Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Tarun. He is the founder of coto, which is coming together.
It is a social inclusive platform, especially for women. He was earlier heading Zee5, the OTT platform. This was a very interesting conversation about safety and creating inclusivity, perhaps in the online spaces and how can we all do our bit in making the online sphere more inclusive and more safe, especially for women.
I can’t wait for you guys to hear this. And I can’t wait for you guys to try out their platform. So let’s deep dive right in.
Hi Tarun, how are you doing today? I’m very well. How are you doing? I’m really doing well. Thank you so much for asking.
So for our listeners, Tarun, can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got into the Web3 space? So, interesting. My background is really about building media and media tech platforms for consumers at large. For the last 20 plus odd years, I’ve been in the business of actually making sure that Indians and people across the globe get the kind of content that they really want as much and as far as possible.
My journey has been very interesting for the last five years where I spent building one of India’s largest video streaming platforms, E5, took that to about 190 countries. And at the end of that journey, which was at the peak of COVID, unfortunately, when I decided to go entrepreneur, I was looking for an idea to do something that was pretty much far away from what I’d done all my life, which was starting with broadcast television to broadcast radio to video streaming. And one of the ideas that really inspired me was to be able to do something in the community space, primarily because I realized that one too many needed to give away to many too many.
And to be able to give people the power of exchanging ideas, collaborating with each other in a really decentralized environment. As we went along, an incident that happened with my wife where she got trolled on social media platforms, messaging platforms, made me realize that really the power lied with the big tech, right, as it exists today. And in the Web2 world, you really are dependent on whether they will take any action or not take any action.
And so it’s all very centralized. They’ll get your data. They will get you as somebody who spends time.
But when you have trouble, there will be very little that will come your way from there. And that then led me to believe that there was a space that was white in terms of being able to give the power back to the users, and especially women. Women who really didn’t have a space to have conversations around pertinent, relevant topics that were very important to them.
But the way the Web2 world was structured, nor was it a safe space, nor was it a decentralized space, nor was it a rewarding space for them to be able to do any of that. And so we built coto, me and my co-founder built coto, which stands for Come Together, which is truly a decentralized, participatively owned community platform, safe platform for women, where women have their own voice. Women have their own ability to build their own livelihoods, their own community, and their own collaboration.
This is super interesting. What you mentioned about how this idea kind of arose in you when you saw your wife had gotten trolled online. I keep having these experiences, and I think that it kind of makes you a little more aware.
You can be going through your day-to-day life, and you don’t really come to that conclusion that, okay, these big companies have so much control. But creating these safe spaces online becomes very imperative if you want to perhaps set the right narrative. And especially for women, these places can be probably unsafe and not inclusive in nature.
Correct. Women, people of color, LGBTQ, all sorts of minority communities in the Internet world don’t really get what they deserve, right? And plural voices become really hard. Now look at what’s happening with Israel and Palestine, right? The problem is that while people may think that Hamas is at fault, and they are and they will be, but then there are also voices that believe that the Palestinians have had it very hard for several years.
And now those voices are being forcibly drowned across the Internet because the people that control traditional Web2 will define what the narrative will be. It’s shocking to say that even as much as a college like Harvard, right, where some kids have signed a petition which is pro-Palestine, are being called out, and there are VCs and corporates that want the name of those people so that they are never then employable in the corporate world. Yeah, they are being cancelled online.
This cancelled culture can be very, very destructive, I think, especially for anybody who’s online, not just the young minds, I think, but obviously the younger ones are perhaps more susceptible to the pressure. And where is the diversity in views? Where is the opinion that is not exactly like yours? Exactly, yeah. You know, there is very little in the online spaces that, you know, the entire decency that people have, you know, we can agree to disagree, perhaps, that is not there anymore.
It doesn’t exist. It’s always, it’s my way or the highway. Correct.
And that’s why we want to build a decentralized world where, you know, on coto, if you build a community, it is the community owner’s prerogative on what kind of content lies in the community. Right. It’s not my prerogative.
