look at Web3 and for one, as somebody who works, you know, in the current web as it's currently constituted, why should I, you know, why should I worry about this or why should I be learning about it? And the other kind of related question is, okay, so you've talked about kind of the blockchain and the ideas behind blockchain and crypto and then you talked about decentralization.

 

And so what I'd really like to know is, before you answer, why should I care, is I'm still trying to get my head around what is this. So how does the blockchain play into the centralization? Is it just that common or public good could be a blockchain or is there more to it than that? And then, yeah, how does it become the successor to Web2 to the point where I should actually worry about it?

 

Julien (26:17.599)

So actually, I think Webstreet is probably a bad name because it makes people feel like it's the next iteration of the web, but it's not really, yeah, I wouldn't say that. It's more like an evolution of the webs. In the future, in your web application, you will have to incorporate the concept of decentralization and you will use some of the technology like blockchain or IPFS, but...

 

Charles Max Wood (26:26.025)

And it's not. OK.

 

Charles Max Wood (26:44.427)

Okay.

 

Julien (26:47.407)

If you look at what is adapt nowadays, it really look and feel like a web two application, except it's more clunky. Because the UI, it's true, it's true. It's one of the biggest barriers to adoption. The UI UX is terrible with the wallet and it's just not as easy to use. But I think it really makes sense for people to...

 

Charles Max Wood (26:57.122)

Hahaha

 

Julien (27:14.323)

get back the ownership over what they produce, their content, and this is something that you can get with Web3. And we really see that how social media are changing now. There's really a wind of change. So I really think that in the future, people will demand this more and more. And in terms of finance, so, okay, so this one is a little bit more deep, but why should you care from a financial perspective?

 

This one is more political. We have this geopolitical change where the US is being challenged and the monetary system is being challenged. And so actually for all of these countries, crypto is an opportunity to challenge the dollar. So all the people say, oh, the US is going to destroy crypto because this goes against the interest of the US dollar, et cetera. I think.

 

I think that's not true because we are in this special period. And so, yeah, crypto, there is like some very deep, deep topic around crypto. It's not just a technology.

 

Charles Max Wood (28:29.625)

All right, so effectively, yeah. So let me just break this down a little bit further. I may get some of this wrong because this is some of just what I've kind of tangentially heard or read or whatever, but effectively what I'm figuring out then is, yeah, some of this like the data might go into some kind of blockchain that may be kind of a public good that decentralizes control over what goes into it. Right, you're talking about blog posts or Twitter posts or whatever.

 

The other thing that I'm hearing is something around, yeah, wallets and NFTs where the NFT isn't a picture of a horse and a dragon fighting it out, but it's actually, you know, it's an NFT that says, you have access to this video series, or you have access to this, you know, this conference, right? So a conference ticket could be an NFT, or, you know, all the way down to like, the deed of your house being an NFT, or something like it. And so...

 

And I don't know how, I'm not gonna make a value judgment on any of this, because I really don't have a good feel for how far, how deep any of this is gonna go or where the change is gonna be. But what you're talking about then is, so Web3 is going to begin to adopt these things because people don't want to tie their identity to a GitHub or a Facebook or something. They're much more comfortable as they learn about technology to tie it to a wallet that they control.

 

identity is going to come out of Web 3. Some of these resources could be stored in a Web 3 format like we talked about. And so as we're talking about Web 3, what we're talking about is kind of a layer on top of Web 2 that allows you to control your data and your access and your identity to the point where you don't have these centralized systems telling the internet who you are. You kind of control how that happens yourself. And then they just grant you.

 

you know, tokens, permissions, access, NFTs, whatever, to basically set up your experience on the web to be what you want it to be.

 

Julien (30:37.815)

Yeah, yeah, that's correct. So yes, really, the blockchain is the core of Web3 app and everything you own, your identity. This is not a solved problem actually today. It's the launch of Worldcoin, the project of Sam Altman of the white Combinator. So yeah, so that's probably like it's going to be one of the biggest crypto launch of this year.

 

Charles Max Wood (30:57.301)

Mm-hmm. Open AI. Yeah.

 

Julien (31:05.263)

And this is a very, very hard problem. And so everything, as you said, like all the blockchain layer is based on Web2. So we are really building on top of what already exists. But the way it works, the logic of it is completely different because once all the program that's, so we call these a spot contract, all the programs that are on the blockchain, once you deploy them, it's impossible to stop them. You cannot say, all right.

 

don't run anymore, I'm going to pause you. No, they'll deploy and everybody can execute them forever. So it's a completely different paradigm compared to Web2 apps. And yeah, so I think what's going to happen is you're going to have the Web2 app that will progressively incorporate more and more of this Web3 concept. But for most of the Web2 app, it will still stay Web2 app. For example, you take a game.

 

Most of the game doesn't need to be on the blockchain. Actually, the blockchain is very inefficient. It costs a lot of money. But it's just those core bits that are very important. For example, in-game assets. People want to be able to retain ownership over this because they work so hard for this. Like, they work for months to level up their Diablo player or something like this. So they, yeah, so this is just some bits of the Web2 app will be put into Web3.

 

Charles Max Wood (32:36.377)

That's interesting. So you mentioned then that the experience with this is kind of clunky, right? So, you know, incorporating your wallet per se into, or your identity or whatever, into your web browser and things like that. Um, yeah, I've done a little bit of that and yes, it is, it's pretty clunky. So do you think that, what did you call it? Walt coin or something like that, that the Sam Altman's coming out with?

