Billy Riggs (00:14)
All right, folks, welcome back to rewiring the American edge.

All right, folks, welcome back. to Rewiring the American Edge. ⁓ Today we are going deep with an episode on blockchain and you guessed it, Mars. ⁓ We have with us a special guest from Tufts University, Justin Hollander, ⁓ as well as my amazing cohost to Vipul Vyas. ⁓

This is Rewiring the American Edge where we focus on automation, innovation, and the things that make ⁓ our economy great. And keep in mind that the things that make the American economy great, many times are not about America. They're about the things ⁓ that make America global. ⁓ We like to say that America is glocal. Local is global.

And, ⁓ think what we're going to talk about today is really, ⁓ taking local global and, I can't wait to hear about the innovations at play that Justin can tell us about. Bipple. How's it going in sunny Palo Alto? ⁓ what do you got to say for us? ⁓ my friend, people BS. Hey, how's it going?

all right, folks, welcome back to rewiring the American edge. I'm Billy Riggs. And, ⁓ this episode, we're really unpacking the intersection of technology and policy, how, the future of work cities and society fit together. And today we're really going orbital, doing, ⁓ blockchain, but also taking things super extraterrestrial

Vipul Vyas (01:50)
application here.

Billy Riggs (02:18)
with Justin Hollander, is one of my super radical East Coast ⁓ colleagues. Vipul, you're grounded though in Palo Alto. How you doing, my friend?

Vipul Vyas (02:31)
Not too bad. Thanks for asking.

Billy Riggs (02:34)
Yeah, yeah, so maybe catch us up with the world of blockchain and then we can hear from from our friend Justin.

Vipul Vyas (02:41)
Well, beyond ⁓ blockchain, the core technology itself, there's a lot of activity with ⁓ cryptocurrencies, obviously, right now, with new legislation around stable coins and the promotion of stable coins ⁓ by the US government, which is a sharp departure from the previous administration. And what that's leading to is, and I think what their goal may be, I can only guess, right? But I suspect it's actually the increased demand for the US dollar.

Justin Hollander (02:52)
No.

Vipul Vyas (03:10)
through another mechanism. think you had reserve currency status to gold and then the petrodollar shortly after that with the deals that we made with OPEC in the 70s. And now ⁓ as some of that falls away or becomes less binding, ⁓ a new mechanism to create ongoing dollar demand is stable coins.

and the use of those stable coins ⁓ and the broad acceptance of them in the financial, institutional financial world ⁓ to leverage them. And so that creates a new source of dollar need, which further extends the dollar's primacy and buttresses it. So that's the big muse in terms of blockchain and specific application when it to cryptocurrency. I think what we're not seeing quite yet ⁓ is... ⁓

the use of blockchain for smart contracts. It's still perceived to be a solution looking for a problem, though most of the stable coins are based off of ETH, which is a smart contracting blockchain platform. But that's my take. I'm sure Justin may have a much deeper understanding, but that's my geopolitical read on what's kind of happening.

Billy Riggs (04:18)
Yeah.

Okay. So before, before we go too far, ⁓ one of our power listeners happens to be my mother. And so my goal for us all today is to be kind to my mother. So she continues listening. Justin, I'm very happy to have you. You are, ⁓ a dear colleague, ⁓ and,

you're also, I think, a leading voice on kind of the future of cities and urbanism. And your work really is always pushing the edge of how we should think about cities. And I think between the two of us, I think we're always challenging one another about how we should think about the future. And this area of blockchain, there are very few people talking about this right now. And so, you know, of the people on this call, ⁓

I think that what I want us to get out of today is that this is really the forefront of how we should be thinking about cities, but I also want my mother not to be scared. And so my goal of today is to really introduce some ideas in a way that hopefully that we can, that can be approachable to people as well. So Justin, maybe you could introduce yourself and we could also, you know, welcome to the show.

We get introduce yourself, but also Can you talk to us about, kind of how is this technology useful to the civic fabric in general and to to real world lives of people?