It’s not me as a platform that defines the narrative on the community. You basically decide and create your own safe space. And we’re taking it ahead where we’re building collectives which are fully self-governed in a manner that they are governed through participative ownership.
And so there is tokenization of all the efforts. And clearly, you know, the ability to take decisions within a community, not forget just at the platform, within a community level, is also empowered to all the effort that you take within the community. Right.
That is wonderful. And so we built up community NFTs which embody the work, that is the proof of work that has been done within the community. And that allows the governance, that allows the revenue share, that allows all the long-term decision-making within the community.
So, you know, just to get like a better view of things, obviously what you’ve created is a very inclusive safe space online. And, you know, there are communities and collectives, like you’ve mentioned, that are there on coto. So there are two questions, but I’ll start with the first one.
How has your experience as, you know, somebody who’s head and led Zee5 influenced in the creation of, you know, founding coto World? That would be the first one. And I’ll let you answer that before I come to the next one. So, you know, every role in the world is very learning, right? Yeah.
And one of the things that, you know, Zee5 taught me was on how little control we have on people’s choices. Right, yeah. There are millions, forget millions, billions of dollars that are being poured into creating original content on streaming platforms, right? And the hit ratio is getting worse by the day because the fact is that you’re really disconnected with what the users want.
And the world is moving towards high proliferation of conversations, forget UGC, of conversation and collaboration, which, unfortunately, the old, you know, Web2 world of streaming or social media is not about, right? Even if you look at Twitter, it’s one too many, right? Yeah. Whether you look at Instagram, it’s one too many. And so that is why even growth on those kind of platforms is very hard to combine.
Yeah. Gone are the days that if you launched an Instagram profile and you’ll have millions of, you know, followers, right? That doesn’t happen anymore. There are too many people that are in the same game.
One, there are too many people. Two, very few people really know what the users want. Exactly, yeah.
It’s usually the same ideas that kind of get regurgitated via content creators, yeah. For sure. And it’s not collaborative in any nature.
Yeah. You’re not even wanting to hear what people want. You’re not collaborating either creating content or creating conversations.
And so the one thing I learned was that this is going to be about collaboration and conversations. And we launched an entire new, you know, front UI, a storefront on, sorry, a conversation front on Monday, Tuesday, where we turned the entire platform upside down to give it a conversational feel. Because we realized that finally people want to be with each other, not just follow each other.
So there is no follow button on our platform. Right. Okay.
That’s interesting. There’s only a join button, come join the community. But you cannot follow a creator.
There is no creator. Everybody is equal. One of the things that you’re learning from Bollywood now is that that whole star culture is over.
Right. An average user feels as empowered as Kriti Senon or, you know, somebody else. Because she’s wearing the same kind of clothes.
She has the same kind of life. There is not a huge amount of glamour. She’s traveling the same kind of flights.
She’s going to the same kind of global locations. She’s not no lesser than anybody else. Yeah, that’s true.
So she’s like, she looks at them vicariously for what they’re doing, or maybe how they’re making a fool of themselves at some level. Yeah. She doesn’t feel that, you know, she’s any lesser.
Right. That is true. There’s a certain amount of relatability that is there.
Like, you know, you don’t feel that their entire being in awe of perhaps these stars, that that is gone. You know, you want to be perhaps on the same level. You want to.
You possibly carry better bags and wear better clothes than them. Yeah. Perhaps.
Yeah. The people who are into that kind of stuff. Yeah, definitely.
I think it’s more about. I think these are two different things. One is obviously that entire the aura of a star and being in awe of them, that has kind of gone away.
And obviously social media has brought all of these people that, you know, they’ve taken away the mystery. You can see them going into the airport every single morning. Exactly.
Yeah. So that, that kind of mystery has gone away. And now, you know, you feel like they’re, they’re just like us.
And then obviously alongside that there comes a certain amount of relatability, but also, you know, a more onus on these people to perhaps become part of everyday conversation as well. They’re not your role models anymore. Yeah.
