Joel Dietz, founder of Metamask and founding member of Ethereum, is a romantic at heart. He creates art as “Cryptoapollo” that reflects the interface between traditional art and technology.
“I have a very classic romantic temperament that is difficult to bring to the modern world as romantically inclined people can be repressed in the modern economy, but I also love the cutting edge of technology in terms of art in architecture and sculpture. “Explains Dietz.
“And like any technology enthusiast, I always try to explore the latest technologies like VR. Most of the time, my art is digital, even though I’ve played around with physical pieces, ”he explains.
He is a polymath and Renaissance man whose passions include art, poetry, and cryptography. He wears his heart on his sleeve, gets bored easily and is constantly learning.
Dietz ‘art projects. Source: Cryptoapollo.io
Kindergarten programmer
When he went to kindergarten for the first time as a child, Dietz immediately informed his mother that he wanted to be taught at home instead. She agreed and that decision was quickly confirmed.
Dietz started programming computers at the age of six, won a scholarship at Arcadia University to study computer science at age 13, and then garnered awards for his programming from Salesforce, Google, and Topcoder.
Joey Dietz. Source: Cryptoapollo.io
After a brief academic career studying comparative poetry and mythology, Dietz joined the Ethereum team on day one, including developing the first educational channel for smart contracts (EtherCasts), writing the first Ethereum DEVGrant, and founding Metamask at Devcon 0 – already his third cryptocurrency-related browser extension.
Dietz was also very interested in the development of governance and law related to cryptocurrencies. In 2014 he carried out the first scientific paper on the subject of “crypto-economics” at the University of Notre Dame, carried out the first non-profit on-chain election for the Bitcoin Foundation, created several governance-related protocols that culminated in Swarm Markets – the first regulated DeFi exchange in Germany – and co-organizer of the first conferences on law and cryptocurrency at Harvard and MIT. He is currently a Connection Science Fellow at MIT and an industrial advisor to Notre Dame.
His most recent projects include a recently launched Layer 2 solution for the NFT industry called ArtWallet, which currently has a market cap of $ 600 million. He’s also working on a platform for creating metaverses called Meta Metaverse – which he started before Facebook was renamed Meta.
I’m looking for VCs who could understand the meta-metaverse. Can anyone think of it?
– Joel Dietz (@jdietz) October 26, 2021
His academic research interests focus on the confluence of blockchain network topologies and swarm intelligence (self-organizing systems), particularly how the principles underlying decentralized organizations can be used to drive global innovation. He also deals with holonic philosophy (how biological and social systems are related), the evolution of law (legal history), data-driven innovation approaches and smart city data architecture.
Model sculptor
Dietz dates a sculptor Marianna Costi, which influenced his appreciation of physical art. He also became the model for her fresco painting, similar to the Archangel Michael in Florence, which hangs on a wall in an unnamed church in Italy to this day.
“I brought this appreciation of the sculpture to a Burning Man festival in 2014, where I designed, commissioned and created a design huge metal sculpture, like a spartan warrior mask for my first great steel installation art, ”he remembers.
His own life also intersects with art. An affair with erotic photography led him to host an opera on an erotic theme with like-minded people on his birthday. The operatic genre was chosen because of his admiration for the Egyptian opera “Akhenaten” by Philip Glass.
“Philip Glass, on the other hand, was inspired by the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and I’m not the only one interested in how we can relate to ancient Egypt and its teachings,” he says.
Dietz also studied poetry and produced a book called Monkey Love as a tribute to a woman he was courting at the time.
“It was ultimately a failed romance, but the poetry reflects the free spirited nature of my loved one. I think poetry is a way of delving into the details of feelings. “
Holistic view
And so on to holon systems, which can be compared to the human body – where different, autonomous organs work together as a whole. This is how Dietz describes elegant organizational design. His research culminated in a scientific book that is available free of charge download from academ.
“How we make decisions, even at the cellular level, is complex,” he says. “Philosophically we may consider ourselves autonomous individuals, but we also exist as part of larger social organizations, from family groups to cities to nations. I see it as a series of nested systems, each with its own level of complexity. “
Dietz sees it as a logical consequence that the libertarian movement does not reject overarching authorities – such as the Catholic Church – but calls on people to participate consciously or unconsciously in various organizations.
