Episode link:
https://www.citizencosmos.space/likecoin

Episode name:
Phoebe Poon, publishing, democrats & community.

In this episode, Citizen Cosmos speaks to Phoebe Poon, co-founder of LikeCoin, a decentralized publishing protocol, built on Cosmos SDK. Phoebe discusses how the changing social context in our ever-changing world is making Web 3, especially decentralized publishing ever more relevant. Phoebe sheds light on broader and lesser publicized use cases for NFT’s as well as giving key advice on how to succeed with a start-up during Crypto Winters. She addresses historic preservation in many different forms, potential avenues for monetization and the barriers to user adoption, as well as many other topics.

Citizen Cosmos
Good space-time y'all. In this episode of The Citizen Cosmos Podcast, I speak with Phoebe Poon. Founder of Likecoin, an open sourced, decentralized, publishing protocol, built on Cosmos SDK. We discuss storage, publishing, history, social media and Web 3. We also talked about the importance of preservation, the role of the community and surviving Crypto Winters.  

Phoebe
Sometimes we need to wait for certain social context to happen, to let the layman or majority of the mass understand why this matter.  The mindset of running a start-up is very important.

Citizen Cosmos
The most important invention in the world, is history, because it doesn't matter what weapon you have. If you control history, then you control everything else. What if there was no heaven? We know we cannot expand too quick, to be lean, and so that's why we can survive a lot of crypto winters.Before we rocket it off into our next episode, here are some news from the sponsor of this episode, Cyber Congress DOA. The foundation has started its delegation's policy for validators on the Bostrom Blockchain, and the Space Pussy Network was launched with 96% of its supply to be dropped to various Cosmos ecosystem chains. Hi everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Citizen Cosmos podcast. I have with me Phoebe today from Likecoin and from Liker Land. Phoebe, hi, welcome to the show. Would you like to introduce yourselves and tell us about everything you do and working on?

Phoebe
Yeah, thanks for having me. Hello, everyone. I'm Phoebe, one of the founding team member of Likecoin, also currently the team of Liker Land.  Where we started building around decentralized publishing and work with a lot of media and writers from where we came from, on utilizing blockchain and also decentralized storage to be a better future for publishing. We actually started in about 2017 on Ethereum, exploring the idea of reinventing the like, more the monetization part. And then after we have almost complete our whitepaper, we decided to go one step further, to develop our own sovereignty chain, an application specific chain on publishing, on Cosmos in 2019. It feels like very long time ago. But yeah, that was a hell of a ride in Cosmos.

Phoebe
And then now we are in 2022 having our chain connected with a lot of other chain using IBC and serving a lot of our users, especially in Southeast Asia. So yeah, it's a very interesting application specific chain on publishing. I guess in Cosmos, we might be the only one working on this area and vertical right now, and that's how Cosmos works, right?

Phoebe
The Internet of Blockchains serving different kind of vertical in the space. So I'm very happy to be here today to share about what we do.

Citizen Cosmos
Nice. Nice. It is a hell of a ride if you think about it. I mean, for crypto, since 2019, even 17, right. This is a couple of dinosaur extinctions, definitely. And I'm not joking around. You know, if you look at all the projects that there have been since then have been reborn, died and never came back. It's definitely like a few mass extinctions. So well done on that and we'll definitely talk a little bit about that. First thing is first that I would like to ask you, and this is going to be like a really lame, simple question, but I would love to hear your explanation as somebody who is, like you said yourself, you have spent already so many years working on that. What is the difference for a person out there between media and publishing and decentralized media and decentralized publishing?

Citizen Cosmos
So for somebody out there who's maybe a little bit clueless about what we are all doing over here, maybe has some experience, doesn't matter. But what would you explain to somebody who spent so long working on it? How would you describe the differences?

Phoebe
Yeah. Wow, that’s a great questions to kick off the discussions, because I have a lot of stories to tell about how we educate non crypto people to get into the space. The first thing is majority of the time you are not actually in doubt about the product but actually educating them about the basic of blockchain, one on one.

Phoebe
And majority of the time are actually teaching them how to create a wallet. I think that's the first very funny and fundamental part of being working with a lot of layman users is that before you actually introduce them what Likecoin is or what decentralized publishing is, you need to create wallet and why it matters to you. I think that's the first part where you need a lot of patience to fill the gap between Web 3 and Web 2 world.

Phoebe
So that's the first thing. And I guess the second thing we observe is that we see a transition between at least from 2019 to today, 2022. It is because the social context is a little bit different now. I remember when we first started on Cosmos and start to onboard users using our on WordPress. People are actually very intimidate about creating wallets and all of those stuff going on blockchain or why do we need to store on IPFS.

Phoebe
However, because of where I came from, the social context tell them, Hey, there are actually things that could be disappeared one day, in just one night. Even it could be a 30 years old newspaper, or it could be as simple as your Twitter account or Facebook account that could be deleted in just one night. And you actually spend your entire like ten years of time and effort building all your social graph, writing all your blogs, email all your content.

Phoebe
Some people even craft a lot of good status on their Twitter. You see all the Twitter storm or even on Facebook. And when they experience those situation first-hand, I mean, knowing something could be disappeared. they start to realize what we have been telling them is a solution towards a problem right now. So I guess is a learning for us too is sometimes we need to wait for certain social context to happen, to let the layman or majority of the mass understand why this matter.