This is not Rekha and Amitabh Bachchan. Yeah, exactly. That, that kind of that aura of mystery and, you know, that kind of screen presence, all of that is not there.
Yeah. There are no biopics that are going to get written about them. Get a lot of people mad by this conversation.
But it is what it is. They’re calling spade a spade. And not as much you as me.
No, no, I am. I am. I’m agreeing with you.
I concur. I think I do think this is something that actually, funnily enough, I was discussing with one of my siblings, like, you know, about how that, that kind of, you know, being in awe, like, you know, you get used to get awestruck that, okay, you know, that this is this particular star is here. That does not happen anymore.
And that I do feel that, you know, social media has given them a lot, but it has taken away that that particular. Yeah, exactly. It’s too much.
Right. It’s too much. Fully overexposed.
Very overexposed. And then, you know, that that entire, I think most, a large part of their stardom was about that, that aura and the mystery. And, you know, the, the, because we’ve become such a hyper voyeuristic society.
A little bit of that clandestine that they have. None of that is there anymore. Right.
Everybody’s on every other person who’s like, yes, we are stars on a reality show. They’re on big boss or something like that. So obviously, you know, all of that is kind of gone.
Yeah. You see the worst side of them, in fact. Yeah, absolutely.
And then, you know, then you’d realize all the more that they’re probably just like us. Correct. And so that was my big learning, right? This has got to be many to many, this has got to be collaborative.
You’ve got to put the power in people’s hand. You can’t make this a very creator led. And this is exactly what came about on the platform.
That the biggest communities are not about, which are led by stars. The biggest communities are where even stars come in, participate in conversations that are, you know, relevant to women. Right.
And star communities don’t grow as much as real communities like menstrual health. Yeah. You know, things like that, which are financial independence, which are very, very pertinent to women starting a small business.
Yeah. Career counseling. Those are the real issues.
Yeah. And people are now ready to face those real issues and talk about them and, and, you know, find solutions for themselves. Absolutely.
Right. Yeah. I think that’s wonderful.
It’s wonderful that, you know, you’re trying to take this narrative and spin it on its head and create like a safer, perhaps more inclusive social community for women to come and feel safe. And so, you know, now that, you know, we’ve talked a little about your experience and how it has kind of perhaps nurtured the vision for coto. So anybody, like any of our listeners can perhaps go up on that website and, you know, they can sign up.
It’s an app, both Android and Apple. Okay. You can download the app.
The, the way we’ve kept it safe is that it’s facial recognized. So you do facial recognition to do gender verification before you enter the platform. Okay.
All right. So why facial recognition? Like why, why is there no social signup? Because there is a social signup, but after that you do facial recognition so that AI can do gender verification, whether you’re a woman. All right.
Okay. Okay. So just to make sure that, you know, it’s, it’s gated in a proper way.
Okay. So, you know, once, so how, how is tokenization a part of this journey? Like somebody. Every single thing that you do on the platform, whether it is create content, whether it is answer questions and Q and A is a very big part of the platform.
Right. Because we’ve realized that people have a lot of questions to ask about health, wellness, education, so on and so forth. Right.
And people who answer those questions and keep the con the contract and the content and the platform vibrant, they need to be rewarded. So your efforts around content, your efforts around referrals, your effort around network effects are all rewarded through tokens. And.
Then your ability to monetize that platform. Is also then a burn part of the token. So you can set up storefronts, you can set up consultations using the same tokens to be able to then, you know, use utilities on the platform.
So it’s a neat circular economy that we’ve created on how you earn and how you really burn the same on the platform. All right. Okay.
And is this, are these tokens listed as well? We plan to list them by early part of next year. All right. Okay.
Awesome. And they have, as you mentioned, they have a bunch of utility on the platform itself, where you can create your own economy and create your own, perhaps small consultancy business, perhaps. All kinds of service commerce and product commerce is, is powered through the tokens.
Okay. Wow. Wonderful.
