0:00

Hey, before we get started with this episode, if you

0:02

are into NFTs, metaverse

0:04

and play and earn gaming, make

0:07

sure you listen to the latest episode of the Nifty

0:09

Show at the nifty show.com. When

0:12

most of us interact with blockchain technology,

0:15

we are experiencing the end user

0:17

product. But the smart contracts that

0:20

run these projects are a bit more complicated.

0:23

Akin to code, smart contracts require

0:25

specific programming language to make them

0:27

do the things they do. Well, what if

0:29

it wasn't that difficult to create a smart

0:32

contract? And what if you could write one

0:34

with plain English? Today, we

0:36

welcome Henning Diedrich to the show to discuss

0:39

how Lexan solves this problem.

0:41

The first architect of IBM's

0:43

blockchain hyperledger and liaison

0:46

to the Ethereum developing team, which includes

0:48

Vitalik, Henning knows a thing

0:50

or two. He might even teach us three

0:53

things today on this I can code

0:55

three lines of basic. So what

0:58

episode number six hundred and

0:59

ninety one. Of

1:02

the Bad Crypto podcast, five

1:05

or. And.

1:27

Welcome

1:32

to the show, Joel,

1:32

come here, Travis, right there, I cannot program my way out of a paper

1:34

bag. How about you, sir? Lord. You

1:37

know, with the new chat GPT force code interpreter,

1:41

you probably can code way more than you

1:43

probably thought you could. Maybe I should go in there

1:45

and say, check GPT, help me get out of this paper

1:47

bag. Yeah, I get

1:49

out. Colonel, turn

1:52

right. Yeah, I actually

1:53

when I bought my first.

1:59

computer in 1980, uh, the TRS 80

2:02

model one, it basic was the programming

2:05

language. And I learned just enough,

2:07

you know, you'd go line 10 print,

2:10

hello, I'm a computer line 20, go to 10. And

2:12

it would just fill the screen with hello.

2:15

I'm a computer. And that's about it. I remember that.

2:17

I remember sitting in Mrs. Walker's class

2:20

in high school, playing, learning computers.

2:23

And I was like, this is so stupid.

2:26

Like we're not, we don't need any of this yet. I

2:28

go, it's not ready yet. I'm

2:30

not going to put any brain power towards this yet.

2:33

And what I literally

2:33

did in my junior year is

2:36

at the semester, I said, I'm transferring

2:39

out of this computer class. She's a horrible teacher.

2:41

I'm going to go, I'm going to go work

2:43

at the, in the library for that, for that

2:46

hour. And so my junior year,

2:48

I said, I'm done with this. This is

2:50

horrible. I'm going to come back and learn it later.

2:52

And I have, I just could see it was just, she

2:55

was a horrible teacher. She was, and she just had

2:57

an attitude. And I was like, I don't want to even sit in this lady's class.

2:59

She's she makes this not fun at all.

3:02

And for me to not want to

3:03

be in a computer class, you know how shitty that

3:05

class had to be. Oh yeah. Well, see, I

3:07

imagine that that's not what actually happened.

3:10

What actually happened is you were like, I want to

3:12

be a Broadway dancer and

3:14

you left out of the room like a

3:16

gazelle. Right. I was like,

3:18

can I do it? I've already found

3:21

Carmen, San Diego. How many times

3:23

Broderbahn I've got to figure out what,

3:26

what next? I'm done. And then she's like,

3:28

well, I think that was part of the problem is I figured shit

3:30

out a little too quick sometimes. And then

3:32

I disrupt everybody else because

3:34

they're still trying to figure it out. It's when I'm cracking

3:36

jokes and then I get in trouble. So that's

3:38

what happened when I was younger and probably still today.

3:41

I imagine that that's a similar story from

3:43

just about every standup comedian that's

3:45

ever been right in school, they were

3:48

telling jokes and getting in trouble and being sent

3:50

to the principal or Dean's office.

3:52

And you know, their grades were probably average

3:54

because they were focused on making people laugh rather

3:57

than being a straight A student.

3:59

mom would always get phone calls and then

4:02

they would be like, you know, your son said this today totally

4:04

disrupted the class. And she's like, Well, what did he say?

4:06

And then she said, Well, we're in this and he learned

4:08

this and he said this, and she but

4:11

bust out laughing. Oh my god, that's pretty funny.

4:13

My mom was

4:16

not a deterrent. And what was funny was

4:18

at that time for me is that they still did swats

4:21

in school. And so I would disrupt

4:23

the class. I would I literally

4:25

got to the point I'd be like, Okay, is this funny

4:27

enough to is it worth a swat? Okay,

4:29

this is where the swat and I would go out have

4:31

to go out in the hall, then the principal would see

4:33

me. All right, come on, Travis, let's get a

4:35

couple swats and then got a couple swats

4:38

and then went back to class and sat down a little more,

4:40

a little more gingerly. Did you have

4:42

your own SWAT team there

4:44

on call and you'd go home and say, Mom, I

4:46

told a SWAT worthy joke today and she'd go attaboy.

4:49

This joke was totally SWAT worthy. Listen to this

4:51

one. Oh, actually, I didn't have one that was SWAT worthy.

4:54

I'd say this one. So I was in eighth grade

4:56

and Mrs. Hedger's class and Mrs. Hedger,

4:58

she did not like me so much at that time, she

5:01

ended up I ended up being one of her favorite students because

5:03

she ended up teaching in high school too. But

5:06

we were she was teaching eighth grade English. And

5:08

she said I said something and she made me

5:10

go out in the hall with the dictionary. And

5:12

from the letter I started the beginning

5:14

of I and in right every definition

5:17

all the way down to idiot.