Phoebe
That was quite a very remarkable month for us, especially in the past two years, where we see a spike in adoption of what we build. Especially the tools that we have in place. People start to reach out to us instead of us reaching out to them. So I guess this is a very interesting atmosphere and user adoption observation compared to a lot of different projects.

Phoebe
Thirdly, I think is also because a lot of Web 3 projects, they don't really have the right tool to on board layman without technical knowledge. Especially, we work with writers and journalists, meaning the expertise is in writing, meaning they don't have understanding on any turncode work. And so you actually need to prepare a lot of documentation, a lot of tutorial and a lot of walkthrough in person.

Phoebe
That will take a lot more time than getting people on board to any defi projects.  They will easily get because they like trading. They already in the atmosphere of being in FX or traditional trading. So when they adopted defi projects it's much more easier. But compared to us, when is the product that merge into Web 2 user flow. It's a little bit hard and you need a lot more workflow. So I will share a little bit, three of these points on the experience that we had.

Citizen Cosmos
This is awesome and I still want to talk a lot more about the experience because it's very interesting to see what the projects have learned over those, the projects that are not there for like half a year but much longer. There is a lot in my opinion, to be learned from you guys and it's awesome. But before we get a little bit more into that, I still want to dig a little bit about the decentralization spectrum that we started to talk about.

Citizen Cosmos
And as you were explaining, you mentioned a couple of times, not why, but you mentioned that it matters to change to decentralized publishing. You also said that it will bring a better future. And there was several times where you mentioned something like that. But could you explain why, in your opinion, that future is better? Why does it matter for us to change from the publishing model that we have today in Web 2, to what you guys are proposing and to what blockchain is offering in general?

Phoebe
Yeah, I think I will bring up several aspect of things. The first is to reinforce why I mentioned social context is so important in terms of the understanding or why we need this product nowadays. Today, not before or tomorrow. I think first is, where I came from. A lot of pro-Democrat media actually got shut down in two weeks of time. Historical record of 30 years newspaper got wiped out in one night and that's part of  where historical preservation or content preservation is one of the important aspect of having publishing on the decentralized manner. I think that's the first thing is very important. And the second is how we can actually improve the current publishing industry, from a sunset era to somewhere individuals can actually participate and have much more ownership and potentially to monetize open content, especially because web two business model isn't really catered for open content.

Phoebe
As you can see, a lot of media actually pursuing a paywall model or even a subscription model that actually isn't really working so well. And most importantly is, if media set up a paywall for information that meant to be distributed, much more wider, much more broader. So that important truth of some sort of social aspect that need to deliver is actually deterring them from doing so because of paywall.

Phoebe
So meaning, people who not afford to pay, or who cannot access are unable to access all this important content. So I think for our vision is there should be a way for open content to be monetized and also to have a better way to preserve them as of history record. And also most importantly, there's a way to improve the content integrity of that particular content.

Phoebe
I think this is quite important when you look back into history or also because of the social context that we have. And if you read the book of Animal Farm, you know, social content integrity actually important when it come back to be a reference point of information. Where you actually want to have a place, you can actually fact check it.

Phoebe
You can use some certain timestamp to proven some kind of work and all this need to be done or is a better way to be done in a decentralized manner. So I think in combined there are three key words that I would say why do we need decentralized publishing? One is content integrity, second is content preservation and also thirdly is how open content could look for a better business model and monetization model, not just for the creator themselves, but also how they actually build community around their fan base and also how they actually sustain a better content quality, in terms of the ecosystem.

Phoebe
When you think about it, currently there are a lot of media model actually relying on advertising, and then I'm sure a lot of people already realize is the sole business model is relying on advertising, meaning whoever can pay you more, the more content you would create around those. I mean, you will see a lot more same content for the people who can pay, however, for quality content that actually not attracting advertising will have less presence in the internet.

Phoebe
At the end of day, humankind would be less too exposed to quality content. That means that it will become a more commercialized content filling in our daily lives. So I guess that would be leading to a more bigger problem that we see in the long run. So that's why I think it's very important to explore how Web 3 can empower all this kind of not just business model, but different kind of how content should be published and how content should be owned and how content should be distributed.

Citizen Cosmos
Of course, I think it was totally agree with everything you said. I think it was Isaac Asimov, who said the most important invention in the world, is history, because it doesn't matter what weapon you have. If you control history, then you control everything else, including religion and including any other form of anything else. So preservation, definitely.

Citizen Cosmos
I think one of the most important things and on a note of preservation, actually, I would love to hear, if you don't mind, your opinion, I think it's a big discussion of the history of when and how did we progress in terms of media and from going from newspapers to distributed media to decentralized media. Do you think that that progression, you know, from The New York Times or the Sunday Times, The London Times, whatever, being number one source of information for the whole world, has that changed. Are things like platforms that allow you to do like Likecoin, like Mirror, so on and so forth, has that really changed the way we as humans, as the end user, perceive information and where we take our content from? Or is that still a progress that is still going to be going on for many, many years to come?