So, you know, what, what are like, can you give us some details of the tokenomics there? So really, you know, the way we’ve built the tokenomics is that almost 60% of the tokens are for the ecosystem. And by the ecosystem, I mean, women creators across the world. And there are a certain set of variables that we built around how these tokens are granted to women, whether it is around referral, the highest one is for referral because that creates the biggest network effect.
Right. And, and then from there, so on and so forth, which is either content or content appreciation and, and things like that. Also the big part of the tokenomics is that all our partnership revenue is burned on the platform through the token.
So if you want to advertise on the platform, even if you can do it through fiat, we will burn the equivalent tokens on the site. Okay. We’re making sure that the demand for advertising is equal to the demand of tokens on the platform.
Okay. All right. Wonderful.
So that, that’ll keep, you know, a sane balance. It’ll create a good economy as you mentioned. Okay.
This is wonderful. So this is sounding all like really wonderful, but you know, I’ve used platforms like Leap and there are some other platforms as well that are trying to create safe spaces for women in there, obviously not on web three, but you know, they do exist. They have an app.
So how are you say different from those? So we are an infrastructure platform, Tarusha. We are not a community or a content platform ourselves. Okay.
So we build the infrastructure for a leap or for any other community to be hosted on our platform. We don’t build any community ourselves. Okay.
So initially right now, how many communities exist? 6000 communities. Wow. Okay.
And these are all unique communities. I mean, they’re not, not unique. They could be overlapping within subjects, topics, themes, local geography, so on and so forth.
And they are between India, the middle East and Indonesia. Wow. Okay.
And are you like also getting perhaps content creators or influencers to, you know, So the content creators and influencers come and build these communities. Oh, okay. So these, these are the women that, that are kind of building and are they getting again, are these monetized in some way or like open out both service commerce and product commerce on these communities in a couple of months here.
All right. Okay. Wonderful.
So right now, you know, if, if somebody wants to start like a collective or a community, how would they go about doing it? Just go on, go onto the platform, onboard yourself onto the platform and use the plus universal plus button and it’ll take you into create community. Very simple. And you have choices of creating an open community, close community, private community, a discrete community that can only be discovered through a link.
So there are all sorts of options there. All right. Awesome.
That’s, that’s brilliant. Okay. We kept it very simple.
We haven’t complicated the community creation process. Okay. That’s good.
Right. Because you want it to be inclusive and easy. So yeah, that’s the way to go.
Just make it very intuitive. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So tell me what is like the next big thing in the code in coto’s journey? Like what is the next big milestone you guys are looking forward to? Big milestone is going to be around monetization stores, both in terms of product commerce and service commerce. The big milestone is also going to be more features around token earn and burn.
The big milestone is also going to be around more geographies. The big milestone is also around token listing. Awesome.
So in terms of token listing, which exchanges are you speaking to? So we’ve just finished a white paper. We’ve now started to take that out, but we want to make sure that it’s accessible to all, all of our big creators in and, and community builders across the key markets that they’re in. So Mina, India, Indonesia, we, you know, our list of exchanges will go down in the order of the exchanges that are large and easy to transact in these markets.
All right. Okay. Wonderful.
The community has something really big coming up that they can look forward to. So, you know, in your perspective, what kind of defines say Web3 and how, how is your platform taking the steps to lead this transformative phase, say, you know, technology-wise and in the internet? So I think Web3 is defined by transparency, decentralization, and obviously using the chain for doing all of this, right? Right. I think there are also lots of use cases around DeFi and gaming and so on and so forth.
They’re a fairly unique mass adoption Web3 use case. And I do believe that the opportunity lies in taking this to a segment like women through a platform like ours and making sure that, you know, we get really new communities and new cohorts onto the chain and onto crypto. That’s really also one of our, you know, one of our very enriching purposes.
Okay. Yeah. So, you know, I do think that with such a huge community and I do think truly that in the crypto space, in the Web3 space, that the gender ratio is very skewed pretty much like a lot of other spaces as well.
But you guys already have like a built community that, you know, you can introduce Web3 to and that is wonderful. Correct. And that’s the hope that, you know, we’ll be able to, a lot of people come and tell me women and blockchain and will it work and so on and so forth.