5:18

So I get down to idiot. I

5:20

go idiot, someone who acts as an imbecile

5:22

or needs attention and I go dot

5:25

dot also see Mrs. Hedger.

5:30

My mom busted up laughing on that one. She cannot

5:33

believe I have balls to say that. That's perfect.

5:35

Love it. All right. Well, I'm

5:38

a completely different subject. Making

5:41

smart contracts easy to write is

5:43

the subject matter of our interview

5:45

today with Henning Dietrich. I think you guys are

5:47

gonna like this as he talks about symbolic

5:50

AI, the eternity chain. This

5:52

is a dude who's been there from the beginning of

5:55

a theorem. So listen

5:57

in. Here we go.

6:02

We do talk a lot about AI,

6:04

not just on this show, but also

6:06

on the bad AI show. And many

6:09

people want to know what is the connection

6:11

between AI and cryptocurrency

6:14

blockchain smart contracts. Well,

6:16

today's guest is going to help bring

6:18

it all together for us to unify

6:21

it. His name is Henning Dietrich

6:23

and Henning is the creator of Lexon,

6:26

which is a programming language that makes blockchain

6:28

smart contracts readable

6:31

in plain English. He's got a

6:33

storied background with IBM. He was

6:35

the first architect of the blockchain

6:38

hyperledger. He's worked with the Ethereum

6:40

development team. I think this guy

6:42

probably knows what he's talking about. So Henning,

6:44

welcome to the Bad Crypto Podcast, sir. Hey,

6:47

great. Thanks for having me. Go

6:51

ahead and fill in the gaps there of your

6:53

history in blockchain and who

6:55

you've worked with. So we get a better feel of

6:58

who we're talking to here.

6:59

Yeah, sure. I mean, I basically

7:01

have been part of the Ethereum

7:04

crowd when they came to Berlin for the first time.

7:07

And I was working in mobile

7:09

payment at that point in time and a colleague of mine

7:11

never stopped talking about crypto and how that

7:13

would be so much better as compared

7:16

to how we were trying to address dinosaur

7:18

APIs that were so old that

7:20

people literally forgot how to use them,

7:23

trying to connect smartphones to banks,

7:25

basically. So I

7:28

hung around and I was actually there on DEFCON

7:30

Zero and

7:33

was, of course, fascinated. For

7:36

me, I guess the big thing about

7:39

blockchain was that it solved something

7:41

that I thought couldn't be solved. Right. And that was

7:43

Bitcoin. And all of a sudden, oh, right. That's

7:45

how we do it. It was just a genius solution.

7:47

And then I found that

7:49

underneath, even Bitcoin had actually

7:51

a programming language, right? Script. And

7:54

I was hooked. There was a lot

7:56

of things coming together, really, from my programming

7:58

experience because I had been doing.

7:59

high velocity databases

8:02

where you also have this challenge of consensus

8:04

between different machines. I've

8:08

been doing cryptography as in different

8:11

use cases, but all of that was basically

8:13

coming together. And then long story short, at some point

8:15

it was

8:16

summoned to San Francisco, became one

8:18

of the first dozen who was basically

8:20

tasked finding out what IBM should be doing

8:23

in blockchain. And before

8:25

I knew it, I was basically the technical

8:28

architect of Hyperledger. So

8:31

that was a real fascinating journey, of course.

8:34

IBM at first was exploring

8:37

whether they would get fully behind Ethereum.

8:39

And I would

8:41

have wished actually for this to happen, but then it was also

8:44

an awesome opportunity of course to create

8:47

a blockchain that had a very strong

8:50

focus, a very good focus on

8:52

how businesses would be using blockchain. So

8:55

that was also a very

8:59

interesting experience on the corporate side, like

9:01

a huge company. It's

9:03

not necessarily that always would

9:06

listen to the technicians. There are a lot of marketing

9:10

aspects that they're thinking

9:13

about. And then at a certain point in time, I

9:15

drifted away from that and became

9:18

part of

9:18

a department within IBM that was again working with

9:21

Ethereum. And then I was a little bit off the go

9:23

between the Ethereum world and IBM,

9:25

and giving talks, becoming Mr.

9:27

Blockchain, because at that point nobody yet

9:30

was talking about blockchain

9:32

at IBM. It was still not quite clear

9:35

whether that topic would be something

9:38

that IBM would really bet on. And then

9:40

it was really interesting that when IBM joined

9:42

the field and really got behind blockchain,

9:44

came out with Hyperledger, that was actually really

9:46

good for the entire field at that point, because it

9:48

was a little bit in the slump, but then IBM, the

9:50

big name behind that,

9:53

that was really pushing new

9:55

life, breathing new life in the whole industry.

9:58

Here I

10:01

was actually confronted with

10:04

the legal aspects

10:07

of blockchain, smart contracts.

10:11

One of the

10:12

monikers back then was like IBM

10:14

was talking about the democracy of things. Like that

10:16

was the IoT concept with blockchain that

10:19

IBM

10:20

was pushing at that point.

10:22

The question was what happens if a smart contract

10:25

is even just frivolously sued, right?

10:27

And you can't even stop it. So

10:30

that's where this idea emerged that

10:32

it would be great if smart contracts would be readable

10:36

for not only programmers but for everybody.

10:39

And this was something that I then later

10:41

pursued when I even when I left IBM, I was more and

10:45

more interested in these discussions

10:47

about what is a smart contract in the first place.

