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The Filecoin Foundation is an organization responsible for the overall governance of Filecoin and will further support the development of the community and ecosystem . The mission of the Filecoin Distributed Web Foundation (FFDW) is to manage the development of open source software and open protocols to ensure the preservation of humanity's most important information . We can learn about the Filecoin Foundation and the Filecoin Distributed Web Foundation from the following conversation. Marta: Rainey, why use a decentralized network to perform your mission? Rainey Reitman is a member of the Board of Directors of FFDW. She is a prominent civil rights activist, including work at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Much of her work focuses on the decentralized web. I am drawn to projects in the decentralized web because I see how centralized webs frustrate users every day . I don’t think that networks that abuse terms of service and build profitable networks at the expense of consumer choice and consumer privacy when we visit websites are what we need. Instead, we must think about creating digital experiences that are enabled by untrustworthy technology monopolies. In the short term, decentralized alternatives can provide shelter for users who want to exit dealing with monopolistic tech companies, and in the long term, can create market alternatives that drive the entire industry to be more responsive to the actual needs of users. I see Filecoin as an important part of the ecosystem of decentralized tools that are exploring and designing a better digital future. Our foundation is to guide Filecoin to fulfill its mission of serving humanity and supporting the larger decentralized network. Marta: Sheila, how do you see blockchain and distributed ledger technology impacting the world? Sheila Warren is Head of Blockchain and DLT at the World Economic Forum. We’ll know we’ve “arrived” when no one talks about blockchain technology anymore. It will become self-evident when every technology stack has integrated blockchain at some point. When everything from storage to payments is decentralized, we’ll build and innovate everything on top of the fundamental assumption of decentralization. What's important is that we really need a cultural shift to happen. People need to realize that there are a lot of advantages to peer-to-peer. Any time you have an intermediary, you're giving them money, but you're also giving them power. Power in the form of control, check, or a host of other verbs we can use in our lives. Removing these intermediaries unlocks a tremendous amount of power. However, we still haven't seen the cultural understanding that these intermediaries have always done. One thing we hope is that this Filecoin effort will be global, and we think it needs to be more global and international. Marta: Ethreum’s growth is astounding. How did Filecoin Foundation build the ecosystem and gain such widespread adoption as Ethereum? Joe Lubin serves as an advisor to the Filecoin Foundation. Joe Lubin is the co-founder of Ethereum and founder and CEO of ConsenSys. Many in our ecosystem are building decentralized protocols with the common vision that these protocols will link and interoperate with each other. Together, these protocols will form an increasingly decentralized Internet and World Wide Web. ConsenSys has been close to the Protocol Labs project since the beginning. There are profound parallels between the Ethereum ecosystem and the Protocol Labs ecosystem. Protocol Labs has done an excellent job to date. In order to continue to be an important part of the decentralized web architecture, they need to do work that considers community, cryptoeconomics, marketing, smart and philosophically aligned talent, and ecosystem investment. It’s also important to think about enterprises in addition to the crypto-oriented crowd. Building developer tools for startups — for the revolutionaries — is important. But you also need to make the technology comfortable and understandable to the enterprises (the evolutionaries). Marta: How can a decentralized web solve the important problems you’re working on? Danny O'Brien is an advisor to FFDW. He is a prominent international campaigner for free speech and privacy online. He works in strategy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and is a founding member of the UK Open Rights Group. The issues that we're working on at the EFF and that other civil rights groups working with the internet are working on are increasingly global issues. They're no longer just confined to one particular country or region. So we're now working on solutions that can scale to a global scale. The lesson of the last few years is that when you're dealing with civil liberties and human rights on a global scale, any centralized solution really doesn't scale. I'm interested in decentralized networks and how to decentralize them not only technically but also geographically and support the diversity of people who now inhabit the digital world. Marta : What is the current state of blockchain policy and what should our policy goals be? Kristin Smith is the executive director of the Blockchain Association, the leading industry association working on blockchain policy. Looking at the crypto policy framework broadly, we don’t have a national framework for how to deal with blockchain and cryptocurrencies. We face challenges defining the different types of cryptocurrencies, and because of the lack of definition, we have a lot of uncertainty about what regulations apply and when. We do have some bright spots. Congress has put forward some very thoughtful legislative proposals, but we still have a lot of work to do. I think the policy goals are well known. We need to figure out how to classify different types of cryptocurrencies. We need to know the tax policy. We need to be clear about how to deal with the crypto market and how to ensure the integrity of the crypto market. Other members of the group are members of the Filecoin Foundation and FFDW. Members of the Filecoin Foundation include: Board of Directors: Brian Behlendorf, Marta Belcher, Rainey Reitman Advisors: Alex Feerst, Georgia Quinn, Meredith Barge, Sheila Warren, Joe Lubin, Sandra Ro, Katie Biber, Kristin Smith Managers: Clara Tsao, Megan Kliman Employee: Philipp Banhardt |