Justin Hollander (05:55)
Well, yeah, so thank you so much for having me and for those kind introductory words. know, Really a pleasure to be able to just kind of talk about all these topics and really, really exciting topics to me. I hope you'll see my enthusiasm over the course of this episode. ⁓ But yeah, I mean, think, you one way to kind of introduce my passion, I think, ⁓ is to tell a story from just last week. So I have...

felt for a long time that the field that I love, urban planning, ⁓ is a field that could really benefit from more of a forward-looking outlook. And one of the ways that that makes sense is in blockchain, because the planner is taught in grad school ⁓

or in undergrad, wherever they're getting their training, they're taught to look at the world in a very 20th century way. And so much about what planners do is they manage information, they organize information, they analyze information, and they have as a profession been pretty resistant to this new way that ⁓

you guys and I think some of your listeners are aware of. There are some new ways to do all that work using blockchain. And so my story is that I talked to some of my students about this last week and it was a group, a big group, about 10 of them and two of them got very mad. And they're like, I don't know anyone who's involved with like blockchain and cryptocurrency.

I don't know who these people are, but they shouldn't be able to control the future of my community or be involved in shaping communities that are already disenfranchised or vulnerable. And so I had to ⁓ kind of stand up for blockchain and I had to kind of make a case. And I tried to argue with them that these new systems are

better in many ways, or we're in the process of evaluating how much they're better. That's a lot of actually what my research is doing. And we might actually be able to do planning that engages with data in a more valid way, but by using these blockchain approaches. And that's my hope. And that's what gets me motivated to continue doing this work.

Billy Riggs (08:45)
Okay. But Justin, let's, let's step back a little bit and maybe you could just, um, before we, go all in on all these buzzwords. Um, let's Maybe you could tell us just a little bit about who you are and how you came to be interested in this topic and, and you work at this university that's in Boston and, and yeah, tell us, tell us a little more about who is Justin Hollander.

Justin Hollander (08:53)
You

Okay. ⁓ Well, so I worked as an urban planner for almost 10 years, working in local government, regional, federal government agencies, doing planning and, you know, really ⁓ thought it was a great field, great area, but did decide to go into academia. And so for the last 19 years, I made a good choice.

Billy Riggs (09:34)
That was a really wise decision. that was a really, really, really, really smart one.

Sorry.

Justin Hollander (09:40)
So yeah, so this was about 19 years ago. I started at Tufts and I've been a professor here ever since Tufts is just outside of Boston and I teach in a graduate program for urban planning. So I do train the next generation of planners. Is that what you needed me to tell you? ⁓

Billy Riggs (10:01)
Yeah. Yeah. so,

so when we talk about, you know, urban planners use the couple, you know, we use the term blockchain, but we also use this, there's a couple other phrases and I'm so just so everybody knows there's this nifty, if you're an urban planner, Justin wrote this nifty little thing. It's called a P A S and I think that stands for planning advisory service quick note. And I think it's called.

PAS 99. Am I right, Justin? 99? I think it's, yeah, yeah, I'm looking at it right now. ⁓ PAS 99, quick note, 99, blockchain for planners. And in this, there's all kinds of buzzwords, but it's a really nice thing. And it talks about all these buzzwords. It talks about smart contracts. It talks about some of the difference between blockchain and how blockchain is not cryptocurrency. And so that's a really important distinction to make, but it talks about

Justin Hollander (10:34)
I don't remember the number actually. Okay, very good.

Billy Riggs (11:00)
this idea of the contract and this idea of how blockchain being kind of the transparent ⁓ ledger and the of the immutable evidence that has been made online that someone has recorded some piece of information there, that time stamp of information.

And why I'm saying that, Justin, is one thing that I think was really interesting that we talked about at a planning conference last year that I've read your work about is using this for public feedback. And ⁓ I really was kind of hoping that you would provide that example. So maybe you could talk a little bit more about just kind of one of the immediate examples that is very present for planners, which is how could blockchain be used for

public processes.