10:49

There was this

10:51

discussion about his code law, law

10:54

is code and so on. And

10:58

that's over some Christmas break. I was sitting down

11:00

basically and

11:01

checking whether it could work, that you have

11:03

a programming language that is completely human readable.

11:07

That really reads like English text. And

11:09

it looked like, yeah, it was

11:12

in reach that you could actually create something

11:14

crazy like this. I had created programming

11:17

languages before.

11:18

Because in crypto, everybody

11:21

was talking about it, but nobody was really sitting down

11:23

doing it. I felt like, okay, maybe I

11:25

give this a try. And then I was lucky that I was in

11:27

the talk circuit

11:29

back then and met law professors through

11:32

Constance Choice Koala, where

11:34

I would give you keynotes and talks

11:37

explaining blockchain to normal

11:39

people at this point. Also wrote

11:41

this book back then. Do you know this book? Maybe

11:43

by any chance. Did you ever see that? It's called

11:46

Ethereum. Ethereum, right? It

11:48

was the first book on Ethereum that

11:50

I wrote back then. So I was always interested in

11:53

bringing the technology. What

11:55

year would that have been by chance? What

11:57

ballpark time frame?

11:59

Pardon? year did that book come

12:01

out? yeah that was 2017, 2016, 2017. so it was really the first

12:07

book around right? it was exactly when

12:09

things took off and it was an Amazon number one

12:11

bestseller and it was a

12:14

really amazing experience because I had just

12:16

written it like I wanted. just

12:19

tried my hand at doing this and then it was

12:21

a huge success and people were coming back and thanking

12:23

me for how this changed

12:26

their lives and that was very

12:28

very rewarding in the end. so

12:31

in the same spirit of basically explaining

12:33

or making accessible what for

12:35

us technicians is like our

12:38

own separate world, Lexon,

12:40

this programming language basically that reads

12:42

like normal English is something

12:44

that you can write smart contracts in

12:47

and what I'm using under the hood is stuff that

12:49

is basically AI technology

12:52

that has been developed for symbolic

12:55

AI which is very complementary

12:57

what we have now which is generative AI

13:00

but it's more about executing stuff more

13:03

like having a model within your computer that you

13:05

can then act on right? it's not so much about

13:07

generating text in an intelligent way

13:10

but it's about using this text

13:12

and it really has a completely different

13:16

inner working right? the number

13:18

crunching that you use from generative AI

13:21

like the feeding and training the artificial

13:23

intelligence that all works completely different.

13:26

it's just not churning these crazy

13:29

amounts of data but it's instead

13:31

working with very precise models of

13:34

what the actual structure

13:36

of a document is. let's

13:38

take a step back real quick because

13:41

I have a feeling that we can wind you up and you can just

13:43

go on and on and on we got to

13:45

get a pause in every once in a while.

13:48

I want to make sure that people understand

13:51

what's going on with this. so you basically

13:54

created this plain text on

13:57

the website lexon.org a

13:59

plain text

13:59

text programming languages that

14:02

basically allow for digital contracts

14:04

and laws to create this trustless

14:07

layer between text

14:09

and the legal system. So is

14:11

what you're saying is any attorney, anyone

14:14

can basically say, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop,

14:16

bop, bop, bop, here it is, here's our legal jargon

14:18

BS and and then generate

14:21

a smart contract or are people

14:23

taking their smart contracts they've already written

14:25

and then plug it into your system and

14:28

translate it into lawyer

14:31

ease or are you just writing

14:33

it directly inside Lexon

14:36

and executing it from there. I

14:38

don't think I fully understand that.

14:40

Yeah, thanks for thanks for giving

14:42

me the chance to clarify. So Lexon

14:44

is its own language. It is

14:46

a subset of English,

14:49

which is why when you write in it, you can

14:51

perfectly read it.

14:53

And if you scroll down a little bit, you also

14:56

see an example

14:58

there you go, like on the left hand side,

15:00

that's Lexon, right? Lex escrow.

15:03

So this is code we're looking at here. This

15:06

is actually this is actually the scripting language

15:08

itself that I'm reading, which is reading

15:10

like a poem.

15:12

It says Lex escrow,

15:14

payer is a person payee

15:17

is a person arbiter is a person payments

15:19

and amount.

15:20

The payer pays a payment in escrow appoints

15:22

the payee appoints the arbiter and also fixes

15:25

the fee. This is a smart contract I'm looking at here.

15:27

Yes, exactly.

15:28

And I'll be happy to live demo to a

15:30

certain degree how this is automatically translated

15:33

into a blockchain smart

15:35

contract. The

15:39

trick, so to say is that this

15:41

is a subset of English, like you couldn't

15:43

just write anything you wanted. It's

15:46

not about

15:47

taking just any contract and

15:49

filling it in there. It has a very clear grammar

15:52

that is unambiguous, which is super important.

15:54

And it also has a certain document structure,

15:56

which is taken from how contracts work

15:59

like they have the definitions in the beginning,

16:01

and they have recital, then they have clauses,

16:04

but you really have to keep to that, right? So

16:07

the focus is really about creating readability

16:10

for everybody to be inclusive

16:12

for everybody to come and join

16:14

and double-check what the content actually is

16:16

and broadening what it means what the development

16:19

team actually is, right?

