#39: Tomer Afek on Proof-of-Space-Time

media investments. Present day he is the CEO and co founder of spacemesh, a fairly mined programmable cryptocurrency platform powered by a novel proof of space time POST consensus protocol. I'm very pleased to welcome to the crypto news podcast Tomer Afek. Tomer, welcome to the show.

I had to it's my job. And I read that you got into crypto after reading the Bitcoin white paper, you knew it was a piece of history, you went balls to the wall all in. And here you are today. And you built an incredible piece at Spacemesh, I would love to ask you to begin this pod. What was it about the Bitcoin white paper that got you so curious and piqued your interest so much?

doesn't have to be that way. I think there is something very different in the sausage eating and in the sausage making industry. So the inside of how those magnificent, capitalistic 1.0 type success is being paid as a lot of things which are iffy, at best. And I think the Bitcoin Nakamoto, the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper found me when I was pondering about that, is there no way to make money which is really for the greater good? Can you not do a well and

good at the same time? Those type of questions and then reading the Satoshi Nakamoto White Paper, it became clear that this is the industry I want to innovate. And the things that I'm looking for, reside within the cryptographic realm. And that led me to find out who's working on what in the crypto space, especially out of Israel, and I came across the name of Professor Morran and Professor Morran. When we spoke it was Bitcoin was all the rage Ethereum was just getting

started. And there was something about proof of stake being named as an alternative to proof of work. And already at the time Professor Morran had indicated to me that he doesn't think that proof of stake is a step forward. Rather than maybe even a step backward from a decentralization standpoint, to proof of work. And we'll get into all that with details. But in short, he added Dr. Bentov to the team. Dr. Bentov is a very famous Bitcoin OG and also researcher in cryptography out

of Cornell. And we essentially combined the innovations that they both Edo Intel has been working on separately. Professor Morran's is that of proof of space time, and this whole new info consensus, and Dr. Bentov was bringing this idea of a tortoise and hare, basically, two consensus protocol, one, which is extremely fast, but with less robustness. And one slower that comes after, and clean any kind of remaining

divergence. And the ability to utilize both this fast and slow and the proof of space time together, as a combination is what we've been, you know, meticulously working on over the past four years. And yeah, we're almost there at the very end. And is indeed really exciting to see how things will evolve from here?

idea of proof of space time. And we find it the need to say those two words like the proof of space time combined with the mesh multiple times in order to refer to this new idea, and then we just started to internally call it space, which between us because it sounds like a nice acronym that includes both and it sort of stuck, got stuck the name and everybody's really

liking it ever since. So, spacemesh indicates the combination of proof of space time with a mesh rather than a chain topology, this is rather than having structure which is a canonical chain will every chain has one block behind it and one block ahead of it in this layer of dag structure. Everyone is pointing one time upwards, but

multiple time downwards. And this creates a layout type of a dag where in the evennt of many layers, there is an ability to create many, many different blocks in dynasty without these blocks needing to make a contest as you know from proof of work and what this achieves is that a legal block is guaranteed to get in and there is no situation where one needs to wait. So longest chain faster chain all this resolution.

resource is too expensive. In that sense, being a proof of stake, it is. The resource isn't in a sense real. This is a problem. It's a problem because when, for example, there is an attack on a proof of stake coin, there is a scenario where the price of the coin can start to go down as a result of the omens on the attack or whatnot. And now, also, the security for the protocol is going down at the

same time. So the reliance on something that its price isn't moving this easily, like the hard drive industry or the electricity industry. And relying on those to stay constant and provide your security when you need it is easier of an assumption than to rely on the price of the coin. And in that sense, and in many other senses, for example, in a proof of stake, you can do something called costless simulation, you need to have the keys obviously know that to

really succeed. But in other ways, you don't need to actually do any work in order to fabricate a whole lot of long history. And if you're somehow able to get even for one point in the history, the keys, you're then able to rewrite history as you see fit. And there's a bunch of consents, I think which are nicely addressed, by the way with some scaffolds by the more modern protocols. I think if you look at the Argo one, this is a very legit type of proof of

stake type protocol. But there is another aspect to this beyond security, which is the key aspects that I'm interested in. And that is, to what degree are you rich get richer with that concerns. Also, to what degree does it in fact, sustain some fairness the world, smaller miners, or sustained fair, honest and genuine towards newcomers. And I think there is a very strong sentiment that proof of stake is failing us on this font. It's very much like

what we have today. And the axes of centralization that are created via the staking are quite evident. So in that sense, proof of space time is the combination of taking something from the outside world, which has value and not doing this idea of a self referential loop.