Phoebe
I definitely see it is still evolving, especially from what you said. Editorial generated content, right, New York Times, BBC, CNN, Wall Street Journal, they're all majority of them are editorial generated content, which is, I would say, the Gen 1 of how media started. And they still hold a lot of centralized power in terms of influence and impact.

Phoebe
However, I do see a switch with the rise of Patreon, Medium, Substack, even Mirror dot X, Y, Z, even Likecoin. We're actually doing some more focusing on user generated content and I still see it evolving. I think they're all looking for a way to sustain this whole business model. And in terms of how we can gather writers and how we get the readers, is because I think we're not lacking of writers, we are lacking of readers. How we can actually gain the attention span of readers to read quality content.

Phoebe
So I think it is still evolving and now with the Web 3 in place, people can have more imagination of what potential it could be, in terms of this transformation, I would say. I think especially during COVID, we see a lot more information or have a rise in terms of readership on this kind of user generated content during COVID, especially because it was outbreak from China. China had a more compressed media landscape.

Phoebe
So in terms of people wanted to know what happened inside. It actually rely on a lot of this Web 3 media platform to actually distribute their information. So I would say social contexts also play a very important role in terms of how people adopt or, how people have to change their behaviour of where they preserve information.

Phoebe
And different major crises will also bring a new behaviour. And I think I see this a lot more during COVID and post COVID. Actually, also during some Western event, right? Like the presidential election of Donald Trump, the whole thing, how they switched from major media to social media, I think the whole landscape, no matter, is institutional player or users like from the funnel, bottom of the funnel, the whole funnel is actually evolving to become more and more hybrid.

Phoebe
And even I think tier 1 media actually struggling to keep their writers or columnists on them because why would they pay? What would they let The New York Times take a majority cut of their readership or even traffic instead they can actually start their own Patreon or Medium or something like that. I think there's still like a unspoken battle between two.

Phoebe
And I think the balance between these two will be very interesting to see. Yeah. So one thing that we also observe and notice is people who actually care enough about their content, they also moving away from platform centric publishing platform. Let's say Mirror dot X, Y, Z or Mirror or Medium or Substack. One thing that writers actually don't have time to manage is you need to handle multiple platform or distribution channel, and that's actually a headache.

Phoebe
Let’s say we have a podcast today. We want to put it on YouTube, Spotify or even Google Podcasts. There's a lot of distribution channel. And how they can actually distribute better. Sometimes might not be rely on one single platform. So our approach is also the same. Likecoin isn’t the platform itself, it’s actually a infrastructure layer, it’s like a publishing stack that can facilitate in all kind of websites, especially WordPress, because we believe if a writers actually care enough for their own content, they actually want the full autonomy of their sites, their topics so that they can work on the SEO, so that they can monetize or explore different business model is just not one. We believe it could be a hybrid business model, so some might still rely on a lot of Web 2 business model, let's say subscription, let's say advertising, but then they can also add some element of Web 3. And that's where our plugin articles came in, where they can actually play around with collect as an NFT or even monetize with our like button.

Phoebe
So all this kind of mixture I believe would fit in the current publishing landscape because it's still evolving. I don't think there would be a clear cut between Web 2 and Web 3. So we won't see a clear jump. For journalists saying, Oh, let's jump directly into Web 3, let's set everything on Mirror dot X, Y, Z or something like that.

Phoebe
I think it's really hard for them to get over that hurdle. That's why our position of our product, majority of them actually the bridge between Web 2 and Web 3, they have a choice to get the hybrid business model. They have a choice to store their stuff on IPFS or Areweave or they can also still chose to store on centralized platform.

Phoebe
It doesn't matter. We believe it will be a process of education to laymen users, especially in the publishing industry, for media players, for publishers, for journalists, for editor to understand, hey there actually something new that you can add in to your current workflow. So I think that's very interesting to see their acceptance level. I think also on the reason like NFT hype, a lot of majority of a magazine or newspaper actually exploring that as well. I think Times did it, some of them not quite successful, some of them did quite well. I think they're all start to explore new business model to survive. Right. So I will see these evolvement coming along.

Citizen Cosmos
Would you say on the topic of advertisement model, because I think that is a very important part of that. Would you say that it's fair enough to say that it's not about, so much the advertisement model? Because I think that will change a lot. And I think the Wed 3 market is still going to explore that, you know, whether it's going to be, like you say, like a plugin, a tool or whatever that you guys use, or the fact that you can monetize your own content and so on.

Citizen Cosmos
I think the biggest change is from people going thinking in their mind, okay, I'm working for a company or I'm working for a freelance company, to me, I'm the content and a lot of people, when they kind of understand that, the hustlers economy, right? I guess, you know, when they realize I am the content, not the other company, then that's when the big change, the big shift, I think happens with people.

Citizen Cosmos
At least that is my experience. Would you say that is true in your experience and the experience that you work with other people, or for them It's more important to understand, like you said, you know, we have a tool that can make us money? Doesn't matter who is the content who produces it. Where is the shift happening, in the mind or in the tools that the person uses? I guess that's the question.