Dietz believes that John Locke, the Enlightenment philosopher commonly known as the “father of liberalism,” was hostile to totalitarian mechanisms that forced people to act without self-reflection about their activities.
“Self-reflection is the key to understanding how we act and how we can optimize our participation for our best.”
The self-reflection becomes even better in Dr. Seuss’ lesser known, often banned, The Butter Battle Book.
Dr. Seuss (Editor: Random House)
“It’s an anti-war allegory in which two people live on either side of a wall and butter their bread on the opposite side of a slice of bread from their neighbor. The dispute escalates into a feud ranging from crossword puzzles about stick and stones to bigger and bigger weapons, ”explains Dietz.
“The senseless escalation of aggression can be mitigated if we move away from these senseless violent tendencies that were not great for the development of this planet – and think about our participation.”
cipher
Like most of Dietz’s passions, his interest in cryptocurrencies was fueled by another special love: his interest in the history of ciphers. He explains that the founding director of the National Security Agency formalized the study of ciphers during World War II and the Cold War. Dietz, in turn, was influenced by the American author Edgar Allen Poe and in particular by his short story “The gold beetle,” with hidden treasures and clues.
“The history of hidden messages is much broader than the formal science of cryptography. Cryptography as a mathematical discipline is a subset of the transmission of hidden messages, and much of the foundations of this science are not really based on mathematical systems. “
“In fact, the concept of number theory on which modern cryptographic systems are based is completely unproven. The random idea in number theory that says that prime Numbers have no patterns is not proven – at best it is a working hypothesis. “
Working on unproven mathematics leads to applications that, according to Dietz, can also be unproven.
Bitcoin didn’t appeal to him at first
Despite his ability to see around the corner, Dietz was initially skeptical of Bitcoin. When he read the first professional articles, he had the feeling that it would remain a nerd currency and not find mass adoption.
As he saw more and more projects struggling to survive, especially other forms of digital currency, he gradually realized that the new enemy was regulation – for anyone who wanted to send money.
He sees the struggle between old money and old people and new money and young people.
“Children build cool things. You will develop more and more sophisticated platforms and applications. Well, I don’t expect everything to go smoothly – on the contrary. There will be problems with steroids because everything moves so fast. “
Dietz is now well embedded in NFTs and has an agency, 1ofONE, which represents a number of celebrities. He recently did the Mike Tyson Drop which proved very successful and he is thrilled with the speed of development.
This white-gloved service was run on OpenSea, with Tyson working with well-known digital artist Cory Van Lew. Titled “The Baddest NFT Collection on the Planet,” it captured some of Tyson’s most impressive moments in the ring. Eleven unique one-of-one NFTs were minted alongside six regular NFTs, with 50 to 250 imprints. The one-of-ones were launched in early September and were sold out within an hour at no less than 5 ETH, and Tyson promises “bigger and worse” drops.
“It is largely a speculative art mania, but it sensitizes us,” says Dietz. “We will add many more shifts over time. including economic models, insurance, bankable assets – basically versions of this second generation technology. “
“In my opinion, the next step is to open up the infrastructure and allow easy access to traditional media and the entertainment industry.”
“The Cappadocian Revelations” by Joel Dietz. Source: Cryptoapollo.io
Why are you purse?
Dietz is often described as someone who builds a bridge between seemingly different elements. In his new Layer 2 project ArtWallet, he combines physical objects with NFTs. One such planned interpretation is a car wrapped by an artist connected to an NFT. The ArtWallet project currently has a market cap of $ 600 million and he is also working on his metaverse building meta metaverse platform.
As always, around 50 business plans await his attention on his desk. He sees his value in throwing fairy dust on projects and is only interested in projects with serious CEOs and teams.
“I can really only scale one project at a time. I’m also happy to be a little dark. When I built Metamask, we didn’t have to be in public. “
Like most serial entrepreneurs and cyber futurists, Dietz has been waiting so much for his attention. To strike the clock, he tried once to forego sleep and stayed awake for two days in a row – but that was bad for his health. Now he keeps his game up through diet and exercise.
“I’m very competitive, but I like to go at a measured pace, like a metronome. If you were to name me by musical composition, I would be the Allegro section. “
Decided today that I want to beat pg in value creation https://t.co/FDTcbZNuAm
– Joel Dietz (@jdietz) November 1, 2021
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