Web3 Ethics with Aleyna Dogan of Vayner3
Episode Notes
Aleyna Dogan is a strategist at Vayner3, Twitter spaces audio host with Rarible, author of a weekly newsletter called NFTimes, photographer, and graduate of NYU Gallatin where she studied technology ethics. She has been on various podcasts talking about ethics in web3, gives workshops about NFTs, and publishes other articles about web3 on One37pm and CryptoSlate.
Welcome to the Summer Series of Culture Factor. I’m Holly Shannon.
When I was speaking and interviewing at NFT NYC I noticed themes that almost every one of my conversations touched.
This new Web3 digital space is made up of artists, collectors and businesses and when we stopped to scratch the surface, these underlying themes all pointed toward our most basic, fundamental, evolutionary need: connection.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to break down the whys, not just the whats, of this new digital space we find ourselves in.
Hello Culture Factor Family, and welcome to the summer series.During my interviews at NFT NYC, a theme that revealed itself underneath the Web3 technology was the different kinds of user experience.
Technology accessibility, fiat (or, real cash money)vs. cryptocurrency, social media, personal expression, community, and education these are all facets of user experience that I’ve noticed directly affect people’s engagement in this space — both literally and metaphorically.
1. This is my second Vayner voice on the show and I see that you are immersed in the new vertical that is Vayner3, are you excited to be on the ground floor of this?
2. The First episode of Season 4 was at NFT NYC and I was interviewing artists and collectors about the user experience. The vantage point was the friction that an artist or collector will bump into in the initial growth of this space and around adoption of the tools. Where do you see the user experience maturing?
3. Switching from User Experience, I realize you are passionate about the human experience. What do you think that specifically is like in the NFT/Web3 space? And please give me the perspective of the artist and the collector.
4. Let’s tap into Web 3 ethics which has become your specialty: How does the artist protect themselves? Is there a perfect smart contract on the blockchain?
5. How does the collector protect themselves from predatory behavior? (ex. wallets drained, NFTs stolen, rug pulls)
Season 4 of Culture Factor is produced by Avery Rogers' Paleblue Studios
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Transcript
Holly Shannon Hello, culture factor family today. I have Elena Dogan. And she is a strategist at Vayner. Three, a Twitter spaces audio host with RedBubble, and author of a weekly newsletter called NF times. She's a photographer, and a graduate of NYU Gallatin, where she studied technology, ethics and the user experience. She has been on various podcast talking about ethics and web three. And we will also tap into that. She gives workshops about NF T's and publishes other articles about web three on 1:37pm and crypto slate. So welcome to culture factor, Aleyna,
Aleyna Dogan 2:45
thank you so much for having me.
Holly Shannon 2:47
I'm very excited to have actually, for a second time to have another Vayner voice on the show. We had Troy positi. A while back in season three, when we were getting sort of our education. And our season for summer series has taken a little different turn. And so let me first let me ask you about Vayner. Three, because I understand it's a new vertical for for the Vayner team, you know, they have like Vayner, NFT, VaynerMedia V con, they have a whole bunch of stuff. So are you excited to be on the ground floor of this
Aleyna Dogan 3:27
100%. Working at Vayner is amazing, because we get to work with such huge brands, a lot of fortune 500 companies and actually educate them about that three and help them navigate the space. And I feel like we've been doing a really authentic job and especially focusing on the culture of web three, because and that these brands entering the space, it's so important that they are understanding of the existing crypto culture. And what is important for me and our team is that very conscious of, let's say carbon footprints and you know, involving artists from different backgrounds. So that is that has always been very important for our team. So our role in that is important to me, and also to clarify because I remember there was some confusion. So Vayner NFT sort of transformed into Vayner. Three, so they're the same thing. Oh, okay. Holly Shannon 4:28 All right. All right. Great, great. Well, I think maybe with the new iteration of it is probably has allowed you to expand a little upon what the goals of that are with the mission of of that and I love actually that I said this with Trey as well. I love that culture is kind of the base and the mission by which all else is filtered in terms of how you work with then the company, your relationships with customers. And then of course, the vision of the company, very often culture is merely something that's written at the very beginning and put on the website but holds very little meaning. You know,
Aleyna Dogan 5:17
yeah, I will say, I believe in at Vayner, the culture is very positive, and they uplifting. And what Gary says in his social persona does reflect into the company. Holly Shannon 5:33 It's nice that he walks the talk, and sounds like, that's really awesome. In my first episode of season four, because we've now shift from education, into the summer series, which was born at NFT, NYC, where I was interviewing artists and collectors. Throughout that, at the very beginning of the season, we kind of focused on the user experience. And the vantage point was that the friction that an artist or collector will bump into in the initial growth of the space in and around the adoption of the tools. So where do you see the user experience maturing? Because I think that that might be one of your sweet spots.