 

Julien (32:59.723)

W-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w

 

Charles Max Wood (33:03.757)

So how do you think these problems get solved in the future or do we just not know yet?

 

Julien (33:09.963)

Okay, so the world of Web3 is super active. Like you, so all people hear about is like the price of crypto, et cetera. But actually the community is like so resourceful and you have a lot of super smart people who are always coming up with solutions. So for example, in terms of UI UX, a major improvement this year will be the smart contract wallet. So which means that your wallet, instead of being

 

Charles Max Wood (33:19.928)

Right.

 

Julien (33:39.455)

just a private key will actually be a smart contract. And this will be, part of this will be made possible by change to the protocol layer of Ethereum. And so with this new kind of wallet, you will have a lot of feature like social recovery. For example, if you forgot your private key, then a couple of your friends can help you to unlock your wallet. A few things that will make it less clunky.

 

So in terms of the UI UX, there was some big progress, but we still have some progress to do.

 

Charles Max Wood (34:18.661)

So just to back up and help people understand and correct me if I'm wrong, because I really am an amateur at this. I've talked to a few people and I kind of have some idea, but with the wallet being a smart contract, what you're saying is, is your wallet is no longer just a private key that says, hey, I'm going to sign transactions and things like that. But now it's actually a program because a smart contract's a program, if I understand correctly. And so it's going to have those capabilities like recovery and things like that, because there's going to be code that actually executes against your wallet.

 

as you authorize.

 

Julien (34:50.695)

Yes, yes, that's correct. And then you can imagine all sort of innovation for your wallet. For example, if you want to implement some maximum spending, that can be coded. You can also, in terms of spending authorization, it's also more simple. There are a lot of behavior that you can embed in the logic. So that's really interesting. And so really, the two big thing.

 

Charles Max Wood (35:00.494)

Mm-hmm.

 

Julien (35:21.011)

at the infrastructure level, the UI UX, and then the scaling issue. The scaling issue is probably gonna be solved by next year. So most of the people right now in the space are focused on this at the infrastructure level. However, what we don't have enough of is people who are working on actual use case. And so a lot of people on the web three are aware of this. And so in the future, probably you're gonna have

 

shift from the infrastructure to the app layer.

 

Charles Max Wood (35:55.021)

Right. So sorry, I feel like I feel like I'm monopolizing this conversation. It's so fascinating to me. So the question that I have next is, OK, so I'm a web developer, right? Build stuff in, you know, whatever back end. I have a JavaScript front end. You know, people who know me know I'm probably working in Rails on the back end. But, you know, however that goes together, how do I start adding some of these features in? Right. So let's say that I'm selling courses, which is something that I'm doing.

 

Effectively, I use something like Stripe. They send me a webhook. I know that you own it. But yeah, it'd be kind of interesting to have it where you have the token that I gave you or something that indicates that you bought a copy of my course. And so you just forever and ever and ever have that token. And I forever and ever and ever, as long as you come to my site, you get whatever you bought. How do I start building that into my web application?

 

either to be ready for these innovations if they come up in a year, or to be on the cutting edge if people are interested in them.

 

Julien (36:59.295)

Yeah, so the most simple way you can do it is by using some existing API. So you have many crypto API that let you access this smart contract and through a web two interface. So that's the fastest, but it's not very fun because you don't see any of the web three stuff. It's just like a regular REST API. So if you have more time and you wanna...

 

Charles Max Wood (37:11.705)

Okay.

 

Charles Max Wood (37:17.956)

Right.

 

Charles Max Wood (37:22.305)

Yeah, but if I'm a business and I just want it in, that's a good way to go, right? I don't need to know how it works, I just want to know that it works. Great.

 

Julien (37:27.644)

Yeah, yeah, but...

 

Julien (37:31.579)

Yeah, but you just have to know that in this case, it's not decentralized because you are at the mercy of the API. But for a lot of people, it's an OK trade-off. And then the other solution would be to interface directly with the smart contract. So that's the next level in terms of difficulty.

 

Charles Max Wood (37:37.937)

of whoever your provider is. Okay, good to know.

 

Julien (37:55.131)

It's not too difficult, but you'll have to learn a little bit, for example, the 3D programming language to be able to read a smart contract and understand what a function does. And then you have to contend with the limitation of blockchain node. There are also little issues, all sorts of quirks you have to deal with. And the last, the most advanced level of integration.

 

of a new in your website, Johnny, the most advanced stuff you can do is build a full website app, including at the protocol lever at the smart contract layer. So you will create your own smart contract and on the blockchain that potentially could also interact with other smart contracts. But that's really next level. And one of the main caveats in this case is that on the blockchain security is really hard.

 

Because once you deploy your smart contract, it's impossible to change it. So if there is any bug in your smart contract and the hacker finds it, it's going to drain all the funds of your user potentially. And then you have things like security audits that can be done to reduce this risk, but these are extremely expensive. So as a builder, you have to be aware of this. That security is a big deal.

 

AJ (39:18.306)

So in everything you've talked about so far, it sounds like you're exclusively talking about only Ethereum. So when people say Web 3, are they generally just they just mean Ethereum? They don't mean a broader concept. It's just like Ethereum is Web 3. Everything else is something else.

 

Julien (39:34.303)

Yeah, right. So in theory, Web3 is everything decentralized. It could be Ethereum, IPFS, et cetera. But in practice, most of what really happens nowadays on Ethereum. But people need to understand that Ethereum, so there is a difference between the technology and a network. So Ethereum is both a technology and a network, but there are a lot of other networks that are based on the technology of Ethereum.

