Human Protocol

Simona Pop

The personal side of building big things. Where builders talk about the messy parts of creating the future. Hosted by Simona Pop.

  1. 3d ago

    Inbox Zero & The Meaning of Life: Dennison Bertram | FREE - PI

    Dennison Bertram joins The Human Protocol Podcast in a conversation that moves from his pre-crypto life in robotics, political science, Prague, fashion, and creative technology into the early days of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The episode matters because it traces how one founder’s worldview was shaped by post-communist Europe, 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and years of building in crypto. In this episode, Dennison shares why he left robotics, how Prague changed his life, and what it felt like to start one of the first Bitcoin exchanges in the Czech Republic. The conversation also turns into a sharp and funny critique of bureaucracy, digital busywork, and the modern internet... Key topics: - Dennison’s path from Carnegie Mellon robotics to political science, and why the late 1990s tech environment felt inhospitable for a Black student- The impact of September 11 on American politics, privacy norms, and the rising influence of ideology over expertise- Why Prague and the Czech Republic became a turning point, both personally and professionally- How post-communist transition created both opportunity and trauma, especially around freedom, rules, and social instability- His move into photography, fashion, and creative technology, including early blogging and helping brands adapt to the internet- Reading the Bitcoin white paper, starting an early Bitcoin exchange in the Czech Republic, and learning the hard way about regulation and startup building- Why Bitcoin and early crypto resonated after the financial crisis and the collapse of trust in traditional systems- Early NFT thinking on Bitcoin, the energy of the Ethereum era, and why crypto felt more experimental then than now- His current philosophy that computers should do computer work, while humans should focus on human things- How family, kids, and mortality shifted his view of time, risk, money, and what actually mattersTimestamps: (00:00) Welcome and why this podcast focuses on the people behind the tech (01:30) Carnegie Mellon robotics, race, and leaving computer science (03:12) Political science during 9/11 and the privacy reset in America (06:29) The early seeds of crypto and experiments like Second Life (06:59) Moving from political science into art and creative work (08:06) Prague, post-communist transition, and studying abroad differently (09:30) Freedom, instability, and the hidden trauma of rapid social change (14:18) Fashion photography, Milan, and pre-smartphone social media (15:22) Helping brands understand the internet and early digital transformation (16:28) Blogging, web culture, and reconnecting with technology through art (17:41) Reading the Bitcoin white paper and launching an early exchange (18:07) Raising money for Bitcoin before anyone knew what it was (20:03) The 2008 crisis, career collapse, and the rise of “craft” culture (22:18) Why Bitcoin mattered in Europe, where bank seizures and instability were real (23:02) Early NFT experiments and the first wave of Ethereum energy (24:37) Why crypto feels less magical now (25:09) Privacy erosion, surveillance, and the normalizing of digital exposure (26:46) Why instant payments are now expected everywhere (28:14) Why humans should stop doing computer tasks (31:25) Bureaucracy, passports, stamps, and pointless verification theater (36:13) AI doing computer work and the end of human busywork (41:16) Hard-won lessons: if it’s complicated or hard to use, it’s probably wrong (44:13) Using crypto on mobile, cards, savings, and meme coins (45:04) What money is really for now (49:41) How having children changes time, risk, and priorities (52:04) Death, legacy, and why raising kids is only a small part of life (53:15) AGI, AI agents, and what the future of work might look like (54:14) Why Dennison refuses to fly economy anymore (56:32) Final thoughts: don’t fly economy, don’t open your email Useful links: https://x.com/DennisonBertramwww.freepi.ai