Justin Hollander (12:01)
Yeah, and so ⁓ as a practitioner and then as a professor who's involved in a lot of different types of practice, I have seen over and over again examples of a community. ⁓ The leadership of the community says there's a planning project we care about. Let's use the example of there's a new park that they want to build a new park in a neighborhood. So they say, well, let's find out what the community cares about. And they're totally genuine in that interest.

but probably about 99 % of the time it doesn't work well. They post a notice on the bulletin board at the town hall saying there's gonna be a public meeting. Maybe they put an ad out on the newspaper, maybe they put an ad out on Facebook, maybe they even have some sort of a Zoom link so people can call in. I've been to these meetings. Usually there's like three people at these meetings. The really good public participation efforts.

involve hundreds of people. But we're talking about a typical municipality of 200,000 people. There's 200 people come. So what are we talking about? This is a total failure. We're talking about the community is saying this is important to find out what people think. Where should the park go? What features should the park have? ⁓ But only the mainly retired wealthy people who have really nothing else going on in their lives are the only ones who actually have a voice in that. the whole system is basically broken.

Billy Riggs (13:05)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Hollander (13:29)
What does blockchain offer? It offers a different way. First of all, it's decentralized, which I don't know if people really understand what that means. Let's say you open up a Google Sheet on your computer. You could share that and someone else could edit that Google Sheet. And then they send it someone else. The thing is though, Google controls the whole thing. So it's completely centralized by Google. Google may end up for some reason wanting to make some of their own edits to the sheet.

They might want to delete the sheet. ⁓ So blockchain is not like that. It's literally that equivalent of a sheet. Google Sheet is decentralized on what is likely to be hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands of different computers. So nobody owns it. So that's important. And then you talked about this idea that it's not editable. Imagine that you're working with your colleagues and you have a project and you have a Google Sheet and you can't, nobody can go back and kind of change it.

So this is profound in terms of thinking about community engagement. We can do that park planning. We can try to figure out what people care about that park in a way that nobody's gonna own it, that it's decentralized and that when that input comes in, that input cannot be changed. can't, nobody's gonna go in and say, well, I don't like your idea and I'm gonna delete it. No, it stays there. And the most powerful part,

Billy Riggs (14:55)
Yeah.

Justin Hollander (14:56)
of all this is the idea of the smart contract, which allows that input to be systematically collated, organized, analyzed, and that feedback can be essentially broadcast all automatically. It's all through computer code to the rest of the community to provide a mechanism for that input to be meaningful.

Billy Riggs (15:21)
Yeah. Maybe I want to, know, I, I think, you know, you said that, and I'm immediately imagining a system where, know, you have your zoning data, you have your permit application, you have your environmental review, all part of a single distributed ledger. All the criteria get met. The approval is automatic. It's recorded immutably. There's no delays. There's no mysterious cues. You know, when we think about

All the inefficiencies people complain about, ⁓ in many cities, those delays are the most inconvenient processes that, create structural drag on processes that are that people, ⁓ you know, complain about in terms of delays to housing projects and things like that. You know, this is a huge opportunity. ⁓ and I, think when we think about the vision, you've just, just, just.

cast. It's a huge opportunity, not just for permitting processes, but for many other pieces of urban infrastructure.

So.

Justin Hollander (16:31)
Yeah,

yeah, so I think you put that really well. So I'm really excited about the future of mining on the blockchain.

Billy Riggs (16:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, mean, so Vipul, mean, one of the things I wanted to ask you about with this is like, ⁓ Vipple, ⁓ it's not just about public processes. A couple of years ago, we've been working on this in parallel. You're out there and hypothetically you're going and you were, if you were going and talking to a city,

You were going in consult for a city. What type of things would you be talking to a city about? What type of low hanging fruit would you be talking to a city about about putting on chain? What type of things would you be talking about saying, Hey, you can put this type of infrastructure ⁓ right out there for, ⁓ for ⁓ putting out there on a permit.