Phoebe
I think the NFT hype actually proven that it’s more on the mind than the tools, because we have been trying to educate laymen on Metamask, on why you need to own your key, own your content. All these kind of same tools already, I think is the people not ready. And once you see more peer getting into this landscape, they start to switch in terms of their conceptual of what is crypto, what is blockchain and want could NFT do.

Phoebe
So I would say mind is over tools. These tools is quite easy to build, frankly speaking, although with a really seamless experience of, wow, it could take time but it’s not that difficult. Is that how people are willing to accept and give it the first try is the most difficult part. So I would say mind, and I think most importantly for Web 3 compared to Web 2 is, does it allow individual to have a choice?

Phoebe
I think that's very important. For Web 2 since the majority of our daily consumption on social media or publishing or media, they are quite centralized. You actually don't have a choice or don't have a say in terms of how you actually want to own your content or how you want to monetize. You basically don't have choice in the infrastructure level, where things should be done.

Phoebe
Even royalty is quite centralized structure right now. But in the high side Web 3 could deliver a better future, in terms of this. however, I think what is lacking right now is the successful use case, especially in our vertical. I would say NFT, brought a lot of more discussion in terms of creators’ economy, but majority of the discussions are still around art pieces, gaming assets.

Phoebe
But for more day-to-day content is still lack of discussion of how it could evolve or how it potentially can be. And this is like a both way sort, right? Because NFT kind of now layman had an image of what NFT should be. They have a framework because of what the story of the market has been telling them.

Phoebe
Oh, it could be a pixel art, it could be something like that. But how could be a blog as an NFT. But when you think about it, NFT is just a format of how you carrying all this kind of content, what you're buying is on the NFT. What you're buying is actually the content itself. So I think this story needs still take times to evolve when more use cases start coming up.

Phoebe
But I do see a lot of more industry leader leaning towards that.  Vitalik had his book in NFT format, e publications are actually thinking about adopting royalties in terms of launching royalties because it actually does make sense. Well, if you are having a huge secondary market, on publishing for school publishing. So I think this is more like a mind or storytelling time, instead of tools, tools are ready, not the heart, but mind, it takes a lot of different elements, social context, peer industry.

Phoebe
Also, the recent market crash might scare off some people about crypto as well, so I think it's a lot of element coming to that storytelling and transitioning for people get into this industry.

Citizen Cosmos
Definitely. I think one of our things as a project is to say that our goal is building for decentralized or at least distributed communications. There is a lot of projects out there. This is actually my next question that are in one way or another are trying to do that. But I guess my question is about the differences and about how Likecoin stands out there.

Citizen Cosmos
So there is, from what I know, from the ones that I'm going to mention, like on top of my head, I'm sorry for anyone else out there that I will now not mention, but I can think of Ulbit, which is a weird one, but that's definitely still communication. Not much or many heard of it, but still there is like Steemit.

Citizen Cosmos
There is Mirror, X, Y, Z, Likecoin. There is Cyber with their social graphs. There is the thing Areweave is building right now. There is the Dether, I think was on Cosmos. So there is, I think the 2017 I remember a lot of them. There was like Alice, was Japanese project, which didn't really survive that long. But, but anyways, from the big ones, that's come to my mind now and all of them, they kind of pursue different methods of distributed centralized communication.

Citizen Cosmos
But the ones that I think I would like you to talk about, are you free to talk about all of them or any the ones you want. What is the main differences between Likecoin from a point of what it's offering from the proposition, from the value proposition I guess compares to things like a Steemit and Miror or Hive, I guess if you want to call it Hive, whatever? Sorry for the long question.

Phoebe
Yeah, no worries. I got it. I think the major difference is, Likecoin is a Web 3 publishing stack. It is not a particular platform that we want to offer to users. So there are several layers that we want to deliver to users. First is where media come to us, they actually have a application specific chain that is ready to facilitate in terms of different kind of module. A module it means what we include in the chain level. So the one thing that we build is called the metadata registry. So it's like the library system having an ISP and catalogue. And I think this is one of the things is very unique in our chain level because we do believe if you need to improve the current publishing landscape or set a better infrastructure for people to get into Web 3 and build on point publishing, you need a ISBM layer first, so that we can build things on top of it.

Phoebe
So that's on the chain level where we want to take care of metadata registry so that when you point to different storage, you can actually have a card just like how you go to the library, you can actually search, Hey, this book is actually in somewhere in the world in which library, and you can see the inventory. You can see all the metadata of this book, which version of it you can even see if it’s available on Amazon.

Phoebe
So, it is actually the base layer of how publishing should be organized and catalogued. So, I think that's the first thing that we’re very different compared to other platforms because I don't think they have the infrastructure support in terms of how things should be organized and catalogue and metadata. How is there a framework of how publishing in Web 3 should be?

Phoebe
And this infrastructure can actually facilitate a lot of different platforms. So, meaning Steemit can actually adopt this module into their platform. Even Mirror can actually take this module to use it to catalogue their stuff. So it is a more generic framework that can suitable for all kind of publishing no matter it’s Web 2 or Web 3. So that's the first layer, which is the chain layer is a very application specific for publishing design.

Phoebe
And the second layer, which is the application layer that we have, instead of building a platform, asking you to come to adopt a new, entirely new ecosystem. We build plugins. So the first standout example would be the WordPress plugin that we have. So basically there's no migration needed for writers or media site that want to try Web 3 solutions.