    Inbox Zero & The Meaning of Life: Dennison Bertram | FREE - PI

  2. Oct 7

    The Anonymous Alchemist: Scoopy Trooples | Alchemix

    Timestamps:00:00 - Welcome and the purpose of the podcast 02:24 - From teaching into crypto 04:52 - The 2016 Bitcoin run and a chance to reassess 05:48 - Discovering Ethereum DApps and deciding to build 06:45 - Teaching himself to code and learning Solidity 08:00 - COVID, DeFi, and building during lockdown 08:51 - Early experiences with MakerDAO, Uniswap, Compound, and Curve 11:42 - Buying ETH near the bottom and feeling vindicated 12:49 - Credit to his wife for encouraging him to take risks 14:03 - How the name Scoopy Trooples came about 16:00 - Early Twitter: explaining DeFi, replying, and shitposting 17:42 - Why anonymity remained important as Alchemix grew 18:31 - Crypto security risks and protecting family 20:49 - Fundraising and the value of trust and network connections 22:35 - The team’s first in-person meeting 24:00 - Alchemix’ launch timeline and its first five founders 25:04 - Building a dapp front end as a new developer 26:30 - Unexpected growth and more than 500 million in TVL 27:33 - Security concerns and getting help with code review 29:33 - The pressure, excitement, and exhaustion of rapid growth 31:42 - Internal conflict, co-founder departures, and losing a friendship 35:06 - Clear roles, hierarchy, and the problem with a power vacuum 38:07 - Scoopy’s approach to leadership and shared ownership 39:53 - How teaching helped him communicate and speak publicly 42:42 - Twitter pressure, self-censorship, and the post-FTX downturn 47:48 - V3, stronger team dynamics, and renewed optimism 49:49 - The Curve hack and waking up to a crisis 50:35 - Recovering funds, LP losses, and negotiating with the attacker 54:42 - The emotional aftermath of the hack 56:43 - Burnout cycles, chronic pain, and finding support 59:26 - Physical therapy, training, and feeling better 63:19 - Alchemix’ Base deployment 64:13 - How redemptions work and why duration matters 66:36 - Fixed yield, looping, and the Base product’s potential 68:52 - Making wellness a priority for himself and the team 69:43 - Positive Sum Pepe’s and a different take on meme coins 71:03 - Testnet plans and the project’s playful concept

    The Anonymous Alchemist: Scoopy Trooples | Alchemix

  3. Sep 24

    Riding Out: John Crain - SuperRare

    Timestamps: 01:27 - Architecture, civil engineering, and why that path didn’t fit 03:20 - Advertising, New York meetups, and discovering Bitcoin 04:46 - Meeting the early Ethereum crowd and knowing he belonged 07:29 - ERC-20, ERC-721, and the first idea behind Pixura 09:24 - Building early infrastructure for digital art before marketplaces existed 11:43 - Why SuperRare became the product to double down on 13:43 - Working with family and why those dynamics became a superpower 15:04 - Early failed side projects and the “blockchain jobs” experiment 16:10 - The pain of 120 VC rejections and recurring moments of doubt 18:02 - Debating whether to pivot into DeFi 20:45 - The first $1 million volume month and the first real signal 22:25 - Staying grounded when growth started compounding 24:22 - The curation debate and criticism of gatekeeping 27:23 - The emotional cost of managing a heated community 30:58 - What it felt like to see artists’ lives change on SuperRare 33:19 - Bug hunting, security stress, and the cost of rapid scale 35:27 - Burnout, endurance, and getting through the hard years 38:05 - Layoffs, public ownership, and what that moment changed 42:34 - Learning to say no and becoming more decisive 45:06 - Thinking backwards from failure before saying yes 48:30 - Why John still believes crypto can expand the creator economy 51:23 - The one thing he had never said publicly...