Vipul Vyas (17:29)
The workflow is a significant part of it in that people just don't know what they need to do next. And I think the combination of AI plus blockchain is interesting because you can help, because oftentimes even the city employees may not know exactly the whole process because they just know their piece of it. So for example, this is not municipal but more state, in terms of like fire mitigation.

There are often multiple agencies that you have to navigate through their silo. They don't know what their role is relative to others. And so you use the blockchain and AI to essentially define, here's what you're to do next. And here's the decision tree essentially to navigate. Now you could argue you don't necessarily need blockchain for that. But the benefit is that ⁓ today,

the beyond the ⁓ just clarity that you can bring with the workflow being very transparent is also just the transparency in general in terms of no I did this this happened I did this next I did this after that I follow the rules ⁓ and then of course the application of ⁓ that same philosophy to how the government spends money ⁓ and in the last decade or two

There's been an increased reliance on NGOs and nonprofits as opposed to the creation of state capacity to solve specific problems. And so what happens when I give this NGO this third party money? How does it flow from me to them and then to the desired outcome or the end clientele, you will, whether that's disadvantaged persons and homeless, ⁓ unhoused individuals, et cetera. ⁓

That is a way that the city with minimal overhead can start to both do two things. One, understand the flow of funds and two, determine the flow of funds because the blockchain essentially with the workflow being pre-specified will suggest this is how the NGO or nonprofit will prosecute their ⁓ enterprise, their efforts.

So you can't have the holiday party that was a big bash. That may not have been necessary. No, you just, can't have, know, boondoggles as easily. That may not be the best use of funds if you have something like what I described.

Billy Riggs (19:48)
Yeah, and I'm not sure if we... I'm sorry, you want to repeat that? I apologize.

Yeah. And I think, you know, you can look at the other applications, you know, beyond this, you can look at like, what are the, where's what's the opportunity to do an ADU? What's the opportunity to plant trees? What's the opportunity to abate graffiti? What's the opportunity to put in rooftop solar and to do so in a way where you can look at disaggregated funding, collective funding, and using

non-fiat currency. And so that's where I also see you bring in the currency side of things. And I wanted to ask Justin, have you started to look at the idea between the interoperability between the currency side and the blockchain side? So the interoperability between the cryptocurrency and the blockchain side, which

I understand from a listener standpoint starts to confound the two issues where you start to say, Oh, we're going to now start talking about alternative currencies at the same type of time as we're talking about, um, uh, as we're same time, we're talking about different ways of doing contracts. But, you know, the way I talked to this with my mother is

Is basically just think of them as local dollars. You know, just think of this and just to make it transparent for everybody is that Vipul and I have started a nonprofit that basically here in San Francisco, we have a local dollar called SFLuv. And it's just a little pilot experience where we take a dollar and we, we, basically transition it to a, a, a dollar that's

that's wrapped in a local currency called SFluv. So it's basically think of it as a dollar that's that's colored red. And it's in it's gift wrapped in a little coupon called SFLuv. And whenever you whenever someone wants to unwrap the package, they can but there's a lot of incentives for not unwrapping the package. And if they keep it in this SFLuv little package, and they exchange it locally, they get incentives if they trade it locally.

And so that's, that's the advantage there and they get earn it locally and they spend it locally. There's a lot of advantages and that's the advantage of this kind of this local currency idea. And this idea that you create this currency that then becomes something that you can assetize through, ⁓ through some of the infrastructure types of projects that you're doing as well. And that's

That's kind of my radical addition to the ledger piece that I've been working on. But Justin, ⁓ I'm curious, have you been kind of noodling on this as well?