16:23

So is there an attorney on the

16:25

team? Yeah, it's like, because it's

16:27

like you're creating this new language, it's almost

16:29

like somebody would need to have

16:33

expertise in law

16:37

and have expertise in blockchain

16:39

to be able to create this. So you've

16:42

created this, you told us your background, you worked

16:44

at IBM, you've created some code in languages

16:46

and stuff. What background do you have in

16:48

law that allows you

16:50

to create this, that way

16:52

attorneys

16:53

and lawyers would be like, oh yeah, this is totally

16:55

legit, we love this. So there's

16:57

a lot of input in there from law professors

16:59

that I was super lucky to make

17:02

themselves available and they were interested

17:04

in this, helping me to, you know,

17:07

even understand how the whole structure

17:09

has to be and making it as much

17:11

inviting for lawyers and people

17:14

from the legal business as possible, right? I

17:17

do, as a freelancer, I do have sufficiently

17:22

involuntary experience with

17:25

courts and how all that works because, you know, every

17:27

five years or so somebody doesn't pay you and then you

17:30

have to learn that part of life too. And

17:33

you also learn how it's completely deficient, right? It's

17:35

really not working well and people

17:38

are, people who know the tricks, they

17:40

use it against you really, really badly, right?

17:43

So that there is something there that

17:45

this 2,000 year old industry

17:48

is ripe for disruption. That's

17:51

pretty obvious, right? I mean, from some simple

17:53

facts, like we're all supposed to follow

17:56

bookshelves of laws that nobody is really

17:59

able to even read.

17:59

in their whole lives, but we're

18:01

still expected to follow all of them, right? I mean, obviously,

18:04

this can't be. This is British law, maritime law

18:06

here, don't you know? No,

18:10

I don't, right? But it doesn't help me. Yeah,

18:12

a lot of stuff. It's like, what if this doesn't even make any sense?

18:14

So let me ask this. Let me ask this

18:17

as a potential case study.

18:18

So we did some work with

18:21

a crypto company, right? And

18:23

we agreed upon a price. And

18:26

let's say that the price of that that

18:28

we agreed on was, say, 20 grand. And

18:30

then the token price is at a

18:32

certain low price. Let's say it's at 2 cents.

18:35

And then you go, okay, so you owe us 20

18:37

grand, and we're

18:39

going to pay. And here's the price, the strike price

18:42

we agree upon, right? 2 cents. But

18:44

then you do all this work and you

18:46

blow up their ends up, their token ends

18:48

up exploding because you've done a great job. Now

18:51

the token's worth 90 cents. And now

18:53

they want to pay you like 25,000 tokens

18:56

because, oh, well, our tokens worth 90 cents.

18:59

Is there a way to do digital escrow

19:02

in a way with your system to

19:04

be like, okay, so $20,000 worth

19:08

of 2 cent tokens is

19:10

this amount locked up. Once

19:13

this work is done, you get the

19:15

keys or it will unlock to you to make

19:17

it easy. Because I think one thing in crypto

19:19

is that

19:21

companies aren't paying correctly

19:23

based on what we agree upon because

19:26

they don't have to. And there's no real good escrow

19:29

system in place.

19:30

Yes. So the

19:33

solution to that is a lazy one,

19:35

is a simple one using stablecoins, right?

19:38

And there are coming there are more interesting stablecoins

19:40

coming out now, for example, out of Wyoming, where

19:42

you have 102% coverage.

19:45

And that is really what

19:48

you do then to avoid this

19:50

kind of trap, right?

19:52

That is one of the things that

19:55

is basically on the roadmap for this right

19:57

now, what it is doing,

19:59

in native tokens, but it's relatively

20:02

straightforward to build this

20:04

towards opening this up for

20:06

the token of your choice, right? But what we have

20:08

right now, that is, for

20:11

example, an E for the eternity blockchain or

20:13

an Ether for Ethereum,

20:15

and isn't quite there yet to

20:17

avoid also the this

20:21

pitfall that you were describing at this point. That's

20:25

one of the things where, for example, another

20:27

thing is, I'm a

20:29

believer that we will have an additional

20:31

layer in the blockchain world where you

20:33

will to a certain degree be able to roll

20:35

back what a smart contract does.

20:38

Because my ambition really is to make it to

20:41

be an interface basically to

20:43

the legal world, right, to really make

20:45

it useful for normal business, right?

20:48

And the fact of the matter is that a judge can

20:50

in the end

20:51

retrospectively like change the truth,

20:54

right? So to be able to

20:56

be in sync with the law,

20:59

you have to find a way that a judge can actually do

21:03

pretty much anything they want to a contract,

21:05

right? But that's very possible. And that's also

21:07

something that from the beginning was part of this concept.

21:10

That's not maybe what the focus is

21:13

on right now. That's not the AI part,

21:16

so to say. That's a different architectural

21:18

element about blockchains. But

21:20

yes, I mean, that's definitely things that to

21:23

be useful for real business,

21:25

so to say, you want to address these

21:27

questions.

21:28

And of course, you know, we're talking

21:31

about the law. Smart contracts apply

21:33

to, you know, so many things across the blockchain

21:35

space. I'm thinking NFTs, right? If

21:37

I go and I look up the board, a

21:40

Yacht Club address in the contract,

21:43

I met with, you know, language

21:45

that I don't understand,

21:46

right? I don't get this. Can

21:49

Lexon take an existing contract

21:52

and rewrite it in

21:55

plain English and be functional,

21:58

or is that a goal of something that you want?

21:59

to be able to do? I think

22:02

the goal here is what you would want

22:04

to have is something that reads like Lexon

22:06

in place of this Solidity contract, right? And

22:10

that is something that we're definitely working

22:12

towards.