 

for example, Optimism, Arbitrum, et cetera. But that is the dominant technology. You can see it a little bit like the Linux of Web3. And so all the ecosystem that is being built is really around this. I think it's pretty much a settled case. So yeah, you have a lot of other blockchain projects like Solana.

 

we use other tech stack that's trying to sell you that the tech stack is better. But at this point it's like almost irrelevant because the, how do you say the, oh, you know, like this, oh, I have, what's the name of this technical word? Like when your network has grown, network effect, yeah. So at this point, network effect that's so big that Ethereum has won already. And if there's any...

 

technological improvement from another project, it will just be incorporated into Ethereum. That's it.

 

Charles Max Wood (41:02.605)

Sounds like the whole thing's rather, you ready for this Steve? Rather ethereal.

 

Charles Max Wood (41:10.925)

Anyway, there we go. That's what I, that was what I was waiting for.

 

Steve (41:13.519)

Sorry, you caught me off guard there. You caught me off guard, sorry.

 

Charles Max Wood (41:23.301)

That's really interesting though. But if I wanted to spin up my own network, I could. It's just that then I have to get people to adopt it. Is that what you're saying?

 

Julien (41:31.387)

Yeah, I would say it's pretty much pointless now. There were countless alternative blockchain that tried to get started in the past with billions and billions poured in this project. For example, EOS. EOS was the biggest ICO of all time. I think they raised something like $4 billion, absolutely insane, and that completely forgotten off the map. So yeah, it's pointless to do that, but.

 

But so, now what happens is you have this Ethereum is the layer one, and then you have this ecosystem of so-called layer two blockchain. So these are basically scaling solutions for Ethereum. So you can see them as like secondary blockchain, and they help to solve the problem of scalability. And now we start to see a new paradigm start to emerge where we start to talk of app-specific chain. So in practice, these are layer two chain connected to Ethereum.

 

but it's like one chain per app. We don't know yet if it's gonna be, if this private thing is gonna hold, but yeah that's the evolution of things.

 

Charles Max Wood (42:49.189)

So one other thing.

 

AJ (42:49.346)

So as somebody from, as somebody from the web two world, one of the nice things about web two is that all web two is compatible with all web two, right? So if I write a program and node, the protocol layer defines how, how the protocol layer is the decentralization, right? So I write a program and node, it can talk to a program that's written in Go, a program in Go can talk to a program that's written in Java.

 

I'm going to talk to a program that accepts exploits via C, you know, and, and so no matter which stack I use, the thing that makes it decentralized is that there's a common protocol that all of the stacks can talk to each other. I can spin up something that internally has completely different details and, and has its own APIs and has, and then all I have to do is document those APIs and somebody else can consume them.

 

And so we don't have to have perfect agreement. We don't have to all run the exact same protocol. We don't have to all, you know, it's not like a hive mind. Every everybody can operate independently, but then can come together an exchange and it and it sounds like well, if everybody just adopts a theory of then that kind of works, but that would be like saying that everybody has to use. I don't know like.

 

The GitHub API is the only API and you can't have any other APIs or maybe that's where the, uh, well, but this would only be for money. Cause there's, there's the whole decentralized exchange, which is like the idea that you can have different APIs and they can exchange stuff. But then I think that only works for money. So is there, is there anything in the web three space that is. That has that quality that you can make independent decisions and then resolve what that.

 

means in a relationship later. I don't know if that makes sense.

 

Julien (44:50.367)

So a smart contract in Ethereum can only talk to another smart contract on Ethereum. So if you have another blockchain and another smart contract there, you cannot talk to it directly. Now there are solutions that exist like bridges, but the problem with bridges is that they are not decentralized. We don't know yet how to do a decentralized bridge. And also bridges are more prone to hacks.

 

Julien (45:18.939)

isn't a solved problem right now. If you want to have compatibility, it has to be within the same blockchain. Now, what happened with this layer 2 is that there are ways basically to have smart contracts in different layer 2 chain and then to somehow lift some part of the state in the layer 1 so that you can still benefit from the trust of the layer above you.

 

So these are some kind of integration that are being done, but between blockchain, the communication is more difficult. This being said, in the future, when Ethereum 2.0 will be completely rolled out, the architecture will be with shards. So you'll have different, some sort of mini blockchain that...

 

basic that are able to communicate through a central layer. So things are being done to advance in this direction, but this is complicated.

 

AJ (46:32.702)

You saying the word shard is good because definitionally, if something doesn't scale, it's not decentralized. That's one of the, you know, that like the three litmus test tenants of decentralization is that it scales. And currently, I've not heard of anything in the blockchain space that scales. So if that actually happens and they introduce a form of sharding that allows nodes to act independently and reconcile later, that bring us a lot closer. I was talking about earlier. So that's cool.

 

Julien (47:03.051)

So scaling is a really very exciting issue, a topic. You have different layer to this. So first at the protocol level, so Ethereum 2.0 with the different shots. And then the next part of it is all this so-called layer two blockchain. So that scale even more. And so Vitalik Buterin said that once Ethereum 2.0 will be implemented plus

 

with this layer 2 scaling solution potentially. So I hope I'm not making a mistake. I think he said that you could scale potentially to 100,000 transactions per second, which is more than even visa processes per second. So there are a lot of things that are being done in this direction. But the general idea is that, yeah, like not

 

You want to have one giant blockchain that has absolutely all the data. Part of the data will be in lower level and we will only go in upper level when we want to basically, when we have some issue. For example, if someone disagrees with a competition that was done at a lower level, then we can go to an upper level to basically settle the case like for quotes, for example.