And very skeptical people pay a lot of lip service to diversity, but when it comes to real world, you know, they’re very skeptical and cynical about just women in STEM, women in blockchain, women in Web3, women in communities, so on and so forth. And it’s, it’s, you know, it’s time to show that the world is not just bro tech. Right.
Absolutely. So transparency, inclusivity, and perhaps co-creation, right. As you mentioned, are very fundamental to Web3.
So for each of these, how are you embodying these values as you build coto? So, you know, the way we’ve actually done this is let’s start with transparency though, all the entire loyalty program is going to be on the chain. You should be able to know wow, and what and how we do with the tokens and how you own them, how you burn them, how the tokenomics plays out. So it’s really cleanly governed or every single community will have its own governance through the mini DAO that they create and through the attributable proof of work NFT that every member of the community or the collective has.
So there’s a huge amount of transparency so that, you know, why I have a, I have a bigger voice in the community versus you will be defined by how much work I’ve done in the community, not because I’m a, I’m a celebrity or a star. Right. And that starts with transparency.
I think getting women onto the tokens and onto blockchain will be a big thing about inclusivity and making sure that because you have enough work done, your voice is heard. And so there is a huge amount of effort behind inclusivity in just the way the platform and the way the tokenomics and the way the proof of work is structured. And lastly, what was the last point I forget? So it was a transparency, inclusivity and co-creation.
Co-creation. I just, communities are all about co-creation. Right.
Yeah. It’s just the way we’ve, the thesis of the platform itself is communities. Right.
And it can’t be, there can be no better place than communities for co-creation. Right. Absolutely.
So, you know, you mentioned that you guys are using AI for the initial signup process. Is there any other way that you are? We built the platform on OpenAI. Okay.
And all the content creation journeys, the recognition of which content is suitable for what kind of communities. So basically recommendations of communities, as well as of the kind of experts that you can talk to and tag around for the kind of subjects. All of that is built on real time, large language models using NLP.
Okay. So as you key in, suppose saying, I want to invest in mutual funds, what should I do? As you’re keying in, you will, you would know the communities that talk about mutual funds, the kind of creators within the communities who you can tag to know more about mutual funds. So their entire journey in real time is built on OpenAI.
Okay. Wow. And like, how do you see this kind of move, you know, moving forward? Like, because you’re creating a lot of communities, a lot of content is getting created.
How would you flag perhaps content that is being not created, say by a human and is a person is actually generating it via AI. Do you have any rules of the community? We actually support creating some of the content through AI on your content creation journey itself. You can take the help of AI because you know, contrary to popular belief, one of the big blockers of why women and a lot of other creators or regular people don’t contribute into content creation is because they don’t know where to start.
And so I don’t think it’s wrong to help people giving them a starting point of what, how they can express themselves. Yes, that makes sense. I think, you know, just giving them that little nudge or giving them a helping hand should not be a problem.
Correct. So now moving on from beyond coto, you know, in Web3 in general, what is your take on the space right now? Currently we are in the middle of still a bear market. What is your opinion on the market scenario in general? I do believe that, you know, some clean regulation will help the market prosper.
Okay. The market has been hit by bad actors quite badly. Right.
I agree. And back to back, you know, what happened with a lot of stuff with FTX and others has not helped the sentiment and the, and what the one word I use trust, right? We want to be in the trustless environment, but nobody trusts blockchain and, and DeFi and, and the exchanges themselves. So the exchanges who went vast were more centralized than decentralized, but unfortunately they dealt with crypto, right? The market needs trust.
And I think what the European markets are doing with my car or what Singapore is doing now with their act or what UK is doing, I think it will put some trust back in the market. And as people start to work through a certain amount of good quality legislation, not random arbitrary legislation, but good quality legislation and give them a sense of safety and security that they can, this can, these digital assets are good to invest in. This will start to turn.
And as next year, my car goes into real execution mode. Right. I see a lot more people, one, you know, follow that, that format and that template.