Justin Hollander (23:03)
Yeah, and I'm also super impressed with the SFLuv tokens. I mean, think that that ⁓ has got have evidence that that seems to really be working and that's been really inspiring for me. You the project that I was talking about, the community engagement that was in Swampscott, Massachusetts, and we did ⁓ experiment a little bit, you know, thinking about that question around currency.

you really just as a way to provide additional incentive. You know, I tried to paint this bleak picture early on about how community engagement typically works around planning. And, you know, I mean, there's really essentially no incentive. And so once you bring in a currency, it's not like anyone's getting rich, but at least your efforts can, there's a way for your efforts to be compensated or at least recognized, even if it all means is getting points.

I mean, people love getting points, even if those point equals zero, zero, zero, zero pennies. One pennies, yeah. I wanted to just also talk a little bit about an example. I was teaching this class this summer and a student, it was an online class and she lives in the West Bank, Israel, and she was studying refugee camps.

And her research brought her to this refugee camp in Jordan, where the World Food Program has been working on something called building blocks. And this is a program where, you know, in refugee camps, you have a real identity issue. It's hard for people to establish who they are and that they are eligible to receive essentially money or aid or some sort of funding support. So you can do that essentially through like a digital wallet. And that's what the building blocks program is.

So you can think about the currency issues as being also a way to give people essentially an identity that they can carry out with them, whether it's through an entire planning process, through their residency in San Francisco, as long as they live there, ⁓ or as a way to keep track of aid that they're receiving in a refugee camp. Wow, mean, a lot of possibilities there.

Billy Riggs (25:18)
It's fascinating.

It's fascinating. That's really good. Thanks for bringing that up. That's really cool. And to also kind of give people stability over their life cycle when they may be transitioning between countries, between place, and it really fits into the theme. And I think I was telling you the theme of this podcast, Rewiring the American Edge and that it's, you know, we're really focused on

the way we rewire America has really less to do with America than it does to do with how we rewire that the future of America has more to do with rethinking beyond America, thinking beyond our borders. And I think that's exactly the way we want to think going into the future of this country and going into thinking locally and globally at the same time. ⁓ so let's think super globally.

and maybe go from ⁓ cities to interstellar. ⁓ Vipple, don't jump out of your seat. ⁓ Let's talk about ⁓ why designers, why planners might want to think beyond Earth might sound like sci-fi, but Justin, think you're dead serious.

⁓ you know, You've written and spoken why we might want to think, beyond, ⁓ planning just here, ⁓ in the U S but we want to think beyond the planet. Why is that?

Justin Hollander (26:55)
You are right, I am dead serious. But when my book, The First City on Mars, when I came out, I did an interview and the guy's like, this is a joke, right? You're not like serious, are you? I am serious, and I'll tell you why. Because there are many very serious, very wealthy organizations.

whether we're talking about here in the US, NASA, or European Space Agency, or many different government agencies, billionaires like Elon Musk and others who are planning on settling Mars. And many of them have developed detailed plans. And so for me, as an urban planner, I felt that our field has been essentially left out.

and that these plans are moving forward, ships are being suited and people are packing their bags, and we haven't been consulted. And it turns out that the planning profession on Earth throughout the last several thousand years has developed some pretty good strategies.

that can translate well to planning a city on Mars. so that is why I've been working in this area for a while. That's why I wrote that book, and ⁓ I think it matters.

Billy Riggs (28:17)
So yeah, I 100 % agree. And I think as I was expressing to you when we met up last week, I mean, I was one of these people that in the early 2010s worked with ⁓ Sam Altman's Y Combinator Research on some of the early conversations and they didn't go very far on kind of, hey, what are we doing to think about a Martian colony?

And so Y Combinator Research was thinking about kind of what is a Martian culminator? What, what is a Martian colonator? What does a Martian colony look like? And, I think we were thinking about habitats and sustainability and economics, but at that point in time, I don't think we had gotten much further than about the way Andy Weir was thinking about things. And.

I think the level of sophistication you're starting to talk about things are starting to talk about the principles of good city planning, walk duty, zoning, land use, but Vipul what kind of things do you think should apply in outer space? ⁓ You're kind of a Jeffersonian planner. What do you think?