Phoebe
They only need to download a free plugin where they only have to create a wallet and they can actually start publishing to Areweave to IPFS, to register metadata on Likecoin chain. Everything in one plugin. First is, we do believe each site just to transform themselves. We shouldn't as writer or journalist, to move their entire site to a new platform because that couldn’t scale, at the end of the day, we don't want to be the one maintaining the platform.

Phoebe
You should be the one because you know your friend, the world. you are the content creators you want to work on a traffic with some Web 2 business model. Go ahead. You want to monetize your fan base, you can try this plugin. So basically we are empowering each site to be their own Mirror dot X, Y, Z.

Phoebe
Instead of asking everybody, come to my platform to create account to write on it. So I think that's the second major difference. Even on the application layer, we want to have a plug in that can facilitate other people to transform even it could be an institutional media sites, or it could be as small as the individual blocks. So that's the plugin that we have.

Phoebe
And then we also have the ecosystem where we onboard a very different set of validators in terms of other chains in Cosmos. We have the hybrid set. We onboard early, all media player last fast check centre media from the Web 2 space. And then we have Cosmo's well-known validators on board. So, that they can actually create a community and a DAO and an ecosystem where we have domain expertise of how publishing should be in the future or how to gatekeep the entire ecosystem when their proposals related to, hey, how can we vote on certain things, they can actually come out and tell their domain expertise.

Phoebe
So that's something that we, when we invite our Genesis validator, we already had the mindset in mind, if we want to create an ecosystem for content lovers that we want to attract media, publishers and readers, what kind of people, what kind of governors that should be? It can't be solely Web 3 validators. Then they don't understand what they're doing.

Phoebe
But instead you see fact check centre here, media here. Oh, they're still doing something interesting and people are more widely open and we can actually maintain the governance in a more down to earth level is not something always on parameter change. It's not something always on the chain level, right? So as the ecosystem to grow, we believe this hybrid set of validators could help us drive onboard.

Phoebe
And also I think the lastly is that the publishing stack that we provide is actually very well friendly, it’s not a competitor to all those project that we mentioned. It’s that we are able to connect them, to plug in to something that they find it useful. Let's say we have that plugin get actually integrate IPFS and Areweave, so project don't have to go between protocols to think about storage. Users don't have to think about, oh, if I need to publish this blog into Areweave or IPFS, I should go to somewhere else and then come back here.

Phoebe
Everything is practically one thing, they just only click you want to publish it to here and we basically. So this kind of ready tool is available for other project to use. I also see this is the most interesting part of Web 3 projects where you can actually cooperate between each others, even platforms, because the stack itself is open source and you can use it as you want.

Phoebe
So I think that's the major difference of us. And today we have about 1000 active installations on WordPress. We have almost 8000 sites that are actively installed our Likecoin button, where you can like as a reward for your content, etc. So you can see all these media stand-alone themselves can facilitate as Mirror dot X, Y, Z, with what we provide.

Phoebe
So I think that's the major difference between us and other projects’ approach, I would say.

Citizen Cosmos
It's interesting that you mentioned that ,because I think if anyone was to follow the change that the industry has gone through from the last major bear market, I'm talking about 17, 18 or 18, 19 here rather, I don't think that they were in the first two bear markets, the 15 and the 13 or 11 whatever, whatever we count as the change because there was no much projects but there was a big change in terms of where the projects on application level up, specific projects have tried to change to the model you're talking about instead of like, okay, we have a product come to us, you know, we're building a new chain. You seeing a lot of like projects are trying to do what you're saying. Okay what we need is now a plugin. What we need is not the projects to just come to us. We need to go to them and for them to understand that we have the tools. But the question I do want to ask is actually very interesting one.

Citizen Cosmos
I'm going to like start a little bit ahead as well. In 2016, I had the experience of trying to launch the first ever Russian social network on Web 3. It was called Golos, and we launched an ICO. And you know, it was an experiment. It was a big thing for us and for the whole Russian blockchain market.

Citizen Cosmos
This was back in 2016. This was before ICO’s. It was the first official fork of Steemit. It was like really official fork. And the question is this, what was the biggest failure of this experiment for us? And in my opinion it was, it depends how you look at it. Whether it was a failure or a success was, in my opinion, the economical part, the economics, underlying economics.

Citizen Cosmos
It was not. No, it was just like you could milk it, you could like, you know, people could use it, could abuse it. They found ways worse, you know, and this was, in my opinion, the biggest failure. And this is why I think what kind of pushed me away from Web 3 social networking for a while, or Web 3 social, like those things for a while. In your opinion and in the form of how Likecoin does it, how important is economics?

Citizen Cosmos
Because this is something we still haven't talked about. I mean, we talked about the stack, about preservation, about creating a better future. What about the economics, the rewards? Is that important and how important that is? Will people do all those things, install those plugins, build their own media if they wouldn't get anything for it, rather than just the preservation and the ability to fact check or whatever, for example.

Citizen Cosmos
But what if there was no rewards? Like what if there was no heaven? If you're a religious person, let me say it in a different way. And the other day, there is no heaven. Would the religion be still as valuable? And I don't mean it with offence.