Aleyna Dogan 6:23
That's a great point. Because right now, the main users of crypto are people who understand the technology, or they at least understand how these work. And they just took the trading mentality and applied to NF T's. And the main point is to make money. But the thing the what is important is sorry, could you Could you repeat the question? Yeah, I
Holly Shannon 6:53
fit? No, no, that's okay. Um, so what I was saying is that there's a lot of friction. Right now user experience. Yeah, for the artists and via the user experience is clunky, right? Like, it's not, it's not simplified in any way, for a number of reasons. And so, you know, I think we're, we're all bumping around in it, whether you're the artist or the collector, and there's no, there's no seamless way yet to really use web three space. So I'm curious from a user experience standpoint, like, do you see it maturing? And maybe in what way?
Aleyna Dogan 7:32
Yes. So this is a problem that I actually personally noticed. Three, four years ago, where I was my initial job at in crypto was at this company called three port Foundation, which is building layers zero, foundation about for peer to peer internets. And there we were tasked to imagine and create an app that would be easily accessible to users, that people can actually benefit from blockchain. Because I think that's one of the main problems that everyday user doesn't know that either. Which applications aren't better three, what does that even mean? How to interact with Blockchain, because that's not really streamlined. And a lot of the applications right now, we're also mainly geared towards people who code or have had more technical knowledge, at least, both on a surface level, I believe, just to use marketplaces, you don't need to know too much, but still still so. But especially advanced applications and protocols, you need to know more. So to onboard the next million people, we need to make sure the UI is beautiful. And I think this is something apparent in web two platforms and companies as well, because UI has been gathering more and more attention and importance, just because that's how users interact. And usually UI is what keeps people on keeps people on the app or, or doesn't. Does it interest people?
Holly Shannon 9:18
Do do you see it maturing from four years ago?
Aleyna Dogan 9:22 For sure. I think even the marketplaces that we have right now are easily navigatable. And thing especially when we get into social platforms, that battery then that's going to be even more so and you know, people aren't really building next Instagram or Twitter per se right now, but it's more people are trying to build the vektory version of discord. So I think that's where we're gonna see the initial steps because I I can think of like three companies right now three startups trying to do the step three discord. So how they will create the communities then talking added content, and perhaps hub, they will make it easy for communication, that's going to be key in figuring out which that three social platform will be the one that's more most popular.
Holly Shannon 10:12
That's very exciting for me, actually, because I'm not a fan of discord, I think that it's very, very loud, it's very hard to use, especially if you follow many different discord channels, and I do. They're all run differently. I liken it to like a bowl of spaghetti. It's just like a mess to me, there's just too much going on in there. And I actually find myself overwhelmed by the experience, and I leave. So I'm not learning in there. And I'm not. I'm not leveling up in terms of what the offerings are, or changes coming down the pike for any of the brands that are on there having a discord channel. So I'm really excited that you said that. So, you know, so we talked about user experience. So switching from that, I also realized that you're passionate about the human experience from reading some of you. What do you think specifically? What that's going to be like in the NFT, and web three space, and maybe like, you can share with me the human experience from the artists perspective. And from the collector perspective, because I think one is selling one is buying, it's very different.
Aleyna Dogan 11:39
Yes, I think taking a step back even because I was really interested in, like you said, the human experience. And my area of academic study was also figuring out how these technologies that we use every day for hours, how are they impacting our brains, our psychologies, so focusing on technology, ethics was something I was very passionate about. Because I believe that ever since you know, I was young, that these platforms, while they provide such beautiful, seamless experiences, it was clear that because they're becoming billion dollar companies do not necessarily aiming towards us. And the more I learned about it, the more it was, it was scary to me. So that's why I wanted to focus on that and and figure out what went wrong with that two companies, and how we approached them and how they approached making a product. And how can we make sure to not repeat those same mistakes, and creating different applications for rev three. And one thing that's important for me is, you know, instead of trying to rush through the new iteration of this web, and building stuff, I think we should have more conversations and more voices. So we build better products that is built by diverse teams. But in terms of the human experience, just in general, I I believe in 10 years, it's going to be a lot of things that we use will be nfts. But we won't necessarily call them NF T's. And I'm pretty sure that we we will be in a blockchain agnostic ecosystem, people will interact with NF T's that are not going to know which blockchain it's on. They might not know that it's an NFT itself, even Reddit launching at least or calling them digital collectibles, not necessarily NFTS. Because at this point, after the last few years, there's some sort of connotation around the word NFT. So for artists perspective, I believe that the artists will have so much more power because you could take your artwork and basically sell anywhere you want without having to have that. That last that you would have on web two platforms where if you're trying to sell clothing, let's say going from at age A B is very costly in terms of trying to list everything again and get get up to speed with how the platform