Vipul Vyas (29:40)
I'm not sure it'd be any different than what you'd have here ⁓ because the same human needs and constraints still exist. And so I think probably, you know, whatever we perfect here would be applicable anywhere. And that's ⁓ in outer space or even in undeveloped or underdeveloped areas here. I mean, you can... ⁓

find sort of an alien setting, if you will, even in our own context, in terms of just lack of familiarity, lack of understanding of how to navigate the environment. ⁓ And that doesn't have to get that far. So my perspective is probably things will be no different. Where we can start is figuring out things that are adjacent to that feel right here at home. ⁓

⁓ That could be, know, understanding, for example, something more concrete. How do we shorten or tighten the food supply and the food supply chain so that we're less dependent on agriculture from long distances because we want fresh produce and we want resilience and reliability as just an example. That was something we wanted to pursue and there's a lot involved there.

and there's a lot that has to be created to make that come to pass. And so, you if you look at the, your favorite place, Billy, the Netherlands, you know, they've got the glass house, you know, process that they went from being a net food importer to a net food exporter of really high value produce. And that happened through a conscious effort, but that's something you'd need, you know, whether you were to colonize Mars or colonize the Mojave.

Either way.

Billy Riggs (31:41)
Justin?

Justin Hollander (31:42)
Yeah, I mean I was really happy with the public how you started this idea that Humans are going to need the same thing that they have on earth on Mars or elsewhere You know for me the approaching this project this kind of work I was really informed by the research that I've done here on earth around Just those questions like what do we need like what are our? ⁓

psychological, ⁓ kind of our unconscious needs, like what do we need to see? What kind of shapes are going to make us calm? What kind of colors?

If you ⁓ ignore that, which many of the plans I saw from Mars ⁓ before I started my work in this area, you know, all seem to totally ignore the kind of human programming, like how we are designed. ⁓ That's a problem. You're going to cause people unnecessary stress and you're going to have a Jamestown. You're going to have a colony that fails. There's no question. I mean, it's possible that any colony will fail, but at least what I... ⁓

I think if you pay attention to that human biology, you pay attention to what people really need in an environment ⁓ and do that kind really good planning and thinking it through, ⁓ you have a better chance of succeeding.

Billy Riggs (33:07)
So let's scratch the surface there. What kind of colors and shapes do we need in our Martian colonies?

Justin Hollander (33:13)
Well, there's a very important idea in ⁓ biology, is biophilia, love of nature. Yeah. So we need to look at and see and be surrounded by nature. So green, green is the key color there. But of course, flowers, flowers produce all kinds of different colors as well. And in terms of shapes, ⁓ curves.

Billy Riggs (33:20)
we need biophilic design. Thank you. Jen Shout out Jen Wolch.

Justin Hollander (33:43)
We definitely seek out curves. Right angles, sharp angles, you practically never see that in nature. So that is something that we want to be able to be producing both in our kind of built environment here on earth ⁓ and in a Martian environment.

Billy Riggs (33:59)
That's fascinating. So it's funny. I'm taking away the conditions are alien, but the problems are deeply human. it's, ⁓ you know, maybe it's less a technology problem than a human problem, but maybe I'm still struck by how much also we might face governance problems.

⁓ and if I was to reflect back on a lot of the, the dystopian sci-fi that I've read, because I've read a lot and I go back to like almost every dystopian sci-fi that I've read, ⁓ there's always issues with strange governance. ⁓ and so how do we get over those, those, ⁓ those issues with, with governance? And so how do you imagine the

that we might appropriately ⁓ govern space communities in the future.

Justin Hollander (35:06)
But what do you guys think about a decentralized autonomous organization? A DAO. D-A-O. Oh, so that is a buzzword that came on the scene a few years ago. And they continue to exist and they are blockchain-based communities where governance is managed through these smart contracts that we were talking about earlier. And there was actually a group

that got together, so about a thousand or so people, and they bought 40 acres of land in Wyoming and said, we're going to build a city. From the ground up, it's all going to be based on blockchain and we're going to run the city. We're going to make all our decisions around zoning and land use and development through those types of mechanisms. I haven't been following it closely, but the point is that yes, that could be emerging of our two topics in this episode.