22:13

Interestingly, for example,

22:15

the Remix guys from the Ethereum Remix,

22:17

they're interested in Lexon because

22:19

they saw that it actually helps learning Solidity,

22:22

which is true, because when you type

22:24

Lexon and you see what Solidity is created from

22:26

that, that's a great tool to basically

22:29

get into how Solidity works, right?

22:32

But unfortunately, going from Solidity

22:34

to Lexon, not

22:37

really possible. The third generation language

22:39

that Solidity is part of, there is something

22:42

that is

22:43

basically ripped out and the

22:45

level of meaning that is really

22:47

difficult to build back in, so to say, into

22:49

Solidity to go then back to natural language.

22:52

I've been asked this question a lot of time.

22:54

I wish the answer was yes,

22:56

because of course, right, a lot of people have

22:59

a lot of Solidity code that

23:01

they would love to basically become

23:03

human readable. But because of this

23:05

information problem that there's just something

23:08

missing, if you have something that's really

23:10

just programmed out in Solidity,

23:12

that path directly is not what

23:14

you can have, unfortunately.

23:17

Can you give us an

23:19

example, right? I want you to share your screen

23:22

right here. I'm going to put this up and

23:25

I want you to go ahead and

23:27

give us an idea and kind of walk us through

23:29

what does this look like in its simplest

23:31

form. Tell us what we're looking at here.

23:33

Yeah, so we're looking at a compiler

23:36

right now, an online compiler that

23:39

is on the left-hand side having

23:41

a field where I'll be typing Lexon

23:44

text, and then on the right-hand side, you're going to see Solidity

23:46

text popping up, actually, and I'll be talking

23:49

to that a little bit, what you're seeing.

23:51

And I'm going to use exactly

23:54

the code that you see as

23:57

the first example on the Lexon.org

23:59

website.

24:00

So I just type Lexescrow,

24:02

right? And what the compiler does from that

24:05

is visible now on the right-hand side,

24:07

and it basically just creates an empty

24:09

solidity contract, right, it just says, pregnant

24:11

solidity contract, escrow, constructor, public,

24:14

table, that's all. And then I write,

24:16

I start with the definition. Now I write, payer is

24:19

a person.

24:20

So that's

24:22

the definition block, what that every Lexan

24:25

contract starts with. And on the right-hand side, you see,

24:27

it starts to fill in

24:30

the fields into the object or

24:33

into the contract, and it writes

24:35

address payable payer, and then the constructor

24:38

gets a

24:39

command payer equals message

24:41

sender, right? And then I continue with

24:44

that, and I, as the next element,

24:46

I'm

24:47

payee, and on the right-hand

24:50

side, it adds, again, address

24:52

payable payee, and then I add

24:56

notary, for example, or arbiter as it's

24:58

called on the website,

25:01

and then I add the fee that

25:03

is an amount, and

25:05

so on. So that's, and

25:08

now on the right-hand side, I have a

25:11

contract defined with the different

25:14

elements and address payable payer, address payable

25:16

payee, address payable notary, UN fee, constructor

25:19

address payable payee, address, and so on,

25:21

right? And on the left-hand side, I just have

25:23

payer is a person, payee is a person, notary is a

25:25

person, but payee is a person.

25:28

So is that pretty standard? Is that gonna be in every

25:30

one that you write when you're like payer

25:32

is a person, this is a this, that is a that?

25:35

Is there like a dictionary that you're

25:37

pulling those things from? Or I would say like

25:39

payer is this

25:41

company, payee is Travis. I

25:45

mean, it's almost like there's

25:47

like little blocks there and it's generating that

25:50

text, but if you don't know what you're supposed

25:52

to put maybe even over there in that left

25:54

column, you're gonna be like,

25:56

okay, so what are my options to even

25:59

put in there?

25:59

Yes, so you have, as

26:03

I said, right, the focus is on

26:06

making the whole thing readable. Like

26:08

when you write a contract, like

26:11

a legal agreement,

26:12

you also have to know as a lawyer what you're putting

26:15

there, right. And learning lexon is a little

26:17

bit the same way, like you have to understand

26:19

what grammar, what

26:22

sentences is allowed. And

26:24

it's actually pretty simple sentences, so it's not

26:26

difficult to learn.

26:28

But it's not like some

26:30

people can reference, like if some attorney

26:32

or something is putting something together, because

26:34

I see on your website, Joel, if you want to pull that up

26:36

the all those different use cases,

26:38

that's pretty handy. And then also that that

26:41

example, the precise internal model

26:43

where it's showing clauses in this cause

26:45

in the body and the statement and the

26:47

and the whatever and this and the preposition

26:50

and that, that, that, that. So those are all terms that

26:52

attorneys are going to know laymen like

26:54

us, we're just going to look at it and be glossed

26:56

over like, but you're

26:58

not going to go to smart contract anyway, Trev.

27:01

This isn't for us. This

27:04

is a good question. Who is this exactly

27:06

for? Would you say it's for attorneys? No,

27:09

I think it's for everybody, right? This is really

27:11

for making smart contracts to a do it yourself

27:14

thing and then giving making contracting

27:16

part of what the definition of literacy

27:19

is even

27:19

right, because now we use to

27:22

smart contracts being something that startups do

27:24

that is a big, expensive thing.

27:26

But it could be a different right. The

27:29

I think the name of smart contracts

27:31

wasn't such a bad choice. And

27:34

you could have a completely different culture,

27:36

how

27:37

blockchains could be used and how people

27:39

could be contracting directly with each other. Right.