 

AJ (48:25.038)

So one of the reasons that almost none of the blockchains other than Dogecoin and Dash have been usable, well, and Litecoin have been usable for money is that the transaction fees on Ethereum and Bitcoin and most of the ones that get the hype because of quote unquote investment, the transaction fees are so exorbitantly high that you'd be paying $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

you know, 50 to 100 times more than what the product costs. If I wanted to buy a bottle of water, but it cost me $50 or $60 or $70 in transaction fees, which I think has been the case with both Bitcoin and Ethereum, you know, that obviously I can't afford to pay a $50 transaction fee for a 79 cent bottle of water. So if this thing happens with the sharding,

 

Does that mean that the transaction fees will get to a point that Ethereum could be used for money?

 

Julien (49:28.211)

Yeah, so that was one of the main problems of the last bull market. So with this architecture, with where you have all these different shards and all these different layer 2, especially at the layer 2 level, you trade security for less expensive transaction fees. So now for a lot of new projects, they are not even deployed in Ethereum, they are deployed directly on layer 2 blockchain like Polygon, Arbitrum, etc. And the transaction fees are...

 

much less. So yeah, in the future, this is with a direction where it's going like way smaller blockchain that aren't the main blockchain, but are connected to the main blockchain.

 

AJ (50:10.77)

So that well that's if I have to wait for quote unquote confirmations, I can't spend the money right? Because if I'm going to if I'm going to walk up to you and I'm going to scan your QR code and I'm going to pay you the equivalent of five dollars. And for me to stand there and wait for the next hour for all these confirmations to come through before I can say, OK, you got the five dollars. I didn't cheat you out of your money. You didn't cheat me out of anything like it worked.

 

So if you have to take away the security in order to have lower fees, does that mean that we just have to wait for a million transactions? So I won't know if you got the money until tomorrow or like what's the deal there?

 

Julien (50:50.495)

So you don't take away the security, you just reduce it, but it's still very safe and it's still extremely difficult to attack a layer two blockchain. I think to this date, we haven't heard of any hack like this. But if you are transacting a very large amount of money, let's say like millions, perhaps that is still advised to do it on the layer one. So depending, you can choose the level of security that you want based on the importance of the transaction.

 

AJ (51:19.55)

Okay. So do you know what, what do transactions resolve in for Ethereum in general right now? Is it is it used to have to wait an hour? Do you have to wait 10 minutes?

 

Julien (51:32.363)

So block confirmation is 15 seconds. Now, yeah, 15 seconds. So if you really want to make sure that there won't be any chain reorganization, you want to wait a few blocks, but that's quite fast. And for layer two, I think depending on the chain, but it's even faster than this, it can be a few seconds.

 

AJ (51:36.076)

Really?

 

AJ (51:50.753)

Okay.

 

AJ (51:56.03)

Okay, so was I was I just completely mistaken because I actually have not really followed Ethereum. But it was Ethereum did it used to be like you had to wait an hour and now they've changed it so that you only have to wait, you know, 1530 seconds or

 

Julien (52:10.987)

I think you are referring to Bitcoin. For Bitcoin, yes, he was advised to wait for a certain number of confirmation. That was about one hour.

 

Charles Max Wood (52:23.722)

Interesting.

 

AJ (52:23.81)

Well, that's cool.

 

Charles Max Wood (52:26.297)

Good deal. Well, unless there's something specific to building distributed apps using some of these technologies, I'm kind of inclined to push us toward PICS. But I don't want to leave anybody high and dry if you have another question.

 

AJ (52:40.238)

I do want to know how does this, how does this apply to JavaScript? Cause this sounds, this sounds like stuff that is happening probably in a C plus server application that, you know, some, some group of people are running, um, and, and not something that I could, I could like use from a webpage. For example,

 

Julien (53:03.091)

So if you're a JavaScript guy and you want to build on the web3, it's easy. You just build an integration from the front end. So as I said before, either by using an API or by integrating with the smart contract directly. And there are some libraries that you can use that allow you to interact with the smart contract really, really easily. So it's just an API call. And actually, so generally you want...

 

run your own Ethereum node, but generally you will use a blockchain API. So they are basically two levels of a blockchain API. Either you use something really high level, where it's a REST API that does a very specific action, or it's a low-level blockchain API that just allows you to interact with any smart contract, but you have to tell it exactly which smart contract, which function, which argument. But it's basically like calling a function and providing an argument.

 

AJ (54:00.786)

So is it like I'm connecting a Coinbase to do this or is it I get a list of Ethereum nodes and I and I connect them to them directly or how does that

 

Julien (54:10.555)

Yeah, so you can use a bunch of blockchain API, like for example, Inferiize, one of them, QuickNode, Alchemy, there are a bunch of these, and they run Ethereum node for you, and they expose the Web2 interface to you, but with the same exact endpoint as the Ethereum node, so for you it's actually transparent.

 

Julien (54:36.659)

But if you want, if you're courageous, you can run your own Ethereum node, but it's a lot of work because it has high requirement for your machine. I think the blockchain now is like something like one terabyte or something like this. It's not every machine can sync this. But there is a lot of work that is being done for so-called light clients, which would allow, which can be run from mobile phone, for example. So, yeah.

 

AJ (55:04.162)

Dang. That's, I mean, that's gonna.