⁓ But that also could be an answer for Mars.

Billy Riggs (36:10)
Yeah, mean, except for your your brokering a lot more. You're brokering power and oxygen and food. so it gets into things that are that are life. Vipul, I mean, I'm not sure if you've thought about this, but it's it's much ⁓ more interesting to play out when you're ⁓ dealing with these kinds of more life threatening issues.

Vipul Vyas (36:38)
I think the stakes are just higher for failure. And so I think ⁓ in that environment, clear workflow and clear process and ⁓ transparency and some degree of rigidity to it or least clarity around.

Billy Riggs (36:42)
Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (36:59)
how to go forward from any one particular step from one node to another is even more important. You can sort of freelance it, which is why, you know, when it kind of counts, whether that's aviation or space travel, you know, today, it's very, you know, they've got a plan for every situation that's predefined. ⁓ There's a procedure for X event or Y event.

And that is because you want to institutionalize that knowledge. So and not let someone have to learn in the moment ⁓ and have an expertise they're never reasonably going to have. And that's where I think you do have that sort of AI blockchain into, you know, Nexus, which, you know, AI simply represents sort of a concentration of collective experience and blockchain represents the ⁓

Justin Hollander (37:44)
which simply represents the concentration of collective experience. ⁓

Vipul Vyas (37:55)
mechanism for execution against that experience. And so that I think is how that would end up benefiting everyone in this sort of a more high stakes environment.

Justin Hollander (38:00)
and I think it's a good one.

Billy , if I could just jump in. One of the things that I think a lot about with this question of governance is how can you be prepared for these potential disasters? Deepu, what was that came about? And I actually, just wrote a paper with a colleague, David Adams, and we're exploring the utility of analogs. So you think, oh, what would it be like?

Billy Riggs (38:10)
Yeah.

Justin Hollander (38:35)
if you were to go to Mars and run a whole city based on blockchain. Well, do it here first. You know, like that's the answer. These analogs, like create the same kind of environment. There have been a number over the years where people have created like little habitats here in Arizona desert or wherever. And ⁓ those are useful. It's useful to collect data and stuff. more simulations, a colleague of mine actually also has done that. She's done these tabletop simulations.

Billy Riggs (38:42)
Yeah.

Justin Hollander (39:04)
around governance. ⁓ So I think that's the answer. We have some time. Nobody's landing any rocket ships there right away. So this is the time. Let's use it to be ready.

Billy Riggs (39:17)
For what it's worth, we've got an oppositional acronym to DAOs. We call them Autonomous Community Ecosystems. So ACES. But ⁓ it's just, we felt like it was kinder and embodied the idea of community ecosystem. But let's maybe take it to, I like this idea of a community, but also,

Justin Hollander (39:27)
⁓ nice.

Billy Riggs (39:45)
It sounded like a much better form of a homeowners association than perhaps what we get in in some places in Arizona. So my hope is ⁓ is we'll do a much better job on Mars than we do some places in the US. But maybe we can take it to ⁓ to close this out today. Maybe we take us to ⁓ maybe a lightning round where Vipul and ⁓ Justin do some some

some bold predictions today. Rather than final words, we'll do some predictions. ⁓ So let's do the blockchain predictions and then some bigger picture design predictions. let's do the first question. This is going to be ⁓ the, ⁓ what's the blockchain enabled civic innovation that you think will be the most commonplace

in the next 10 years.