But this something that you take from the outside world is not work that you have to work as hard as you can all the time, but rather something different, you need to store huge cryptographic file on your drive for a certain amount of time. And for as long as this file remains on your drive, you'll be barely doing any work. And your wallet will accommodate coins in a very fair and distributed

manner. So regardless of how big is your drives, you will always be getting your fair share of the reward every two weeks, which is every epoch and humbly I'd say that the best you can hope for from protocol to be paid both fairly with regards to the amount of storage you have and nothing else. And also frequently And this idea that if after 10 years, the money will be distributed the same. Why does it matter that I'll be getting mine every two weeks rather than every two years.

Right? So that's a question that only a person that has too much money can ask right because Okay, you're gonna give me the same amount of money well, the next four years, but the one will start to take in that money from the beginning. And then whatever you do with that initial money will count. Right? If you are in a waiting position for three years, all this time in between when you've been waiting for the reward, it's time that you couldn't make your newly acquired money work for

you in some fashion. So, yeah, what I mean is that the sense of urgency is particularly important to those who need the money.

old. And rather to be making money with the PC already have at home with no basically riskless you can choose to drop out but you will never lose money and that ability, I think is what Satoshi Nakamoto had in mind when he envisioned magic internet money that everybody can join via mining from home. I think that it was hard to extrapolate into the future and see in the mining industry going professional and industrialized

waiters. And so after this long intro, my 30 second pitch will be that space mesh is iterating closer to the original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto and we are making a blockchain that everybody doesn't matter rich or poor, or a leopard in a basement, no KYC No, nothing is needed. There is a link, you download the software to your PC, you run it, you leave the PC open, and it accumulates money

for you. And at no point even upon a I don't know Amazon or something, you just choosing to join the network, you won't be in a place where you will be losing money. Because your monthly spend is let's say the additional electricity for leaving the PC open all the time, something like probably five to $8 a month. And so that's why you can barely lose money, even if the rewards, the nominal rewards get smaller.

using it. And yet, we have we've been working at least 50% of the past two years on on the SVM and on everything that is going into that layer, and the passion, I have to see the next 10 million people perhaps joining the blockchain revolution, is by constantly reducing the bar for them to mine this and to participate in some of the communion or civic endeavors that are coming with it. And think it will matter less, who is your daddy, and how much

money does he have? And it will matter way more what you want to contribute to where do you put your passion, how, what choices you make, and how are you rewarded with the local currency on those choices. So I believe the community based economies huge and it's just getting started. And we really need decent infrastructure to be able to support such endeavors.

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Tomer, I have a quick question for you regarding the design on the website. It is an old school, super retro design. I personally love it. It reminds me of poolside.fm shout out poolside, no free ads, but we do love you guys. Spacemesh the design, I'm looking at the web page right now. It's either black or white. And it has super old font, and now most programming language on it with a lot of cool little words, like Tweedle Dee is here. I love all this. Tell me, like what was the

decision making behind this? Why do you guys choose to go with this layout and this UI experience?

just ridiculous. And it felt more important for us at the beginning to pay homage and to pay respects to the crypto banks, and the founders of this industry. And we are and I hope I'm not giving surprise I shouldn't but we are replacing this website in two weeks with a website we've been working in something like four months on and extremely, extremely proud

of the outcome. We've been helped by a design from Denmark out of the Hello Monday team and that would be I'm hoping you will love that website as well. It's less sentimental, but it's way more designed and it's I guess less for the cypherfunks of us and more for the younger, creative You know, and caring people, wherever they are.

disruption in a good way. I mean, trailblazing industries. Can you tell me a little bit about the scene in Israel and why the needle gets moved so quickly? Like, what is it about that community there. Is that the government, is it the people is it the funding? What is it that gives you guys such a leg up on the competition?

do very well. All the things which are not the core competence of the company, but I find these answers to be somehow less satisfying. And if you want my opinion does, I'm not a researcher in this space, but I believe culture at large is part of this, and culture is something that evolves slower than, you know, individual choice making. And there is something about this, both being in somewhat of a tense environment and both being in in a position where you have no

internal market. So your orientation is multilingual and towards the outside from the get go. All those things. And some other aspects of being Jewish as well.

that almost 24 hours off. No technology, doing things the old school way, and really, I almost find it's a form of meditation in some sense, because you're thankful and you're grateful of something that's just more than yourself, maybe I'm going the

wrong way with this here. But again, I just look at some of my friends who are extremely successful, very mature for their age, and I feel like that sense of enlightenment and taking that day off of technology allows you to sort of recharge, and you know, and refuel up before before talking the next week.