    Riding Out: John Crain - SuperRare

  4. Sep 13

    Growing Up - Eva Beylin

    Key topics: - Eva shares her background as a first generation Canadian raised in Toronto by Russian immigrant parents who were both engineers. In college, she studied economics, global economics, and Spanish, with interests in languages, global affairs, and how markets connect across borders.  - She explains why management consulting felt like the right first job: problem solving, exposure to businesses, and the chance to work across finance, technology, and operations.  - Her shift into crypto started through her brother, Mark Baylin, and accelerated when Ethereum clicked as a better payment rail than the patchwork systems she was seeing in consulting.  - She reflects on the early crypto era as a time of intense experimentation, especially around DAOs, community driven models, and more idealistic visions of coordination. - How the industry has matured into a more capitalist and realistic phase, with less romance and more focus on what actually works in practice. - Navigating a highly technical ecosystem without being a developer by leaning on her business background, learning quickly, and staying close to the technology. - Why crypto projects need business, marketing, and sales people early, not just engineers, and why technical proficiency is often overestimated.  - On why she left the Graph after five and a half years: burnout, changing personal energy, and the project’s own evolution into a more mature infrastructure layer.  - Burnout and boundary setting come up as a major theme, including practical changes like removing Discord and Slack from her phone. Eva discusses how crypto’s always on culture is slowly running into more human constraints, including the practical pull of nine to five workflows. - Her longtime art practice, how NFTs briefly gave hobby artists a venue to sell work, and why her view of NFTs has become much more skeptical. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro to Eva and the Human Protocol focus on the people behind crypto 01:49 - Growing up in Toronto as a first generation immigrant with global interests 03:48 - Why management consulting felt like the safest and most interesting first career 06:02 - How Eva first understood blockchain through her brother and payments work 07:32 - The Bitcoin growth shock that made crypto impossible to ignore 08:58 - Taking a sabbatical, then leaving consulting with no clear plan 09:35 - Moving to Bangkok and joining OmiseGo 10:48 - Volunteering at ETH Denver 2018 and finding her people 12:58 - Why the cozy early crypto culture changed as the space matured 14:20 - DAOs, experimentation, and the cost of early idealism 17:36 - Whether humans are actually wired to coordinate through blockchain systems 18:22 - Why trustless systems still depend on human incentives and realistic design 20:49 - Why Eva is glad the industry is moving past repeated experiments 22:43 - How crypto changed her political and economic worldview 25:14 - Growing up with the industry as the average participant aged and matured 27:07 - Being non technical in a technical space and building authority anyway 30:11 - Why business and communication skills are essential in crypto 34:46 - How the Graph matured from crypto native ambition into enterprise reality 37:02 - Why she joined the Graph in the first place 38:44 - The moment she realized it was time to leave the Graph 41:41 - Burnout, Discord overload, and removing work apps from her phone 43:17 - Why crypto is slowly becoming more nine to five in practice 46:10 - Autonomy, remote work, and the need for stronger boundaries 48:51 - Eva’s art practice and how NFTs opened a selling path for hobby artists 52:13 - Why her view of NFTs became much more bearish over time 54:57 - What she would do differently: less indexing on meme driven chains and dapps 58:08 - How leaving a role changed the way she uses Twitter 61:34 - Figuring out her next mission and role in crypto 62:18 - Why she finds much of the RWA narrative boring 64:55 - Why zero knowledge proofs feel like the most exciting technical frontier 66:29 - Crypto as an expander of the financial system 67:16 - What Eva expects from the next cycle and why she is optimistic

    Growing Up - Eva Beylin

  5. Aug 19

    Be Less Worse: Richard Moore (ricmoo) - ethers.js

    Timestamps  00:00 - Welcome to the Human Protocol Podcast  00:30 - “Random developer from Canada” and Canadian humility  02:27 - Before crypto: Waterloo, Blackberry, Kindle, Amazon  03:43 - Why the Kickstarter failed and what it taught him  05:33 - The hackathon project that was not about crypto  06:27 - The Bitcoin meetup that led to Ethereum  07:42 - Why Bitcoin mattered for people without access to banking  10:12 - Learning crypto by building wallets and writing BitcoinD in Python  11:01 - The risky early Ethereum wallet and the 1 percent bug  12:17 - Why Ethers was built to be smaller than Web3.js  13:09 - Making Ethers work without syncing the whole blockchain  14:21 - When Ethers first shipped publicly  15:18 - How Gitcoin made open source funding feel real  17:09 - Why growth felt gradual instead of overnight  18:31 - Speaking at Devcon and becoming known in the ecosystem  20:21 - The burden of maintaining critical code with millions of downloads  22:42 - What he wishes he knew before public releases became high stakes  23:26 - Why API changes are painful and why older versions linger for years  26:07 - What anonymity and doxxing feel like from his side  28:08 - What he sacrificed, and why he feels net ahead overall  29:03 - Programming as a lifelong pastime  30:19 - Woodworking, DIY, and buying land in the middle of nowhere  31:48 - What happens if he stops tomorrow  34:06 - Why AI will reshape the developer market  36:19 - The frog he accidentally hit and still feels bad about  37:33 - What ecosystem capture says about crypto funding  39:33 - Hoping for a future ENS DAO reboot  41:17 - A randomized system for resisting rule gaming  44:00 - Why most people are not naturally greedy or predatory  48:21 - Culture, marketing, and why values get reinforced early  50:40 - Non negotiables: kindness and gratitude  53:45 - Final takeaways: be kind, be happy, touch grass, be less worse