works. So a lot of a lot of responsibility lies on the artists to take charge of their own artwork and their approaches. But it gives so much more power by getting rid of the middleman and a lot of artists in terms of more music, more connections with fans, direct connections with fans, and collectors. They will be able to have a part in the artists journey. I think that's what web three makes it so beautiful is the fact that you could actually invest in an artist early on and then learn learn and grow and, and partake in their success as they move in their careers. Holly Shannon 15:08 Yeah, I love that part of it myself it's it's kind of like you you buy into their future and I really love that a lot. Um, curious like are there because you know more about maybe the the web three ethics platforms and you know the the language maybe behind that how can an artist protect themselves you know, if they're just innocently producing their music or their art, you know, maybe it's photographs or whatever and they want to create NF Ts, they're stuck with that word right now. How can they protect themselves
Aleyna Dogan 15:50
in terms of their artwork and or
Holly Shannon 15:53
just just the ethics of it? Like is there you know, there's you know, some bad actors out there right there's there's things happening the the unethical behavior of wallets being drained or NFT, stolen or rug pulls, how can an artist protect themselves Aleyna Dogan 16:14 because collector per collectors that might be even more important, because they invest in these projects. For collectors, I would say lies a lot of responsibility in researching the projects, researching the team. And understanding how wallets work saying that artists, understanding how blockchain works, how wallets work, to a certain extent is important. You know, talking about user experience, actually, I am a proponent of not making everything so easy. While it's a still a debating topic, I feel like it'd be make interacting with Blockchain so easy and seamless. without giving any proper education, then these problems occur more so because if you don't know how to open your own wallet, or what that entitles, I don't think you should own a noncustodial wallet with an NFT on it. Because you need to have that knowledge. That's the premise of web three that you know more about your own data, your own assets, digital assets, and have ownership and you can act on on them. So in terms of that, in terms of like rock pools and hacks, and that's scams, that's unfortunately, happens in any emerging space. That's what I always hear during web two boom in the 2000s. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So many projects that are platforms that were just not successful. So how I, how I would predict is, most of the projects will die, and they're not going to be successful. But the ones that are successful, will be huge brands similar to metta, or Apple or Microsoft, and about artists. I think another point of your question is, would remind you of plagiarism, because that's also a topic widely discussed. No, just last week, actually Gamestop allowed an image read remaking of an image to be sold in as NFT. The picture was falling men from 911. It was a famous picture that the artists just made them then into an astronaut and sold the NFT. And again, stop later, remove that NFT. Because the the owner of the NFT, the Creator did not own the IP. So I feel like the conversations are an IP is going to be one of the main ones and it it has to continue throughout next years. Because even with such screens, eight being stolen, the it's very different what what could happen. There are a lot of scenarios. Blockchain enables a lot, but we're also in bounds of the law. So it's very difficult to navigate that space. But I believe the more we live through these things and situations, then people find solutions and answers to these questions.
Holly Shannon 19:35
Yeah, I agree. I think it's just a learning experience. We just get better over time and how to mitigate the circumstances. And I've said on many episodes before when people have talked to me about, you know, doing their due diligence, but then they it was a rug poll and you know, you hear about all these People getting things stolen. And so a lot of people are reluctant to get into it. And and I say to many people, kind of the same thing that you're just saying here is that we're not you're never insulated from that actors and people who who want to steal and and exploit any system. You know, there's a lot of people in web two that went through getting their identity stolen, I had that happen to me, we had to go through the IRS and our taxes and the whole thing and it took a couple of years for to rectify itself. You know, I remember my parents literally bringing the mail in. And if there was any, like offers for like credit cards or things that they didn't want, they would tear them up, like a lot before putting them in the garbage because people used to steal your mail out of the garbage so that they could exploit you that way. So like, it happens IRL. It happened in web two, and it will happen in the metaverse like, I don't think we are insulated from any of of that behavior, not in my mind.
Aleyna Dogan 21:10
It's not the technology. It's just actors. No, technology is inherently good or bad. I always find it funny when people don't like NFP is like it's some it's the same thing as not liking PDF, because it's just a formats. It's what you make.
Holly Shannon 21:29
I agree. And I don't like the name NFT either. So I will tell you, I interviewed William and truckin, who was one of the four people who authored the paper on the NF t. So you know, I can't call him the inventor of it, because he was one of four people, but he's kind of like 25% of the event are but and I said to him, I'm like, Why did you guys choose non fungible token? Couldn't you come up with something else? So maybe you'll be a part of this with me because he sent me the list of the other choices they came up with. And I said, we need we need to do a poll, like we need to do like a renaming of it. We need to get a lot of people behind it, because no one likes it. You know? I mean, if you Google, you know, WTF NF T. Like there's like a zillion articles, right? Because nobody's like, don't even understands it. Like even if it's explained to you. It still is a weird term. I don't like it.