bring back. And it doesn't have to be we are believe it believing in the Almighty God, though it might be but I think there is, again, my humble opinion, there's some things in modern religion, which are... laundry over many generations of something which was sacred to the people who made it, but over

time, sometimes lost touch. So being able to think about the future in an inclusive manner and find world problems that you have passion to collaborate on and solve together with some friends, and use real money and real leverage and real momentum to do that this is not Boy Scouts, this is Lille, and yet it's working towards the greater

good. And you have no boss, you do what you see, like, and I believe that it's, you know, so anyways, I want to finish my tool was this idea that I've been the CEO of a startup company, and I'm now the CEO of crypto project. My culture now, I argue, is 17 times better than my previous culture. And yet, I use a no enforcement, no policing, I do none of those

things. When I used to do those when I was telling people what to do all the time, but when you're able to create a group of autonomous people that choose what to do, because they are aligned with the cause, that you are aligned on that next level, and for more coherence and unity standpoint, and those things are

important. And if you want to talk about the ultimate winning together, I believe it's collaborating on something which is outside of any given individual among the group, and finding, alignment, and even therapy, like you will say, in this idea that we stick the meaning to something outside of us, and we're not locked inside our own joy.

convert media? Sorry, when you were the CEO at a start up convert media, which was sold to now the CEO of a crypto project? What are the what what have you done differently? And sort of what light can you shed on creating a world class culture like you have at Space mesh?

to. Okay, and I could say that really nicely and never shout but it was still violent in that sense that you all now do what I say. In spacemesh, while we can argue in passion and even raise our voice. And it might seem a whole lot less civilized from the outside. No one gets to say something like okay, we do that because I say so, there is only argumentation until we are in alignment and conviction. And this goes into everything else

in the company. I think that they're allowing the people some room to maneuver, allowing them to speak over me, to contradict me, and to make fun of me as the CEO is is a part of what makes the culture in spacemesh so unique, and I think I now understand my role more was an architect of talent as opposed to, like a motivator or something along the line of vision, settle in, I think about life in a different way. Whenever we encounter with a new and tough problem, we just

surround the problem. We really feel into the problem, we go to sleep and maybe two days later, there is something else that we understand. And just being able to do this new dance. It's a new type of dance, how do you respond to reality? How do you respond to real life events, this is...to dance in a group rather than to be isolated alone as a CEO that takes all the decision and then sort of bring them down is both easier for me as the CEO, because I'm not that

alone anymore. And it both doesn't allow all these like corner cutting that you would potentially do when you are deciding by yourself. And then you have to face the sudden mess and small details. And that's, yeah, just better on every

aspect. But it's not for everybody, it means that there are some people who can't change the way they operate so much and they want to have dates, and they want to have no linear hierarchies, just realities, and like that, and it helps to be able to be more adaptive and more responsive. So I hope that gives you some color on your question, but it's a question we can be chatting on forever.

awesome. I really appreciate you coming on, I would love to have you on for round two in the future. And after hearing your pitch on space mesh, I'm definitely going to give it a try. And, you know, soak a bit of electricity and make some cake. So really appreciate you coming on. Before we do wrap up. Do you have any questions for me? Is there anything that you would like to know from myself?

everyone can get in. And oftentimes when everyone gets in, there are less fruits to pick from that tree. And how do you protect the fruits on the tree, you put up a big wall. And I feel like that's what blockchain is done. Mind you, we are extremely early in the space blockchain crypto, the whole nine yards are still very early, I've seen all the comparisons to you know, the late 90s, early 2000s of the internet, still a

phenomenal time to get in. But that barrier to entry is still very tough, especially for people who do not have a lot of knowledge in the space. And after hearing your pitch on how easy it is to get in, I think that's great. The only thing I would maybe do is I would maybe even have a video front and center on your website. Again, I'm, you know, I'm 26 years old. And if I can read something,

I'll read it first. But if there's a 30 second video that shows me how to, where to navigate the website, to download the application, download the program and and to start actually, you know, using the proof of space time and getting that up and running. That's probably the only thing I'd want to see. And if it was as easy as you say it is in the

3 second video. I don't really know what else I need, you know, like you explain, hey, it's only gonna cost you about 10 bucks a month, all you got to do is leave your computer on. You have to download one simple thing. There's no viruses, it's all good. Again, low barrier to entry. That's it. So I sort of rambled on there. But to answer your question, that would be the low barrier to entry, which you

guys have already done. I would probably want to see a video or a little how to rate on the front page of the website just to get those new users on board.

for an artist. So if you are an indie artist looking to become autonomous, please make the effort to join this revolution and become a part of this, you know, region regenerative type, business model that artists been craving for a long time.

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