Phoebe
No, no, no. That's great sharing. Thanks for your experience as well. That's a great question. I think economic incentives always come into place because that's the human nature, right? So, Like what started as like as a reward. So, like as a reward where want to promote the idea of educating the public about, hey, content should be paid in some sort of way and your content should be rewarded, just like how much like you receive on Facebook.

Phoebe
They're just up in the air. What if it should be like a real reward? So that was like a really early idea in 2017. I think people are really hyped about that around that. However, when the social context that come in, when we evolved to be a more decentralized publishing angle, I think we also changed it evolve along with the social context that we are in.

Phoebe
I think at least nowadays, journalists in my area or in South-East Asia, they are fully aware that their stuff cannot be stored on centralized storage. It’s not something that we educate in, or give them money to do so, but because they experienced first-hand of how their stuff could be disappeared in one day. So, I think that's a little bit different in terms of social context.

Phoebe
So, I think that rely on what kind of experience they have in their own society. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is, yes, I think economic incentive is still very important as well. And that's why we offer not just like the tokenomic incentives, right, but also how they can own a piece of NFT, let’s say of their memories, of their blogs or even book NFT.

Phoebe
We recently had a campaign on book NFT and people are actually exploring this, in this format. And NFT also align with a little bit of economic incentive, right? When people collect NFT, they would have thought they could have resell it with a high price or they can actually own a piece of NFT that could grow in value. So I think that still lie under people mind.

Phoebe
But you would be surprised when we tell them, Oh, writing NFT or book NFT, we are not actually looking at that kind of NFT hype, that flip that inflated price model. We are actually looking for something. How much would you like to pay for this kind of content that you preserve? You liking it, or you want to subscribe to authors?

Phoebe
How much will you pay? You'll be surprised people are actually willing to pay than we thought, in terms of something they value. So when I say value, it means the value of collective memories. It could be non-economic incentive driven kind of value. So I think that's the most fascinating part that we discover, especially because we started as like as a reward campaign, become now more on decentralized publishing, more on integrity, content preservation and now towards the new understanding, not new understanding.

Phoebe
But more reinforce on the value of the non-economic side, because you can imagine there are still a lot of people actually paying for content, I believe. Especially if I think you're in the podcast. I've been paying a lot of audio books, for newsletters because if you are a person that actually consume a lot of this kind of content, you will see good content actually need to be sustained with someone willing to pay.

Phoebe
And I think we actually gathered a community that have this similar mindset along the years, and I do believe these kind of people exist. If those people who tell you they won't come in for incentives, I would say they are not our target audience for now. But there are still a majority of people who are willing to do so, especially if you see the rise of Patreon.

Phoebe
They are actually paying just for the content. They don't really have incentives on the economic side where their content would be flipped in terms of like the NFT hyped up market. So, I think we should take a balance of that, where would economic incentive driven social network will be a sustainable model for people or real users to stay.

Phoebe
I think the more we see it is not the answers, is it need to be a hybrid of truly find out what people actually care and what they value above economic incentive. So I think that we are in the great state is where we're exploring this, especially with like writing NFT. We've been asking a lot of our community members, why would you purchase a writing at your blog that won't increase in price or won't be like a hyped-up piece of work you will find different fascinated reason.

Phoebe
It could be because they pursue for collective memories, because they're getting a postcard. I, myself, I personally post up my wedding ceremony, as a blog and they're actually ten and 20 people collected it and they're paying for it because they want to be part of my journey of my life. So I think there are a lot of value in terms of what the product could offer to people, and you would be surprised.

Phoebe
They are beyond economic incentive. However, for a project like us, for application specific projects, you often see a gap between trading activities and the user itself. I'll say I would still think this is a difficult gap for us. We need to fill in how you can actually attract people to speculate your token in terms of because trading activities, right, are something that you want volume, liquidity versus you have a superset of users that actually using your stuff every day, but they're are not people that will attract to trading, which mean that economic incentives that attract them to go trade and increase in value etc. So I think this is a dilemma of a project owner, how you can actually bring this to a common ground where you can show people the holistic view of the entire project. So that's a headache problem that I think our project would face. So yeah, I'm not sure if I answered the question, but since that's a great to spark some new discussion too

Citizen Cosmos
Definitely. I think the whole movement of trying to put on the same weights, objective income because as well, the income is objective, it's not subjective. People, you know, we can change that to money if we want. And I'm not saying that something isn't money or is money, and I'm being like kind of like high overview that even if somebody clicks and it's token  X, Y, Z, which is subjective to somebody today, the liquidity allows us to change it to objective income.

Citizen Cosmos
And it's interesting that we can put objective income and personal value on the same scale. It's interesting. And again, I think that that a lot of things like you say, they haven't changed. There is still a lot to explore there. Yeah, I've been watching that scene for a while and definitely very excited to see what will win, you know, whether or not rather what but how like what would be the combination of value and income that will have a reward and value that will help people to make that final flip in their minds.

Phoebe
So, my co-founder is, so his name is Kin. I always remember something that he said about a movement, I think Web 3 right now is a movement. Even what we did since, even though we started in 2017, we still think what we write on the white paper. This is a ten-year movement. As a movement because we knew it could be a very disruptive idea in terms of decentralization, in terms of the tools that people need to adopt.