 

AJ (55:11.21)

As that, you know, being a terabyte, that pushes almost every home user out. Most laptops aren't sold with a terabyte of storage.

 

Julien (55:21.375)

That's, yeah, so the people are interested in that. They need to check out the light, what's the technical term for that? Lightweight client, yeah. There are like a new generation of clients that are being built for a smaller device, yeah. But this is really what I love about blockchain is like you have all these problems and in each of these areas with the big problem like scalability, UI, UX, the problem of the...

 

Ethereum node that requires too much, too much very powerful hardware. You have a lot of people working on each of these programs and progress are being made. So that's fascinating, basically.

 

Charles Max Wood (56:05.773)

Very cool. All right, now I am gonna push us to wrap up. But Julian, if people have questions, if they have, if they get stuck, I mean, what's a good resource?

 

Julien (56:19.207)

Yeah, so they can go on my... Yeah, so they can check out my channel, Eat The Blocks, on YouTube, and they can also reach out to me on Twitter.

 

Charles Max Wood (56:20.151)

to find you and to, yeah, sorry.

 

Charles Max Wood (56:31.565)

Very cool. What's your handle on Twitter?

 

Julien (56:34.647)

It's J-Clipatch, J-K-L-E-P-A-T-C-H. T-C-H, sorry.

 

Charles Max Wood (56:39.925)

Awesome. Very cool. All right, well let's go ahead and do our picks. AJ, you wanna start us with a fix?

 

AJ (56:51.126)

Yeah, let's see here.

 

AJ (56:56.79)

First thing I'm going to pick is Dash. I've mentioned before I work for Dash Incubator. That's actually that is transition to becoming my primary source of income. So I have an extreme sense of bias in that, but if anything,

 

I don't I don't believe that blockchains are a solution for basically anything but money and not that they necessarily Necessarily a blockchain has to be a solution to money But that there are you know that people talk about the generals problem and yada yada. There are certain things that a Blockchain is not the worst possible solution for getting consensus over a group of untrusted parties

 

I would like to see scaling blockchains. So that wouldn't be a chain, it'd be a tree, but that get basically what Git does. Git is perfectly verifiable from one hash to another hash. You can work asynchronously. You can come back and reconcile things later, like the whole idea of the PR process, whatever. But, okay, all that aside, I think that I'm not aware of any more work.

 

or effort that's gone into making it easy to spend an international currency, then what Dash has done. And in terms of for developers, you'll notice when you look at these libraries, almost all of them are based on work that's 10, 15 years old, older than cryptocurrencies are themselves, of course, because a lot of these libraries were created, you know, circa 2009, 2010, 2011.

 

And they were lying on JavaScript cryptography libraries because web crypto wasn't a thing yet that were built in, you know, 2006, 2007, whatever. So there's, there's a, there's a lot of stuff out there that you want to, you want to pull in something that generate a wallet address you're pulling in four megabytes of legacy code. And, uh, with dash, we do have. Code that has been written within the last two years for.

 

AJ (59:16.226)

wallets, addresses, key signing, using noble crypto, which noble crypto is one of the so as you may know, a lot of the cryptography, and you know, they say don't roll your own crypto, but a lot of the blockchain people just decided to do it anyway. And they came up with they either used algorithms that are obscure, or they came up with their own stuff. And that's where a lot of security vulnerabilities have come from. But, but over time,

 

Uh, there have been some actually audited crypto libraries that are audited for security and noble crypto is, is one of those. So anyway, there's, there's a collection of tools. I'll provide a link to that. We have that if you're interested in the money aspect, there's some people that want to do the DAP thing and all that. But if you're interested in the money aspect, um, I would not recommend investing in dash or any cryptocurrency because that

 

that defies the whole idea of money because you don't, you know, I mean, people short the dollar or short the euro or short whatever. And they, you know, they run investment scams, but that's different. That's that's in that's a different category than money. Like I'm going to go buy a bottle of water or a pack of gum or a video game or a skateboard or, you know, go to a flea market or a mops, you know, whatever. So I think the dash has a good shot at actually

 

money and I'll give a link to some of the tools that we have. They're lightweight. They run in the browser. They run a node. They use web crypto. They use audited cryptography libraries that it's basically the best of the bunch. And yeah, so I'll plug that. That's that's what I'll do. And then I'm going to give a shout out to Harbor Freight because dang, it's just convenient.

 

It's just so convenient. I'm so glad I discovered Harbor Freight. It's like. In a lot of cases, cheap, crappy tools that are going to break when you. Push them beyond their recommended limits, but in a lot of cases, there are things that just work surprisingly well for a couple bucks less. And it's nice that they kind of Harbor Freight has stuff that nowhere else has like a motorcycle lift. You can't get that at Lowe's and, and they have, they have the kind of stuff that they're like as a, as a.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:01:08.953)

Thanks for watching!

 

AJ (01:01:38.75)

a dude working in your garage, they have the kind of stuff that you need. And I don't quite know how to explain it, but it's like it's very different from Home Depot or Lowe's. The selection is much smaller, which is probably why their prices are less. They don't have to supply every possible thing. They give you a lot of the tools that are going to break often anyway, because they're the type of tools that get abused a lot anyway. And I just, yeah, I'm happy to have discovered

 

Harbor Freight and I don't have one super close by. I go a little south or a little north. I can get to one and that's nice. So gonna give a shout out to Harbor Freight.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:02:20.345)

So you mentioned cheap tools. I do have to say that I have never bought a tool, Harbor Freight, that broke, that I couldn't just take back. They're always good about that, so yeah.