27:42

And that's actually, I think that is the future

27:44

that's that is going to happen because next on makes

27:46

this so easy. And we will end up having

27:48

a one click deployment and

27:50

path where people

27:52

basically pull from a template, right,

27:54

and then get help

27:57

from generative AI

27:59

to to.

27:59

write up what they actually want to articulate.

28:02

Then at a certain point they will make sure

28:04

there's no hallucination in there. And then

28:07

they will go and click

28:09

the button and say, okay, this is the contract that I actually

28:11

want.

28:13

So it looks like you're, you're

28:15

building this on the eternity

28:17

chain. Um, uses the

28:20

old English eight, what do they call that with the

28:22

A and the E or together as one

28:25

character?

28:26

Apparently, yeah. So we go,

28:29

we're going to have a launch

28:31

of this, of the newest version of the compiler

28:34

on the eternity blockchain. And

28:37

that is something where we had really bringing

28:39

the work from the last month and

28:41

years together, where we have a new grammar. We

28:44

have basically something from

28:45

scratch that is even more powerful

28:48

than what we had before.

28:51

And where we are looking right

28:53

now for people who want to dive into this,

28:55

give us feedback, become part of the community,

28:57

basically. And, um, uh,

29:00

the eternity, uh, website,

29:02

the eternity blockchain basically has this advantage. It is

29:05

in a certain sense, what Ethereum

29:07

would have loved to be. Um,

29:11

it is very accessible and it's very cheap

29:13

and you can really do microtransactors with this and try

29:15

things out. Right. So that's a, that's a great

29:18

advantage. It's it's, it has very

29:20

good engineering. It has like super,

29:22

uh,

29:23

burst telecom and, and, uh, finance

29:25

programmers who

29:27

created the smart contract language

29:31

and the whole chain. So that's all, uh,

29:32

it's pretty sound. And it's a pretty strong

29:34

proposition about how a blockchain should

29:37

actually be to, uh, to be useful.

29:43

That is fascinating. So I guess, you know, I was

29:45

reading on here and talks about, you know, the eternity blockchain

29:48

and you have a token that's going to be built

29:51

on top of this. So maybe,

29:53

you know, I know this is not, uh,

29:55

where you're promoting what you're doing there, but maybe

29:57

explain how would a token even.

29:59

work on your platform? Oh,

30:02

it's simple. I mean, you just pay with a token for

30:04

the compilation, right? There's this online compiler,

30:06

as I just showed you, and for one successful

30:08

compilation of a Smart Contract, you

30:11

pay one token. That's as simple

30:13

as it is, right? It's basically a voucher for

30:16

making these translations.

30:19

That's simple enough. So why

30:22

eternity? I mean, if most people

30:24

are writing Smart Contracts on Ethereum

30:26

and these other more

30:28

popular chains, it doesn't matter,

30:30

right? You pick the chain to run the utility,

30:32

but the contract can be deployed on any

30:34

blockchain.

30:35

Oh yeah, I mean, Lexon already

30:38

has basically three targets. It has

30:40

Solidity, so that's Ethereum. It

30:42

has Sophia, which is Eternity,

30:45

but it also has JavaScript,

30:47

which is the computational law community

30:50

and has nothing to do with blockchain at all. Where

30:53

computational law is something that exists since

30:55

the 40s, basically, is all about analyzing

30:58

a contract, making a computer understand the contract.

31:01

And they are not even interested

31:03

in blockchain because they feel like that's just making

31:05

the problem even more complicated. They

31:07

are happy to actually just

31:10

work with a normal programming language, and it doesn't

31:12

have anything to do with trust, like

31:15

technology underneath. Of course, I find trustless

31:18

is more than the icing on the cake,

31:20

right? It's really what makes the

31:22

huge difference, and I think the

31:25

huge business potential of the whole thing is. But

31:27

the computational law

31:30

community is really happy

31:32

about the JavaScript version of this. So that's

31:35

just three targets. We will

31:37

extend this. We will go beyond this because

31:40

that is an expression of how Lexon

31:42

is really the nexus, if you want,

31:44

between natural language and different target

31:46

languages and different technologies,

31:48

because it really has the meaning in

31:51

an internal model of what the document means. And

31:53

then creating out of that different

31:56

computer languages is

31:59

not trivial. but it's

32:01

relatively fast actually. So

32:03

there you go, Trav, if you're going to school to

32:06

learn how to use Solidity, then

32:08

Henning's putting you out of business basically. No,

32:12

it's really interesting. So now I'm going down a

32:14

rabbit hole. Let me ask you this then as a

32:17

bystander of this, but somebody who has

32:19

said, eternity is,

32:22

which it looks like a-thurnity, but eternity

32:24

is a great product.

32:26

So I'm looking at this, like what makes it a

32:28

great product? As I'm looking at it right now, I'm

32:30

looking at, it's been around almost six

32:32

years,

32:33

and it has basically

32:35

had very little volume overall,

32:38

speaking,

32:39

overall looking at it since like

32:42

June of 2021. And

32:44

so it looks like maybe they're still building

32:46

stuff, but their market cap is $16 million.

32:49

So either it's something that's really

32:51

awesome that a lot of people don't know about, or people

32:54

are just kind of forgetting about it. Like

32:56

what's your overall thoughts on eternity

32:59

and why is that a good solution?

33:01

Yeah, I mean, this really reminds me to

33:04

the time when I was writing analysis

33:07

about blockchains for IBM.

33:09

And at some point I had written an analysis

33:12

about IOTA, and

33:14

I basically said, well,

33:17

it doesn't really work, right?