Phoebe
So right now we're just in the middle of it. So ten years it seems very long. But when you think about it, it actually takes… a new habit or new era or some new business model to evolve, actually take ten years, it’s a really short time. And I do believe we're just in the middle of it. So I think there's also our vision where we believe, Likecoin will take this much time to evolve to a different kind of what we could achieve as a decentralized publishing solution.

Citizen Cosmos
Yeah, for sure. It's definitely just the beginning, I think of the journey. I don't think it's just the beginning like a lot of people say, but it's definitely not the end for sure. A quick question on the journey. I mean, for a project that has been around for a while and not just the project yourself, have been around in this space for a while.

Citizen Cosmos
You've seen ups and downs and you've seen projects while your developed yours disappear or, well, it's hard to make a crypto disappear, I guess, but to the extent of what a crypto can disappear, what would you say as a piece of advice to people not necessarily starting out their projects but working on their projects already, And you know, maybe also for a while or maybe not?

Citizen Cosmos
What would be your advice to these people? To do what or not to do what?

Phoebe
It reminds me of one of my recent tweet. I tweet about our learning because it was the three years of the Likecoin chain last week, especially during the chaos of the fall of FTX, I believe a lot of people are suffered and I actually personally feel bad to a lot of friends as well. So, I will share that's one of the summary of my set.

Phoebe
So, there are three things. I think, first is to make sure you know why you were here and during what you're building. So, our team has been told that we were too serious in terms of our product flow, our internal procedures. We have been using multi SEC like really early on with like I need to learn about command line how to manage our wallet and they actually benefit us from the recent FTX incidents because we understand how important it is even though keeping people telling us how you guys are too serious.

Phoebe
Come on, let's find something more convenient. So, at this point where you need to stand on what you believe and you need to be persistent on it. So that's the first learning, and the second learning is, there a lot of temptation in Web 3, where you can gain quick success. Came from hyping up an idea or a product and people actually came as often to come at us. Hey, you have a whole full dev team, why not just start another DEFI or NFT projects that can make a good learning? And the hard part is actually say no to these opportunities. And I think that's also come back to the first point where I say you need to know why you're here and what you're building. Thirdly, I think the mindset of running a start-up is very important.

Phoebe
So, I'm very fortunate of a lot of my co-founders and our angel investor are from us. Like a lot of them are YC alumni, they have their successful business in Web 2 and Web 3. We've been studying a lot of like what is the lean start-up methodology? We've been working on internal procedures and how a product should be in terms of learning and communicate with users.

Phoebe
So, I think have a mindset to run your project as a start-up and build fast, fail fast is something that we also learned in our experience in the past few years and also because of the learning of lean startup. We know we cannot expand too quick to be lean, and so that's why we can survive a lot of Crypto Winters.

Phoebe
I forgot how many Winters already, so I truly believe that Web 3 is so big that isn't just about trading FX or just about defi. You actually need to bring in solutions to problem that people are facing, not the other way around. To sort out the potential of the actual use case of Crypto. So when you come into the game, I think you have to have a mindset of I'm thinking the long haul.

Phoebe
It's not something in the short time that if this doesn't work, you leave. It will hurt a lot of your time and effort in this. So, I think that will be three of my learning. And also the last tip, maybe, before this I was in an exchange. I was in another crypto fund before being full time with the founding team of Litecoin and I think being with the right people is very important, especially I love surrounded by builders, my team except me, they're all coders, so I'm very fortunate that they I am actually learning from them every other day.

Phoebe
I think that's very important in terms of being in Web 3 as well, because they're very close to the tech. So that actually give you a lot of faith in terms of what you're doing. And then also thanks to the community to actually stick around with us for a long time and they actually see us evolve from different products and give us active feedback.

Phoebe
So, I think community is super important in terms of supporting your mission. So yeah, hopefully it’s not too long, but that's my summation.

Citizen Cosmos
No, no, it's perfect. I was just going to say that thing about Crypto Winters. We were lucky this time around, lucky in brackets. We fucked up, two months before the crypto winter came, so we were already working in advance. So for everybody out there, if you want the good advice, fuck up early and it sets you up for the bear market.

Citizen Cosmos
The last kind of question, the last Blitz that I wanted to ask you is that we asked there was the one that we ask all the guests if you could give me three projects from the crypto space that are interested in. It could the protocols as well, like IPFS, for example, that you're interested in and that you follow and that you think are interesting out there?

Phoebe
Yeah, I think the first one I would say is I had a really good time working with Protocol Labs people. IPFS community has been very supportive in what we do and I got to spend a lot of time with them. So, I think that would be something good to look at if you haven't heard about them. Second, I've been lately studying lot about Last Protocol, although that's not a Cosmo ecosystem, but I think they're doing a great job in terms of the stack of what they could offer because it's quite similar to what we wanted to do.

Phoebe
So I would love to learn more about them and certainly let me name any favourite projects. Well, I don't have a particular name of projects, but I would love to share a crypto community, especially because I attended their event in August in the US. They are the Dweb camp folks, Dweb. I think they're amazing people. I have never been to any kind Web 3 events that the discussion isn’t about tokenomics, But in terms of the mission and vision and the first question that they were asked when they come to you is how they can actually help.