 

AJ (01:02:30.854)

I bought a motorcycle lift and it broke and they won't take it back. Well that what broke was the handle. It's an ATV lift and the handle that you use to push and pull it around that broke off. I could have paid $30 more or gotten the warranty that on their on their things like their screw drivers all of their screw drivers and their wrenches I think all the Pittsburgh brand comes with a life lifetime warranty. You just take it back. But basically anything that costs more than $10.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:02:34.19)

Okay.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:02:41.556)

Oh, okay.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:02:53.017)

Yeah.

 

AJ (01:02:58.902)

you have to buy the warranty on. So if you're looking between the thing that's $150 and things $180, never ever buy the thing that's less expensive when you get into their stuff that's $100 and the spread is, you know, $20.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:03:15.041)

Yep. Yeah, I tell when my wife asks where I'm going, if I'm going to Harbor Freight, I tell her I'm going to the toy store. So, and I'm not kidding. I really do. I tell her we're going to the toy store. Usually taking my father-in-law. Going to the toy store. Don't spend too much money. All right. Steve, what are your picks? Oh, or did you have something else? AJ.

 

Okay, go ahead Steve.

 

Steve (01:03:40.819)

I will say following up there that Harbor Freight is really cool. Around where I live, it's right down the street from Home Depot. So, uh, so yeah, I've gone in there before and found some stuff for cheaper. It's a good place. Um, shoot, AJ left. I have a pic that I know he will appreciate. So, oh, here's AJ. Okay. So earlier in the episode, I called AJ a term and he was slightly offended. And that was erudite.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:03:47.895)

Yeah, same here.

 

Steve (01:04:11.087)

AJ, I thought you would like to know this, that the term erudite means having or showing great knowledge or learning. So if you describe someone as erudite, you mean that they have or show great academic knowledge. So, see, I knew that.

 

AJ (01:04:17.903)

Oh, cool.

 

AJ (01:04:26.142)

I feel like this is a catch-22, because an Areodite should know that.

 

Steve (01:04:30.327)

Right. Well, I didn't say I was. Oh, that's true. Yeah. You know, it's like the, you know, when I knocked on the door to visit my psychic and she said, who is it? And I left because you know, she should know that. But anyway, so with that definition, we will move on to the dad jokes of the week. I went into a pet shop the other day and I wanted to, you know, buy a goldfish said, can I buy a goldfish? And the guy said,

 

Charles Max Wood (01:04:31.379)

hahahaha

 

Steve (01:05:00.331)

Yeah, do you want an aquarium? I said, I don't care what star sign it is.

 

Steve (01:05:07.483)

You know, if anybody's ever heard the great pun guy's name was Kip Adada. He had a great song called Wet Dreams. That was all fish puns like that classic song. You ever want to look it up on YouTube? And then he had another one called Life in the Slaw Lane. That was all vegetable puns. I'll have to pick those. Yeah. I'll, I'll make those a couple of picks too. Uh, back to the dad jokes. Uh, so simple question. Why should you never brush your teeth with your left hand?

 

because a toothbrush works better.

 

AJ (01:05:41.602)

that one. You got me once on Twitter. I forgot about it. You got me again.

 

Steve (01:05:47.451)

And then, you know, it's like the one where I was, I was washing the car with my son the other day and he said, dad, can't we use a sponge instead?

 

And then finally, going back to the psychic, I actually had an appointment next week with my psychic, but then she called and told me I wouldn't be able to make it.

 

Steve (01:06:07.971)

So that was a different one than the first one who didn't know who I was when I knocked. So anyway, those are my picks, Chuck.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:06:14.349)

Awesome. All right, I'm going to throw in some picks. So I usually pick a board game or a card game or something like that. I just barely... What was that? It's called Sky Joe. My mom had it. We went up and we were hanging out at the Heber Valley Camp, which is another pick I'm going to put in there. But here, let me look it up real quick so I can tell you the complexity score on it.

 

But anyway, so Sky Joe is kind of like, it's kind of like gnoming around, I picked that one, or golf, if you've played golf with just regular cards. So with Sky Joe, you have a field of 16 cards, and if you get three in a row, then you can get rid of them, right? So if you have three 10s or three eights, you know, diagonally or horizontally, you can get rid of.

 

those and it counts as zero on your tableau. For the rest of it, yeah, you're just trying to get the lowest value cards and whoever has the lowest, so whoever, when somebody flips over their last card, everybody else gets one more turn to try and get their score lower, and then you get your score. But if you go out first and you're not the lowest, then there was some penalty you got like,

 

your negative score flip to positive and you got penalized double or something like that. Anyway, so it was fun. You can play two to six players. We played with four or five and that seemed to be pretty good. Fast game, you know, 15, 20, 30 minutes. Sky Joe actually, or Board Game Geek actually says it can go to 45 minutes. I'm assuming that's with six people. And it has a board game weight of 1.08. So that's a very, very simple game.

 

And this is one that I think that she had like the seven-year-olds and stuff playing it. So anyway, it's Sky Joe, the word Sky J.O. I guess it's been out for a while, but yeah, fun game. And then, you know, I'm going to pick another game because I played this one last Wednesday with my buddies. I'll have to look it up because I can't remember what it's called, but I'll pick it in a second. So Heber Valley Camp.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:08:41.745)

We, uh, we went out there, they have cabins that you can stay in and, you know, they have, I mean, it's not proper camping, right? Cause you're, you stay in a cabin, it's not air conditioned, but that's, you know, they have bunks in it, uh, in the cabins and, you know, a fire pit and, uh, a pavilion for you to eat under and, uh, they provide camp stoves and in the pavilion, there's actually a refrigerator. So you can put your food in it. Right. So.