    Be Less Worse: Richard Moore (ricmoo) - ethers.js

  6. Aug 10

    High Standards Build Resilient Ecosystems: Kartik Talwar - ETHGlobal

    Timestamps:  00:00  - Introduction to Kartik Talwar and the podcast’s focus on building communities  00:34  - The origin of the Human Protocol podcast and its personal storytelling approach  01:27  - Kartik’s background in astrophysics and transition into software development  02:09  - Lessons from studying complex systems and the joy of programming feedback loops  03:47  - The impact of early Silicon Valley experience at SV Angel on tech worldview  04:19  - The role of innovative data analysis in early investment decisions  05:46  - High standards from exposure to top-tier startup pitches and founder benchmarking  07:14  - The long-term influence of thousands of pitch meetings on decision making  09:04  - Origins of hackathons, starting with Hack the North pre-ETH Global  09:35  - Why hackathons are effective for learning, testing, and building fast under constraints  10:49  - Accessibility in tech and how hackathons democratize new frameworks and hardware  12:13  - Bridging university education with real-world startup demands through hackathons  13:43  - The approach to improving Ethereum developer tooling and onboarding processes  15:08  - How feedback from hackathons accelerates protocol and SDK improvements  16:55  - Overcoming challenges in organizing global hackathons and the value of engineers’ input  19:05  - Evolution of hackathon focus from Ethereum setup to product deployment and scaling  20:48  - The groundbreaking NFT and CryptoKitties project at ETH Waterloo  21:28  - Unexpected innovations and lessons from early hackathon projects  22:23  - The emergence of early Ethereum projects and industry milestones from hackathon ideas  24:02  - Validation of the crypto ecosystem through startup success and community growth  25:11  - The unique advantages of blockchain’s ability to create resilient, programmable infrastructure  26:37  - Resilience in crypto markets and the ongoing commitment to innovation despite bear conditions  27:20  - Qualities of participants during bullish vs. bearish markets and community dedication  28:02  - The importance of consistent criteria in selecting participants for ecosystem health  29:17  - The long cycles in blockchain development and the need for patience and vision  30:46  - The role of infrastructure and open development in enabling trillion-dollar innovations  36:13  - The impact of market swings on event logistics and community engagement  37:43  - Scaling from hundreds to tens of thousands of developers and the challenges involved  38:47  - Institutional shifts, long-term thinking, and the importance of grassroots development  40:43  - The balance of short-term obstacles versus long-term ecosystem vision  45:04  - The massive opportunity in infrastructure and software-enabled business models  46:19  - Faster iteration and idea validation powered by AI and blockchain tools  47:34  - Personal insights and future visions from Kartik on the ecosystem’s trajectory This conversation highlights how community, feedback, and relentless iteration are crucial to building innovative ecosystems in tech and crypto. Whether you’re a developer, founder, or enthusiast, understanding the value of collaboration and long-term thinking is key to shaping the future.