And we’ve seen that with GDPR, right? Yeah. That Europe built a really good data protection act. And most other countries just, you know, replicated it in some form or fashion.
Absolutely. Yeah. And so I think Marco’s markets in crypto assets, which is my car, which is the regulation that EU has built around, you know, crypto.
And I’ve studied it very deeply is a very good quality, you know, piece of legislation that if that really goes through the world, we will have a world with some really good, you know, framework to actually build confidence back into the crypto markets. Right. So, and do you think that this, the regulation bit or do you think is it going to be some sort of a trending technology that will pull us out of this bear market? We already have the trending technology, whether it’s blockchain or whether it’s AI.
Right. Yeah. But the technology has been misused by bad actors.
Right. Absolutely. So, you know, what you need is trust.
What you need is confidence. What you need is that, okay, this is some genuine thing which with genuine projects and with some really good long-term outcomes. So how do you perhaps put, you know, fester in that trust and how do you build confidence in the end user? Because I still think that, you know, we are very far away from mass adoption because even though this is a very cool new tech and everybody seems to be building on it, how do we get the users more involved or interested in this new way of doing things? I think, you know, users don’t mind regulation.
Yeah, that’s true. Right. We’ve all invested in a lot of different kinds of assets where they’re regulated assets and we feel safe about them, whether it’s putting your money in the bank or whether you’re putting your money in the mutual fund.
Right. And so you must see the users from a very traditional finance lens. Nobody wants to lose money.
It’s a very small fraction of people who want to play the risk game. And so you must realize that once you give the users a good framework and give them the confidence, they will want to invest in an asset like this. Right.
And the underlying projects have to be strong. Okay. And by strong, you mean perhaps like, you know, Fundamentally solving their issue, giving them convenience perhaps or add some perceived value should be there.
Correct. They have to have use cases, which are strong. Yeah, absolutely.
Otherwise like, I think that is like, that is something. The whole other part is in the NFT piece. Right.
So your, your opinion versus mine, like it’s art is for the very select few. Yeah. That is very true.
It’s very relative. Right. Like, you know, because you might be interested in art and if that is the only use case that you’re looking at NFT is for, then yeah, it is very limiting.
Get out of the hype cycle and get into long-term sustainable business. Hmm. Very true.
Very, very true. I think that is, that is something that I keep telling, you know, entrepreneurs were just starting off that, see, this is very similar in Web2 as well as Web3. If you’re going to be running a business or building a business, then ultimately you need to make money and people are only going to pay you money when you are doing something that is actually adding to their life in some way, you know, perceived value.
And only then. How do you perceive real value? Yeah. Perceived value at times, perceived value can just be something, you know, like that is adding convenience or saving time.
And that, that is at least, you know, that is how you look at it. Some aggregator platforms and whatnot. So I do think on some level initially when platforms like Swiggy and Zomato was started, there was a lot of, you know, people didn’t understand it.
And then there was some perceived value. Because there are other ways to perhaps achieve what they are trying to achieve, like via phone call, but then there is, there is value there. Like if user finds the value that you’re trying to push towards them as, as real value of convenience, then yeah.
Then, you know, you’re winning, I think. Yeah. So do you have any, you know, favorite Web3 projects that you feel are really delivering on what, what they promised or, you know, they’re really delivering value? I think there are some infrastructure projects like, you know, Polygon, for example.
What they’ve been able to do with the gas fee and, and that could lead to mass adoption is truly a project that, that can work here or is working right. And there are, you know, there are a few infrastructure projects are, you know, worth looking at. Look at what Goki is doing with the universal health token.
Really good use case because health, wellness, people encouraging people to stay healthy, utilizing those tokens into you know, building their health scores, which can get them better insurance covered so on and so forth. These are very, very real use cases. Yeah.
I agree. Like these are real use cases that, that are actually solving a problem as well. And you know, they, the user, there is a certain stickiness there as well.