Aleyna Dogan 22:29
I would be curious to hear the other names for sure.
Holly Shannon 22:34
When your your vote right now is digital digital collectibles that you said earlier?
Aleyna Dogan 22:39 Yeah, that's the one Reddit is setting right now for their own analyses.
Holly Shannon 22:44 Okay. All right, cool. Well, maybe we can, we can start with that. And I'll let you know when I'm posting that episode. And we can, maybe we can start a poll. And you can bring that into the Vayner ecosystem. I'm sure it'd be really interesting. See what everybody's responses to that
Aleyna Dogan 23:02 be really cool thing. So.
Holly Shannon 23:04
So are you enjoying writing for? So you have two different things you write for? So 1:37pm? Is that a Vayner? publication and crypto slate? And then I think you had your own right? You had NF? T NF times. So I want to get that right. Or is that correct? The umbrella is those are under?
Aleyna Dogan 23:26 Yes. 137 as part of the VaynerMedia family, my main thing that I write is my newsletter, that I've been publishing for more than a year at this point. And it's weekly news of different brands and industries and entering the space and just kind of compiling what happened that week, that I believe it's important, and I tried to not miss anything just to provide a comprehensive newsletter. And aside from that, I like doing some thought pieces that are too long or too much to get into detail in the newsletter. So I publish in several different places, which has been really fun because the space is so fast that being able to document it and perhaps, you know, we don't know how they're gonna look at this crypto craze, two years, in 10 years, 20 years. So being able to document what happens in the sentiment of that moment. Is very fun to me. And there are a lot of sorry, no, there are a lot of different ideas to write the what makes me so passionate about this space, is the fact that there are so many routes that we can take some neat thought experiments that we can do. So many projects, protocols, like the technology is there. You just need to figure out how to get there or I don't have the technical skills to code, unfortunately. So Well, I can theorize it and at least write about it. Holly Shannon 25:04 I love that. And I love how you said, you're, you're like documenting the sentiment of now, which changes week by week. So it's it's really, it's really great that you're doing that. I love that. I'm curious, is there anything like that you would want to share that I'm not asking you like, is there something that you're doing under Vayner three, or in your writing or in the education side that you would want to share with people that I'm not asking you about?
Aleyna Dogan 25:37
One part that's important to me is education. So I tried to educate people in different aspects, I tried to respond to whoever reached out to me and help out. Because I think my main role and why I feel so passionate about it, and why I want to work in that three, for long term is, I think having more women and people from underrepresented groups is so important. And in any space, so in positions of power, so we can have a ripple effect and have more people and people from underrepresented groups and women in in spaces where we can be vocal. So that's what I'm mainly passionate about the fact that that we need more women voices, on these panels on Twitter spaces on any, any sort of room that that a crypto conversation is going on. I tried to call people out which, you know, I enjoy to do, because I feel like somebody's got to do it. And I'm happy to be that person because I do not want us to build the vestry in a way that's that's just like a repetition of up to where 25 to 35 year olds, like guys in Silicon Valley office, making decisions about billions of people's daily interactions and how they, how they see their notifications or what they see online. So that's, that's my main passion, I would say, and, and I tried to uplift forces, and hopefully, hopefully, we will build a better web. And yeah, I write the newsletter. I have a weekly Twitter spaces with variable every Monday is that we talk about US News and bring people on to talk as well. So that's fun. And I'm also trying to build a actually a decentralized application right now. But that's still in the works. So if anybody who's hearing this is a time developer, you can reach out to me.
Holly Shannon 27:49 I love that. I love that. And I love I say all the time, I'm hopeful that we can enter web three better than we left web two. Because I agree the agree with you. I think there's it's like a bro culture, it's very much VC type of culture. And they quickly adapted all of the spaces that we're in right now if you're affiliated with anything to do with web three and NF T's. So having a voice having more female voices and underrepresented voices, be able to speak up and speak out and be a part of in shape is really a critical component to ensure that web three doesn't have the level of bias that I think web two carried. So I'm glad you are leading the charge Alina, and I'm so glad that I had a chance to meet with you and have you on the show. So thank you for coming on culture factor.
Aleyna Dogan 28:54 Thank you so much for having me. It's so nice to meet you and have this conversation. And hopefully we'll see each other in person as well.
Holly Shannon 29:02 I think we will since we're chasing each other from South by Southwest to NFT NYC we're determined we're destined to be on a stage together be at a show and you know, have a drink together or something. But I do want to let my cultural factor family know that I will put the newsletter and all of your socials in the show notes so that they can find you and they can subscribe to NFTimes. Thank you so much. Thank you.