Vipul Vyas (40:47)
And I may have to bolt after this, after my comment. And I'll go first. I'll just add. My sense is that people do with a traditional relational database most of the things they need and want. And blockchain probably doesn't offer.

in many people's eyes much more than what a relational database offers. So you're not going to displace things where an RTB is fine. ⁓ What's going to be the winning use case for blockchain is where no one sort of trusts anyone and there is a significant party-counter-party risk.

and that is a natural place for it to be super relevant. And I think that will be in the government to government interface with nonprofit, just because the recent stories, mean, not that anyone's inherently untrustworthy, it's just sort of where we are. And I think that's a place where the government's gonna go, well, where does my money going exactly? And this is the best use of it.

I think there'll be significant pushback on adoption, but I think that's a logical place to say, if I'm going to give you a hundred million dollar grant, I want to know where at least 80 million of that hundred million went. And did it go where I thought it was going to go?

Billy Riggs (42:23)
Oh, accountability. Nice. All right. Justin, by 2035, where's the innovation going to be?

Justin Hollander (42:31)
I just have one word for you. Polymarket. So blockchain-based betting markets. you know, betting markets have been around forever, but they're generally considered to be corrupt. What Polymarket and any other blockchain-based betting market offers is a chance to have a betting market that's completely transparent, that's completely decentralized, cannot be edited or corrupted, and helps us

maybe helps us understand the future. And so in urban planning, the future is at the core of what we care about. We care about what the future is going to look like. So we want to make sure we plan our communities that way. So if Polymarket can tell us whether our population of our city is going to grow or decline, if the number of jobs are going to grow or decline or stay the same, ⁓

If we could talk about whether some environmental or weather hazards are going to get worse or better. I mean, this is the core of what we do in planning. If these kinds of blockchain-based betting markets can do a better job than the existing tools that planners have had and have had for decades or more, that's going to be big.

Billy Riggs (43:48)
I love it. love it. I'll put mine out there and I'll say ⁓ IDs ⁓ and IDs for ⁓ basic services, transit, food, driver's license, housing credits. I think we'll see a revolution in identification. ⁓ Okay. Really, really, really quick. ⁓

If we were going to look, what's our most ambitious prediction for design in space?

Vip.

you're muted buddy.

Vipul Vyas (44:29)
There you go. I think it's going to be those microspaces you talked about before, those small greening efforts. ⁓ And it's basically just an extension of what I said before, because often that's done by third parties. And so the ability for urban resources to be used ⁓ in a highly accountable way.

for these micro projects that you can reduce the permitting overhead, everything along with creating accountability by creating a blockchain based workflow.

Justin Hollander (45:06)
Okay, well, so for me, think it's, you you have to, I think, take a step back and look at when we talk about space, the fact that for the last two decades, humans have colonized low Earth orbit through the International Space Station and then the Chinese have a space station that's coming online soon. We are also working with a coalition of other countries building another space station.

I think this is the future that we will be spending a lot more time in low Earth orbit, kind of navigating around all those satellites flying this way and that. I think that's the future, immediate future.

Billy Riggs (45:44)
Yeah. And I would add just, think the immediate future also is resource mining in space and the immediate future is being able to harvest those resources for the planet, unfortunately, but that will enable the ⁓ additional extraterrestrial exploration and that future dynamic urban zoning future that Justin has.

Justin Hollander (46:13)
you

Billy Riggs (46:13)
put forward, which I think allows us to that shift that population, ⁓ you know, algorithmically managed algorithmically managed urban zoning future with blockchain that I think you've put forward, Justin, that sounds ⁓ pretty awesome. It sounds like it's the homeowners association of the future. So, ⁓ thank you so much, Justin. This has really been a super.

Justin Hollander (46:35)
You

Billy Riggs (46:43)
⁓ Thought provoking. We really appreciate you giving us a lot to chew on.

Justin Hollander (46:49)
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been great.

Billy Riggs (46:51)
Yeah, so thanks everybody for joining us. If you enjoyed this conversation, leave us a comment or better yet, ⁓ build something that brings these ideas to life, ⁓ maybe even a spaceship. We'll see you next time right here at the edge of what makes our planet great.

Justin Hollander (47:07)
You