Phoebe
And I meet a lot of great founders there, including Gatecoin, including Protocol labs, including Ceramic. So, there are a lot of established Web 3players there where I had the conversation and got to know them as a person. So I think if anyone want to, especially if they are looking for some kind of support, no matter is mentally support or in terms of your product development of how you want to get new inspiration, I think they're a great community to be surrounded with.

Phoebe
I think I benefit a lot from my presence there in the last couple of months, so I would like to share this piece of opportunities to people who are looking for something different, especially in Web 3. So hopefully that helps.

Citizen Cosmos
It's funny that you say it last night, ironic, sorry not funny that I was recording and most of the discussion happened around Protocol Labs and Dweb, I was on Discord.

Phoebe
Really

Citizen Cosmos
Yes. Was Fission. So…

Phoebe
Oh, Fission! Okay. No wonder…

Citizen Cosmos
Yes, yes, yes, second question. Wait, there is still more, wait, wait. The second question. Two things that motivate you in your daily life to keep on building decentralized, distributed communication, I guess, and keep on building Likecoin and Liker Land and everything else that you do. So Which two things motivate you in your daily life if you could share them, of course?

Phoebe
One is community for sure. And when I say community is because I host our community call every month, even though that could be a small scale or large scale, I would love to connect with users that actually give us active feedback and people who actually care about our product. I think that's especially important if you're a product owner knowing someone actually cares about what you do.

Phoebe
So I think that gives you a lot of motivation. And the second kind of community, of course, is like Citizen Cosmos. I just came back from Lisbon and I got to meet some Cosmos people face to face in person for the first time, and I'm very glad I actually did it because I finally know them as a person, not just knowing their project, but actually knowing what kind of wine they like to drink or what kind of food they like.

Phoebe
So, I think it's important to have this kind of human connections, especially after COVID. And there's a lot of change in the world where human connection at the end of the day is some fundamental way of being as a human. So, I think that's quite important. So, if you get a chance, go meet some people out there. And I think in general, a lot of Cosmo people are really nice, especially because they see me as a girl that just hanging around by myself.

Phoebe
They're very taken care of. So I'm so glad that I actually met them. The other thing is that I think I mentioned already, but I would like to reinforce is surround yourself with builders. So, people who actually understand what is going on. Spend less time on Twitter just in between some argument of some kind of proposals. I think it takes a lot of manpower to be fully on those kind of conversations.

Phoebe
But when you actually understand more about the technology, like even though like just how Cosmo works, talking to all the projects actually made you more confidence to talking to more people. Because I guess a lot of people had a hard time to jump in, a lot of high end conversations like those that we see on Twitter. So now is just too intimidating for other people to jump in because we become our own circle.

Phoebe
And I think that's not really healthy, but instead, like go talk to more builders in the space and try to understand what they do, will help support what we're doing right now. Even though you are just speculators, you are a builder, you're project owners. So that helps. So, it's awesome that we have this kind of podcast that we have a chance to share our experience and get to know more people.

Citizen Cosmos
Last one. One person, could be a builder, a book writer, a coder, a writer that you know doesn't have to be a crypto person. One person that you would suggest if it's a book, the book, if it's a person or a blog, or if it's a builder, it could be a GitHub account for everybody out there to follow. That will be interesting for them.

Phoebe
I'm a little bit biased on this.

Citizen Cosmos
Good.

Phoebe
Because I think there are a lot of excellent English content right now. Already. I think my co-founder, Kin, he's a serial entrepreneur, has been gaming for a lot of years and he co-founded Likecoin and he wrote a book on sociology of blockchain. Actually, blew a lot of mind because it’s the first blockchain book that does not talk about Tokenomics, but talk about the fundamental what is the value of money.

Phoebe
What is the value of consensus, why DAO exists, like all this kind of thing I think lies behind actually the fundamental of blockchain in the sociology. Expect to understand it, it's great, especially for crypto one oh one I guess. So, if you are interested, I think a lot of majority of them are translated into English too. But he already got a book that was quite a bestselling, I think last early this year, the first officially sold out in Hong Kong, Taiwan.

Phoebe
So, if you're interested, follow Kin Ko at Ckxpress dot com that's his blog and he's a creative common defense, so his stuff is open source and open content for sure. Advocate on that and you can also support him via Likecoin or subscribe as well. Yeah, that's bias recommendation.

Citizen Cosmos
I think bias is good. You know, it's good to be subjective. I think sometimes and definitely we will include this in the show notes and everything else, of course, that you mentioned. Phoebe, thank you very, very, very, very, very much. It was a huge pleasure catching up with you and talking with you and hopefully we'll catch up again in the future.

Citizen Cosmos
Thank you very much else for joining in.

Phoebe
Yeah, thank you. Thank you also for the links here, which is one of the community.

Citizen Cosmos
Ah yes!

Phoebe
Top Taiwan Crypto writers doing a lot of analysis has been awesome. So I also want to mention them as well.

Citizen Cosmos
Nice one will include all of them. Will include all of them. Yeah. Thanks.

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