33:21

And they didn't care. And then later they

33:24

asked me again if I would write an analysis about IOTA

33:26

again. And I said, I still said, why do you

33:28

think the analysis is gonna be different, right?

33:30

Yeah, well, there was investor interest. Of

33:34

course my analysis was not different, but looking

33:38

at what a blockchain can actually do and how sound

33:40

it is underneath is pretty different

33:45

from looking at what the numbers are and

33:47

how successful and popular it is. And

33:49

I can tell you, eternity totally tanked

33:51

because they had an attack in

33:53

the exactly wrong moment.

33:55

Not that Bitcoin never had this big

33:58

blow up or Ethereum had this big. blow

34:00

up also like in the middle of a death con. But

34:03

for eternity it wasn't forgiven, right? They

34:06

just suffered really badly from it. I

34:10

can look into what the quality of

34:12

the chain is myself. I know what happened. I know

34:15

where the code wasn't perfect

34:17

at that point. Like it wasn't for Ethereum or Bitcoin

34:20

at exactly that time of maturity, right?

34:23

So yeah, that happens. I mean, that's

34:26

an unfortunate truth that I think

34:28

what is actually making it

34:30

big and what is technologically

34:32

on a good level can be

34:35

very different things, right? I would

34:37

know. It looks like they're still in it. They're still

34:39

doing stuff. They're launching. They've upgraded

34:42

their nodes. They've been going through and creating

34:46

it. They're not the only project, right? That is in

34:48

the moment, not in the limelight, but where

34:51

people are convinced of what

34:53

they're doing there and they're toiling away. And it's

34:55

just you have the stars and

34:57

then you have the people who actually work.

35:00

It's

35:00

like four cents right now. So that's crazy. Considering

35:02

that it was five dollars at one point.

35:05

Well, is the listing on

35:07

CoinGecko,

35:08

is that the actual token

35:11

now? Because it says, let me put this up

35:13

on the screen so you guys can see it as

35:15

well. It says, mainnet's

35:18

live. There's still a tokens on Ethereum

35:20

managed by the contract that is here,

35:23

but the contract expired in 2019. So

35:25

are people buying when

35:27

they go here on Ethereum? Are they buying

35:29

the actual token or do they have to get the

35:31

token

35:32

on the eternity chain? No,

35:35

no. I mean, that's old news, literally.

35:39

This is its own chain and E

35:41

is the token of the eternity blockchain.

35:43

I'm sorry. What is the AE is

35:45

the token?

35:46

Yeah. So that's the

35:49

native token of the eternity blockchain. And

35:51

it's not. This is accurate. What we're looking

35:53

here, what people are trading as of this recording,

35:55

it's around four cents a token. Yeah.

35:58

And it's.

35:59

started as a new C20 on

36:02

Ethereum. But the the

36:04

tag there on coin gecko is not

36:06

that's all news. That's not correct.

36:09

One gecko is not updated.

36:10

Kind of like us have old news.

36:13

It's still having

36:15

take a look at it. Because it is like people are looking

36:17

at that they're seeing the old

36:19

ERC 20, you know, address

36:22

there and they're going to plug it in and check things out.

36:24

But that's not might not be correct. So that's good. Good

36:27

to know that it might not be in the right place. And I

36:29

want to go check it out. It looks like the price is still accurate.

36:32

But it just might be the wrong address in there.

36:34

Yeah, dangerous. Well, Henny, appreciate you. Joe,

36:37

have you done any research on eternity at all? Because

36:39

I don't know.

36:41

Just another chain that I've never

36:44

heard of. And it seems like you know, there's more

36:46

and more. And,

36:48

you know, we're gonna let them duke it out. And

36:51

hopefully the cream will will rise to

36:54

the top. This is a it's this, you

36:56

know, one of the things you look for in chains

36:58

is use cases. And certainly

37:01

Lexon, you know, real English smart

37:03

contract coding could be a very practical

37:06

use case for Yeah,

37:08

to say that again, I mean, the good point

37:10

about that is it's really fast. It's not clogged.

37:12

And it's really economic to have your smart contract

37:15

on them. So having the do it yourself environment

37:17

of your dreams, right?

37:19

Well, you said something you said it's what a theory

37:21

and wishes it had been. And then I

37:23

hear you say that and I go, Wait a second. Well,

37:25

this dude worked at IBM, he

37:27

was doing the hyperledger stuff. And he's saying

37:30

that about this, that makes me

37:32

want to go and look at it. Obviously, not financial

37:34

advice to anyone.

37:35

But it's fascinating to hear

37:37

why you think that that this is

37:40

maybe a better solution. Yes.

37:42

And by the time this is airing, then hopefully

37:44

people will be looking out also what

37:47

the year C 20 like token, the Lex

37:49

token on the eternity blockchain

37:52

is doing because that's called a x nine

37:54

on eternity. And that's how we

37:56

are going to start on the tax nine.

37:58

That's

38:02

ERC 20 standard on how

38:04

it's called on eternity. Eric's nine and the

38:06

token. Like the LAX

38:08

token or something.

38:10

Exactly. We're going to have an LAX token and

38:12

that's why how you buy the compile time. Very

38:15

nice. There

38:16

you go. Well, listen, Hey, we appreciate

38:18

you coming on and edumacating us. Hopefully

38:21

you guys enjoy the conversation today

38:23

and there's links in the show notes

38:25

to the various places that we went.

38:27

Thanks again, Henning. Appreciate you. Thank

38:30

you guys so much.