    High Standards Build Resilient Ecosystems: Kartik Talwar - ETHGlobal

  7. Aug 10

    The Decentralization Revolution: Tech Needs Human Resilience - Jake Brukhman | CoinFund

    Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction to Jake Brukhman's background and journey 02:00 - Life in Russia and early technological influences 05:00 - Immigration, family, and early coding experiences 10:00 - Transition from academia to finance and hedge funds 15:00 - Discovery of Bitcoin and crypto in 2011 20:00 - Building CoinFund during the ICO mania of 2016-2017 25:00 - Validation of crypto investments and industry growth in 2017 30:00 - The evolution of blockchain use cases and institutional adoption 35:00 - The challenges and future of decentralized AI training 40:00 - The interplay between regulation, innovation, and openness 45:00 - Lessons from bear markets and the resilience of entrepreneurs 50:00 - The importance of human qualities and creativity in tech success 55:00 - Opinions on the future of crypto, AI, and decentralization  60:00 - Personal boundaries, mental health, and art as sustenance  65:00 - Final thoughts on industry maturation and opportunities ahead  Connect with Jake Brukhman: https://x.com/jbrukh https://www.coinfund.io/  Note: A rich dialogue filled with insights on innovation, resilience, and the intersection of technology and human values. Perfect for entrepreneurs, investors, and crypto and AI enthusiasts.

    The Decentralization Revolution: Tech Needs Human Resilience - Jake Brukhman | CoinFund

  8. Jul 15

    Proof of Letting Go: The Story of POAP | Patricio Worthalter - POAP

    Timestamps:  00:07 - Introduction and guest background  00:23 - Personal motivations and early crypto experiences  01:28 - Argentina’s economic collapse and impact on the founder’s journey  02:35 - Discovery of Bitcoin and Ethereum amidst survival mode  03:34 - The first encounter with ransomware leading to active learning  04:27 - Ethereum’s early misperceptions and enthusiasm for blockchain potential  05:24 - Burnout and personal sacrifices in tech and crypto life  06:56 - Buying Ether as a lifeline out of hardship  07:40 - Building credibility and status through active participation in Ethereum ecosystem  08:38 - The initial excitement and cautious optimism about Ethereum's promise  09:37 - Ethereum’s failures versus Bitcoin’s perceived success  10:54 - The rise and disappointment of ICOs and market hype  12:16 - The transition from investment to education in crypto  13:13 - Understanding Ethereum’s social hierarchy and developer culture  14:23 - The desire to be a builder and the importance of community validation  15:15 - Riding the 2017 bubble and subsequent market correction  16:00 - The burst of the Ethereum hype and market disillusion  17:28 - Developing POAP as a tool for legitimation and community bonding  18:56 - The ethical constraints and visions for POAP's impact  20:18 - Preservation of digital assets as a core passion  21:25 - The origin story of POAP and its core function in creating verifiable memories  22:51 - How POAP evolved as a social and emotional asset for communities  24:23 - The emotional volatility of founders and highs of POAP’s community success  26:49 - The pandemic’s impact on POAP and the subsequent recovery phase  28:52 - The NFT market’s growth, hype cycles, and social relevance decline  30:28 - The market’s shift from innovation to speculation and the fading of NFT relevance  34:24 - The decision to put POAP into maintenance mode and what it signifies for the project’s future  36:22 - Reflection on failures, the importance of closure, and the symbolic meaning of the farewell jacket  50:59 - The emotional toll of closure and protecting community trust  54:55 - Broader crisis within Ethereum, industry disillusionment, and future risks for blockchain technology  58:28 - Comparing blockchain to historical innovations like the Concorde, and pondering their long-term cultural impact  60:10 - Closing thoughts on the next chapter and moving beyond the past  Connect with Patricio: Twitter: https://x.com/worthalter  Note: The narrative illustrates not just the lifecycle of a project but offers critical observations on the broader industry, emphasizing the importance of purposeful building, ethical constraints, and knowing when to gracefully close a chapter.

    Proof of Letting Go: The Story of POAP | Patricio Worthalter - POAP
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About

The personal side of building big things. Where builders talk about the messy parts of creating the future. Hosted by Simona Pop.

Information

  • Creator
    Simona Pop
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026
  • Show Website
    Human Protocol