 

Anyway, that's all to say that.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:09:17.769)

Yeah, it was a ton of fun. So we...

 

Charles Max Wood (01:09:25.333)

Yeah, we stayed there and that was cool. And then a couple other picks. So Heather, my wife, Heather and I, on Tuesday, I think, we decided to go do a double feature, which means we bought two movie tickets each. We went and saw Sound of Freedom, and then we saw Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny. And the Indiana Jones, I mean, I have to say, I was disappointed by Crystal Skull. I just wanted more.

 

It didn't have all of the feels that I got from the original two or three, depending on how you rate that. Uh, Indiana Jones's and this one had a little bit more of kind of the nostalgia in it, but I didn't think the plot was particularly strong. And the other thing is, is that, um, half the fun was watching Indiana Jones do these like probability defying stunts. And Harrison Ford's like 80 something. And so, you know, you don't see that as much.

 

And the woman that was in it that was his goddaughter and the little kid, you just don't see as much of that either. And so it was good. Like, I wasn't disappointed at what we spent to go see it. But it's definitely not of the caliber of the original ones that I grew up watching. As far as Sound of Freedom goes, it was amazing. And it really, I mean, I have to say, some parts of it were hard to watch, right? Because you know.

 

Steve (01:10:51.931)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

AJ (01:10:52.754)

I was crying through most of the movie.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:10:54.653)

Yeah, they don't show you like the, you know, but they kind of, you know, you can see it coming and then they go to the next scene, you know, the really, what would have been a graphic part of the movie, you know, where they're actually abusing those kids.

 

Steve (01:11:07.575)

Yeah, that one scene where he's typing up the... Or when he's typing up the transcript at the beginning of the video. I was like, oh, please don't keep going into detail. Yeah.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:11:13.085)

Right, yeah, so they don't expose you to a lot of that, but you can see it and feel it coming, and I'll tell ya, I've donated to Operation Underground Railroad a couple of times, and I've gone and looked into them, and they're a solid group, and I'm glad the movie came out. If you haven't seen it, you really need to go see it.

 

AJ (01:11:33.542)

I would say it's like Schindler's List and that you need to see it, but you should not want to see it. And I think it's, I think compared to Schindler's List, this is actually a, it's, it's a harder hitter.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:11:39.289)

Yeah.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:11:48.578)

Right.

 

Steve (01:11:50.671)

Now what amazes me about this movie though is the blowback that it's getting. Oh, this is made up, this isn't really true, you're just trying to tug at hearts and like, I don't get it.

 

AJ (01:11:57.506)

weird because I watched the movie and I thought that maybe there was going to be some sort of like, you know, message driven, like they're going to have really cheesy dialogue to say like and the government's doing it. But there was none of that. It was like a Colombian drug lord. It's like the guy. Yeah, it's

 

Steve (01:12:03.236)

Right.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:12:04.324)

Yeah.

 

Steve (01:12:06.051)

Yeah.

 

Steve (01:12:09.847)

Yeah.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:12:11.669)

Yeah.

 

Steve (01:12:15.383)

It just blew my mind, but yeah, it's a good movie. Mm-hmm.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:12:16.437)

Yeah, but it has Jim Caviezel in it. It's pretty close to how I've, because I've heard some interviews with Tim Ballard that came out, I guess after the movie was made, but before it came out. And this seems to stick pretty close to how his operations run. So anyway, so I'm gonna pick it. I think people ought to go see it. Yeah, I think AJ kind of nailed it. It's about a topic you really don't want to know more about.

 

but it really makes it real for you. I also wouldn't take your kids. I'm just gonna put that out there.

 

AJ (01:12:53.178)

And and I think if you're a single person, you'd have a dramatically different experience than if you have kids because I have a son and daughter that are a little bit younger than the kids in the film. And I just like I can't even think about it. I'm going to tear up just thinking about it.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:12:59.851)

Oh yeah.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:13:10.025)

Yeah. Yeah, I have an eight-year-old. I think the girl in it is 10, 11. And I have an 11 year old son. But yeah, I mean that too, right? You know, I'm watching that dad and I'm just sitting there thinking I would never give up. Right. It'd be like this. This guy, all he does is look for his kids anyway.

 

Steve (01:13:30.315)

You know, a number of years ago, Chuck, there was a movie that came out, it was called Human Trafficking, that had Donald Sutherland and Mirosor Vino in it. And it's probably been 10, 15 years. And it was, the plot was similar. It was that there was an American couple that was living in or vacationing in Southeast Asia somewhere. I don't remember where.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:13:38.906)

Mm-hmm.

 

Steve (01:13:59.823)

And it was about them tracking this, you know, what's the term you want to syndicate, whatever down and, and getting this girl back as well as, as other ones. And so the plot was, was very similar. And there was also a scene in there at the beginning that I want to say was somewhere Southeast Asia. I don't remember the specific country where, um, it showed a family who literally to get by had to sell one of their little girls, you know, to this syndicate that they were tracking throughout the movie. So it was a heartbreaking movie. And I remember when it came out.