38:44

Hey, thanks, Henning for this info

38:47

today. We do appreciate it. Hey,

38:49

trap harkening back to our conversation

38:52

prior to the interview. Did you

38:54

ever imagine, you know, as a kid that

38:57

you'd be doing something like this? Today,

38:59

did you see yourself as an author, as a

39:01

speaker, as a broadcaster?

39:04

Did you think that you would be, you know, this tech

39:07

fiend that would be talking about the latest

39:09

happenings in technology

39:11

advancements?

39:12

I thought it would be actually in some sort

39:14

of form of entertainment level, because I

39:16

know I like crack jokes. And when

39:19

I went to college and I took all the improv classes

39:21

and I, I got selected to go

39:23

to second city. And right when that

39:26

happened, we found out that my

39:28

girl was pregnant with my first kid. So

39:30

I was like, Oh, I guess I can't go to Chicago, the second

39:33

city. So that's just one of those destiny checkpoints

39:35

I look at and I go, whoa. But, you

39:37

know, you're stuck here with me.

39:40

I'm done to stay. I got to sit down in comedy

39:42

with you and this shitty podcast. I mean, bad

39:44

podcast. But,

39:47

you know, my first job was a radio disc jockey

39:50

as one of your first ones. And so it's like being

39:52

in front of a microphone doesn't feel foreign to

39:55

us at all, right?

39:56

No, it's very, very natural. And,

39:58

you know, when your first.

39:59

to DJ. It's like, all right, what am I doing

40:02

here? And maybe a little nervous. So when you first

40:04

speak on stage, you might be a little nervous. And now

40:06

all of it, you know, we've done it for so long.

40:08

It's like walking into our own living room, whether

40:10

you're at a stage in front of thousands of

40:12

people or, you know, or you're in front of

40:14

a microphone broadcasting to thousands of people.

40:16

It's all, I mean, I know we went on radio city

40:18

music hall, dude. I got, I wasn't even really nervous.

40:21

I get all, it's like, dude, I'm going over to radio

40:23

city music hall stage and I'm like,

40:25

where are my nerves? I don't have

40:27

any, I know it's, it's, it's a weird thing. You

40:30

know what? Maybe because it's like, there's a comfort

40:33

factor between you, you and I are going on

40:35

stage right now. Boom. Let's go kill it. So maybe

40:37

that kind of diffuses any of my

40:39

potential nerves that I would have had, but

40:42

radio city musical seems to me to be one

40:44

that in my mind historically, I know

40:46

that even when I go do a keynote, sometimes if

40:48

there's a big crowd, I'm like, all right, let's go. Tdubs.

40:50

But

40:52

you know, radio city music hall, that place was freaking packed.

40:54

I mean, went on stage after spike Lee. And

40:57

I was like, okay, here we are. Let's go. Well,

40:59

it was probably because I was, I was

41:02

hodling you, you know, backstage beforehand

41:04

and singing you a little lullaby. Huddle

41:06

me closer, Tony Danza.

41:09

Hey everybody. Thanks for

41:11

joining us. Wait until next

41:13

week. We finally got Dan Mapes

41:16

of the spatial web to, uh,

41:18

to join us for an interview. And

41:21

this is going to be mind

41:22

blowing for you guys because you are going

41:24

to see into the future of

41:26

the internet. Like never before. This is

41:28

not hyped up hyperbole here. Hyperbole

41:32

hyperbole hyper

41:34

burps. Yeah. Hyperbole.

41:36

Yeah. This is, this is the

41:39

real deal. This is not, Hey, maybe

41:41

tech is going to go this way. Maybe this protocol

41:43

will become, no, this is happening already.

41:46

And Dan has got a lot to say. You

41:48

want to just go ahead and bookmark now, make sure you

41:51

are subscribedified

41:52

that you have your notifications on

41:54

that. You ring all the bells and this would be a great

41:56

time to turn to any nerdy friends

41:58

you have that understand. The

42:01

vision of, hey, you know, technology's

42:03

changing. We need to keep up with where,

42:05

uh, where the puck is going. This next

42:07

episode is going to show you exactly

42:10

where it's going. And so you want to share this

42:12

with others.

42:13

Yeah. And I'm editing it right now and it's going to

42:15

be for the podcast, but then also it's

42:17

going to have some cool visuals if you're looking at it at

42:19

YouTube. So

42:21

choose your poison, baby. There you go. Thanks

42:23

as always. We appreciate your reviews, especially

42:26

if they're five star, if they're not, we

42:28

don't appreciate them as much. In fact, don't waste your time.

42:31

Yeah. You give us a one star review, then we mock

42:33

your little tiny micropenis.

42:37

What? Look at the tiny list. It

42:39

says, you know what we ought to do is we ought to stop glorifying

42:42

these serial killers and then giving them

42:44

like, Oh, it's the green river murderer,

42:47

the strangler, you know, the son of Sam.

42:49

They should just call him like the micropenis

42:52

maniac. And then like, man, like I

42:54

don't want to be one of those guys. All

42:58

right. Well, there you go. I, I'm going

43:00

to file that under not a bad idea. So

43:03

don't give us a one star, please. Yeah.

43:05

You and your little micropenis don't,

43:08

I think it's projection is what it is.

43:10

When, when they, when you give us a macro,

43:12

it's one inch. If you

43:15

give us, you know, five star, then it's telling

43:17

us your, you know, Hey, your least average, you

43:19

got some, you got some BDE, you

43:23

got to drop them on the five stars.

43:26

Everybody. Thanks again. We appreciate

43:29

you. We'll catch you on the next episode and stay

43:32

bad.