Juan Benet, founder of Filecoin and Protocol Labs, introduced Crecimiento: A movement to transform Argentina into the world’s first crypto-friendly nation. He outlines how startup ecosystems, libertarian ideals, and crypto adoption could redefine Argentina’s future. Website: https://aleph.crecimiento.build OUTLINE 0:00 - Crecimiento 2:54 - Countries with bad conditions for startups will lose 5:40 - Argentina’s Libertarian wave 9:05 - Popup city Aleph 10:55 - Crypto in Argentina LINKS Crecimiento: https://aleph.crecimiento.build Crecimiento Slides: https://x.com/juanbenet/status/1837724781665570886 Juan Benet: https://x.com/juanbenet Network State Conference: https://ns.com/conference Full Network State Conference 2024 playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJg2RipiXz8qTp3xEaD5F0e5zy9C9PkNo
The story of how innovation happens is a long one — from government funding early basic research, to the heyday of corporate R&D like Bell Labs, to startups as experiments before product-market fit. Through all that, we’ve ended up with “unprecedented superpowers” distributed through the internet, and people building on top of it. Yet there’s still a huge lag in going from brilliant ideas in the form of research papers to an application that’s actually working and in people’s hands, observes computer scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur (founder and CEO of Protocol Labs) Juan Benet. Benet initially designed the peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol IPFS or “InterPlanetary File System” to help build a more robust, distributed, open web. But those ideas were around for a while — they just weren’t implemented in a way that people could easily use. The same was true for early computing revolutions as well… until Apple came along and vertically integrated from research to production, bringing together different groups of people (design, hardware, etc.) to make something amazing that everyone could use, wanted to use. What if open source, online networks — enabled by blockchain and cryptocurrencies — could do something similar? [Full disclosure: we’re investors in the ‘Filecoin SAFT’ security mentioned in this podcast, but are not otherwise affiliated with Protocol Labs or Filecoin.] This episode of the a16z Podcast, hosted by general partner Chris Dixon, explores all of the above and more with Benet, going beyond the buzz around just “ICOs”. What’s the big picture?
The internet, believe it or not, was just the beginning. Yes, it spawned an incredible number of uses (some unexpected), from marketplaces and commerce to publishing and social networks... but that’s all been built with old models of funding and coordination. Now, as we enter a new phase of blockchain-enabled innovation -- decentralized, distributed, crowdfunded -- we’re finally bringing capitalism to open source: Smart people can come together in new ways, to build new things. In this brief discussion from a16z Summit November 2017, founder and CEO at Protocol Labs Juan Benet and founder and CEO of Polychain Capital Olaf-Carlson Wee -- both of whom have appeared on the a16z Podcast for more in-depth conversations -- chat with general partner Chris Dixon to summarize the big picture on crypto, going beyond the buzz around ICOs to the golden age of protocols.
Juan Benet is the founder of Protocol Labs (YC S14). They’re working on IPFS, Filecoin, and CoinList - https://twitter.com/juanbenet Dalton Caldwell is a Partner at YC - https://twitter.com/daltonc Read the transcript: http://blog.ycombinator.com/ipfs-coinlist-and-the-filecoin-ico-with-juan-benet-and-dalton-caldwell/ YC's podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - http://twitter.com/craigcannon