The user will keep coming back. So in terms of, you know, any kind of perhaps like ephemeral trends, I think there are many in this space, ephemeral trends, ephemeral projects, platforms. What, what is one thing that you think is, you know, really big right now in this space in Web3 and you feel that it’s a very short-term trend and it’ll pass very quickly.
I think, I think the big short-term trend is hoping that, you know, that Bitcoin will get to a hundred thousand. Okay. Right.
Bitcoin has inherent value, but it will take some time to get anywhere. I think it’s at a good value today. And this whole bull market wanted to come back and take it to 50,000, 100,000 all the time.
Right. And I was at token 2049 people at stage on the stage are asked, where will the Bitcoin will be? And there are kind of astronomical numbers that come your way. I mean, you know, fundamentally you have to realize that the more crypto adoption in the world, the more Bitcoin can replace currencies, the more Bitcoin can do work that centralized currencies can do, the more it will create value.
But all of that will require good legislation. Otherwise countries which large countries, you know, fight back. Absolutely.
I think, yeah, legislation. I do think that at some point in my journey, I was pretty much very against regulation and I think I’m pretty anti establishment that way. And I don’t, I didn’t think that, you know, it kind of goes with the ethos of the space, but I do understand where people who say that, okay, regulation is required, where are they coming from? Because there is no other way ultimately.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No matter how decentralized the space is, ultimately it is people who are running the space.
Right. And there are also good people, but there are also some bad actors. It’s decentralized, but not decent.
Yeah. Yeah. That is absolutely true.
So I do think that, you know, some kind of self-regulation or some kind of regulation should be perhaps there. The framework needs to exist, man. We all need to operate like, you know, people who are responsible.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because there are a few bad actors that kind of really muddy the pond for everybody else.
Even though there are more good guys than the bad, but you know, the bad guys do such. The other big trend that could be long-term is CBDCs. Right.
Okay. So I would love to know, you know, your thoughts on CBDCs again. I think if they can take away the cumbersomeness of fiat and bring in real ease of, you know, transaction, ease of money going between borders, ease of money going, you know, between peer to peer, it could work.
I’ve seen the RBI CBDC document and I think, you know, it may have some way to go, but it’s a good starting point. But CBDCs are very, very, they’re at odds with everything that decentralization stands for. Don’t you? But they make a good use of the chain.
It can be a good use case. I agree. But I do think that.
I mean, if you think of it as more blockchain than decentralization, it’s still very good. Yeah. There’s a lot more ease of use that, that, you know, is not present in the financial ecosystem as it exists today.
There is some, I guess there are certain advantages that are there, but I do still feel that CBDCs are everything, you know, that decentralization kind of. That is true. And I think the banks will realize that.
I think they have a way to go, but they’re a good first step. Yeah, absolutely. I think there are other stable coins that are getting launched around, you know, different currencies, which is also a good trend.
It’s going beyond just the US dollar. Yeah, that is true. There are a lot of real world tokenization that is happening.
So that is wonderful. And I think it’s in the right direction. So yeah, now, you know, because we are almost out of time, but this has been such a wonderful conversation.
I would love to ask these some fun questions that I had in mind for you. If you could like perhaps imbibe any, you know, tech superpower and from some superhero, what would that power be? And how would you use that to empower women? One thing I definitely won’t want to do is what Meta is trying to do, where you wear glasses and start to record people and all of that. That’s really a sign of, you know, regressive superpowers.
But the one thing I would definitely want to do is to deal with poverty across, right? If blockchain and crypto can help in decentralizing the wealth across the world. I mean, there is so many people living under the poverty line across the world. There is something that needs to be done.
The unequal distribution of wealth, right? Somebody has to look at it at some point in time. I mean, most conflicts in the world are happening because of that. I think the underlying issue too is that, you know, one particular set of people feel more powerful than the others.
That’s true. I think the underlying issue for all of these geopolitical conflicts ultimately comes down to scarcity and or at least like the fact that people think that there is scarcity in terms of resources and they don’t feel. You know, entitlement and the sense of power on the other side.