 

And I think it might have been made for TV, but it didn't get quite the play that Sound of Freedom has gotten, but it's very similar. And it's a really good movie if you ever want to watch that as well.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:14:40.513)

Yep. So I'm going to pick one more in this vein, and then I will talk about the other game because I found it on Amazon. So the other film, this is related because it is also about Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad. It's called Operation Toussaint. And it's another mission that Tim went on. This one was done, it was commissioned and done by Russell Brunson, if you know who he is. He's actually owns ClickFunnels.

 

started ClickFunnels, he's the marketing genius behind that. And like every year at their conference, they donate thousands of dollars to Operation Underground Railroad. But yeah, it's another, it's a documentary, right? So it actually, you know, it's not a dramatization like it is in Sound of Freedom, but it's also really, really good. It came out in 2018, I think.

 

and you can get it on Amazon, you can rent it for like two bucks. But it's also really good. So if you, if you're looking for a little bit more, you want to know more about the organization or about human trafficking. And if I remember right, I don't know if they, I don't remember if they actually found the, it's been a long time since I've seen it, if they found the kid or anyway, but it's really good and it goes into how they actually operate. So.

 

I'm going to pick those. And then, yeah, just going back to a more lighthearted topic. So the other board game is called Living Forest. I actually played it. It's funny because it's like ages 8 plus, blah, blah. I played it with two 40-ish old dudes like me. And we had a really, really good time. It was awesome. Effectively, what you're doing is there's like this fire spirit that's generating fire.

 

and you're trying to build up the animals and trees in your forest faster than the other nature spirits who are the other players. And so you place trees, you place animals, the animals give you resources, you know, to place more trees or get more water or, you know, so you can put out fires. And anyway, when you get 12 tokens of the same kind, the game ends.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:17:02.677)

you know, gets to finish out the round and then, um, anybody who got 12 tokens, um, is considered having one, I guess. But then there's a tiebreaker and that's just all of the tokens that count toward your. So if you have 12 Lotus tokens, you know, and somebody else says 12 fire tokens, then you count up your fire tokens and your Lotus tokens and your trees and right. And, and whoever has the highest score wins. That's the tiebreaker.

 

So anyway, it was super fun, really enjoyed it. Let me find it on.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:17:43.701)

It came out two years ago and it has a board game weight of 2.21. So yeah, pretty run of the mill game. It really wasn't that complicated. Um, had a good time. It says eight plus. Oh, it says 10 plus on board game geek. I was going to say, I don't know if my eight year old could play it without help. Um, I mean, she could play it and she'd understand the concepts, but I don't think she could win it. So anyway.

 

Those are my picks. Sorry I went so long, but I got feedback on one of my picks Julian, what are your picks?

 

Julien (01:18:20.591)

No, okay, so picks can be anything you like recently. Yeah, all right. All right, so I became addicted to a series on Netflix. It's called Manifest. It's a plane that takes off and disappear and then it land five years later. Nobody knows why. And so yeah, that's the main mystery and then like the subplot and yeah. And...

 

Charles Max Wood (01:18:23.317)

Anything. Yep, anything at all.

 

Charles Max Wood (01:18:33.664)

Mm.

 

Julien (01:18:50.719)

So, you know, as a YouTuber, so like when I watch videos on Netflix, I always like analyze things and I try to see what I can learn from my own videos. So they're like two purpose to this, like entertainment and educational.

 

AJ (01:19:11.134)

the 3000 I think it's called

 

Julien (01:19:14.691)

What about the 3000?

 

AJ (01:19:16.686)

It's very similar. It's very similar to this. This show people disappear and they come back later and then they have special abilities and they're trying to figure out what happened. I was just wondering if you heard that show. I think it's called the 3000 but you might also like that since you like I already forgot the name of what's that one called him. What's the one you just said? What's that one called again? Manifest. Yeah, since you like manifest.

 

Julien (01:19:42.045)

manifest.

 

AJ (01:19:46.454)

you might like, I think it's called the 3000. Or maybe it's the 3300 or it's something, it's got, it's some number, the 4400.

 

Julien (01:19:49.724)

Yeah.

 

Julien (01:19:55.987)

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to check it out. Thanks. Yeah. But it's funny how they catch your attention. Like I watched maybe the first half of the episode, like a few months ago, but I wasn't paying attention. And then the second time I watched, I became aware of the mystery. And then you hooked, you're like, oh, why disappear? And that's it. That's how they hook you for the whole thing.

 

AJ (01:19:58.841)

Yeah, 4,400, that's what it's called.

 

Steve (01:20:27.371)

All right. Thanks for that. Looks like we lost Chuck for some reason. Not sure what happened there. Technical difficulties, I guess. Thank you for coming on, Julian. I think we already covered where people can reach you and give you money and yell at you on Twitter, right?

 

AJ (01:20:42.838)

Wait, wait, no. No, we forgot to ask him where his QR code is so we can scan him money.

 

Julien (01:20:43.13)

Yes.

 

Steve (01:20:48.545)

Oh yes, where is your-

 

Julien (01:20:52.088)

No, what is my favorite pick of crypto? I have none.

 

Steve (01:21:00.127)

Okay, you're a generalist. All right, good deal. All right, thank you, Julie. And it's probably now about what, three o'clock in the morning, your time. So we'll let you get going.

 

Julien (01:21:02.657)

Yeah.

 

Julien (01:21:09.543)

Yeah. All right, guys. So, yeah, thanks for thanks for having me on the show. All right. Have a good day. Bye.

 

Steve (01:21:16.875)

All right, and we will talk at you all next time on JavaScript Jabber.

 

AJ (01:21:20.907)

Adios!