Yeah, yeah. I think that that kind of is a very simplistic way of looking at things, but ultimately I think that is like one underlying cause that kind of creates. And what really happens is that then the other party who is suffering for so long is going to react one day or the other.
Exactly. Yeah. For how long will they like silently just hold on and keep going on? Right.
And nobody, this over domination in the world has to end. Absolutely. I think there has to be some kind of equilibrium there, a balance perhaps.
But you know, again, I feel that all of all these systems are there and everything we know we imbibe, but ultimately we are all people and people are very flawed. Yeah. We are broken at some level.
Yeah. That is what, and that makes me feel a little less hopeful about how we can perhaps, you know, create a more balanced. We get up every morning and think this is a new world and it’s going to be different.
Yeah. But I guess, you know, we have to keep looking the other way and keep doing our part because otherwise there’ll be no reason to get out of bed. That’s true.
So this has been a really wonderful conversation and I’m so glad that I could speak to you. I feel a platform like coto is super necessary in this day and age. As I mentioned earlier, like I keep getting trolled, but recently I had another experience on Twitter and it felt like, you know, the kind of vitriol that people spew on you.
Without understanding the whole thing is, it can be debilitating. Like if you really start taking it seriously. You’ll think that, what’s the big deal, but ask the person going through it.
Exactly. Yeah. You know, I couldn’t sleep.
I was thinking that, okay, what did I do wrong? And I’m thinking, you know, I’m, I’m thinking and I’m overthinking and I’m questioning. And then there are people around me telling me that, okay, no, you didn’t do anything wrong. These are just people who have something to say and they have, you know, the vitriol that they want to pass it on.
And you know, people don’t realize the impact on mental health. Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. They don’t. And it’s like, you know, it’s just, this social media has also given this garb of anonymity, right.
That, you know, you can sit in your room and say whatever you want to whoever you want. Yeah. There are so many, it’s, it’s just horrible.
But so, you know, your vision is something that I can really appreciate. And I can’t wait to try out photo myself. This sounds like a really wonderful space.
I’m all for getting more women involved in all of these important places in web3, just empowering them more, giving them some more confidence. So more power to you. More power to you.
I think you’re one of the few women who’s doing this. So, so good to, you know, be on your show and to be able to take the word out. Yeah.
Thank you so much for your kind words. Now, before we wrap up, I’d ask you something that I asked everybody who comes on the show. And that is basically what would be your suggestions for somebody who is perhaps, you know, peering in from the web2 world into web3 to start living on blockchain.
So I think, based on this case, on why blockchain, I studied blockchain at Berkeley. Right. And one of the things that teach you, Tarusha, across the course is that don’t fall in love with blockchain.
Don’t fancy it. See it as a means to an end. Right.
And so you must be sure that it needs to be applied. A lot of use cases of blockchain fail because they’re not made for blockchain. Yeah.
And so the key to blockchain usage is, does it need blockchain? I think that’s an expensive technology. Yeah. Hard to implement.
And so you need to be sure that it needs to be there. That’s a good question. I think that is, that is something that one needs to ask themselves.
I think this is something I tell, you know, these young college students who come out who want to do something in web3. Like you’d first need to decide whether it, you know, you really need this technology before really implementing and executing. Perhaps the execution would be better and cheaper and more efficient, say, you know, using the traditional technology.
Correct. So those are some good thoughts. And that is a wonderful suggestion.
I think for our listeners and before we wrap this up, Tarun, any, any last thoughts? No, I think, you know, I want to call out to every single man to pay their debt and encourage more and more women to be on court. Absolutely. I think that is, that is something all men should do.
And I think all women should do as well, refer more women. And men need to pay a lot of debt for the way the society’s gotten structured over so many years. That is true.
But then, you know, then again, I think then there are people like you and there are men like you are trying to make it better. And that, that, that itself is, is quite a, you know, soothing thing for our souls. So thank you for the work that you’re doing.
Thank you so much, Tarusha, for being on, for getting me on the show. All the very best. Same to you guys.