Hey folks, this is both our first and last episode on the NFT moment for the near future at least. This episode was the first one we recorded back on March 11th, just over a month ago, but man, a month feels like a year in 2021. Things are moving fast in all our worlds, and as of next week, we'll be returning to timely shows covering a variety of topics, so stay tuned for that. But for today, enjoy this host solely discussion at the dawn of the NFT moment. One of the amazing things that's happening with NFTs today is that it's bringing a lot of digital artists into the crypto space, and those digital artists are changing the way people perceive the crypto space, but they're also providing very, very valuable perspectives that we are lacking in our industry. As prices explode and mainstream attention, if not adoption, seems to be reaching a fever pitch, tokenized collectibles, commonly known as NFTs, are all the rage today. This morning, popular crypto artist Beeple's auction at the Venerable Christie's topped $69 million, making him the third most valuable artist alive today. I'm Adam B. Levine, and this is Speaking of Bitcoin. Today as always, I'm joined by the other host of the show, Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Hello. Stephanie Murphy. Hi. And Jonathan Mohan. Hey, hey. So this episode on NFTs has been a long time coming, but frankly, I'm glad we waited, because today's auction really capped off an astonishing rise that we've seen so far this year. On today's show, we're going to discuss what NFTs are, what they can and can't do, and a bit more than that. So who wants to kick us off with a basic explanation of NFTs? I feel like I've been talking about them constantly, and I could do it, but let's have someone else jump in here. Well, Adam, that's because you have been talking about them constantly for like the last eight years, actually. Well, that's true, but that's not the point that I'm making here, although I do appreciate the accolades, Stephanie. Well, no, I think that's really important, because this is your thing. And then for those of you listeners who have been with us for a while, you've heard us talk about this concept a lot over the years, whether it was Adam's project with Tokenly or even before that with the idea of colored coins and other projects. So my understanding of an NFT is, first of all, NFT stands for non-fungible token, and fungible means one thing that's sort of exchangeable for another, like cash is fungible, Bitcoin is fungible. If you have one Bitcoin, it's not like that particular Bitcoin is the only one that can be used in a specific instance. While with non-fungible tokens, it is specific to the actual token that can fill whatever use case you're looking to use it for. So for example, this could have lots of implications. It could be like a key to a lock. It could be a unique piece of art like we were just talking about today. It could represent a physical piece of property in the real world that can be swapped to transfer ownership of the property, and there's only one of them. I like to call these NFTs. I say the acronym itself is a negative explanation, and it stands for naming failure total. And the reason it stands for naming failure total is because if I explain what an NFT is by unrolling the acronym, that's a negative explanation. What is a negative explanation? Well, you had one question, which is what is an NFT? I unroll the acronym. Now you have two questions.  So now I have to explain fungible before I explain non-fungible, and now I have to make two explanations to explain one thing. So that's a negative explanation. So you get minus one knowledge when I rolled it out. This is a fundamental problem that we see again and again and again in our industry, which is the engineering term doesn't make it through a marketing, branding, naming, product management towards user experience departments because we don't have those. It just goes from engineering to the public with no intermediation. And as a result, you get a name that actually doesn't tell you anything. I almost like that one company has tried to rename these into NIFTs, which while it's not a good explanation, it's at least not a negative explanation. So if you say, what's an NFT? Oh, it stands for NIFTY. Okay, what does it do? Well, lots of NIFTY things. NIFTY, that's the only appropriate reaction. I mean, at least I haven't had to add another explanation. I can just start talking about the NIFTY things it does without having to explain monetary economics. I think the needing to explain it is a part of the social dynamic. Every major concept in this space that became very popular was one that you spend like 10 minutes explaining. And I think that everyone wants to be Neil deGrasse Tyson for like five minutes. And I think like, because back when Charlie Shrem co-owned that bar in New York, and it was ever, but if you said ever, someone would just correct you and say, oh, it's called VR. And that type of culture of being able to clearly know someone didn't know how to say it, right? Because it's the letters, not the name. I think in Bitcoin, or especially in Ethereum, it's the like, the idea that catches on most easily is the one that lets you act like Neil deGrasse Tyson.  So what you're saying is it has like enormous smug factor. Yes. And that is the reason why it medically gets adopted. Okay. Okay. I see that. That's also why people are confused about what this means. No, it is confusing. It's confusing, because, first of all, most of the explanations only cover a very, very small range of things that can be NFTs. So almost all of the explanations I've heard lately are digital art related. And that's great. That's the most prominent use case for NFTs today. But it's not the only one. The best explanation I've honestly heard, and the one that I used in mastering Ethereum when I described these three years ago, was the word deed. And if you look at the actual technical specification, they're called deeds. So what is the deed? Now, we already know what a deed is. I have a deed to my house. That's a deed. Okay. So a deed is a certificate of ownership. But it's a certificate of ownership of not some quantity of something. It's a certificate of ownership of something very specific, this house, or the title to your car that's a deed to your car. And you can understand how that works. If you have a mechanism by which the ownership can be ascertained through presentation of this deed, which has a lot of implications in this space, then you can transfer the deed and that effectively transfers ownership. Therefore, whoever controls the deed controls the asset that that deed refers to. If I transfer the deed to my house through a lawful process, somebody else now owns my house. If I sign over the title of my car, somebody else now owns the car. Now with Tangible, it's easy. When you add intangible, you can see that like I have a trademark. So what's my trademark registration? Well, it's my deed to my trademark. If I transferred that, I could transfer ownership of that trademark, even though you can't touch it. It's a thing, right? And you can make a copy of it. And this is where it gets interesting for digital art, which is you can take a screenshot of my trademark logo, but you don't actually own it. And I do have, in that case, an exclusionary interest that I can use, but also I can prove that I own it. And that's important. So anywhere where you can think of a deed being useful. And again, even that doesn't cover all of the different use cases. I think that the deed idea around NFTs is a really, really interesting one. The angle I want to point out here that you didn't really focus on, but which I think is probably the most interesting to me is that when you own the deed to something, that means that you own it and you have a lot of control over what you do with it, what other people can do with it, how they interact with it. It doesn't mean that you're making money off of it. You can use it in ways that make you money. It doesn't mean that you're enjoying it or getting any sort of benefit from it, right? If you own the deed to a house, but you never pay any attention to it, you don't live there, you don't rent it, you don't maintain it, you still own it, but it's not actually doing anything for you. And that, I think, is kind of a place where we are right now with a lot of these NFTs. Right now, we have the deed part. But what do you do with it part? The kind of, what's the advantage that it offers you? How can you make money with it? All of those things are things that people are still working on. And yet, we built the deed part first. So keep going, Andreas, but I just want to point that out. The deed, as a certificate of ownership, is only one part of what tokenizing control over a non-fungible thing can actually do. Because unlike a deed that is a non-programmable static claim of ownership, these things are programmable. And also, they're payment endpoints. And that opens a whole range of possibilities that you didn't have before. And here's a specific example. If I had a non-fungible token that represented ownership of my car, that could also be the very same non-fungible token, could be the access mechanism that allows me to start it and drive away. Meaning that the key to the car is the key to the NFT is the NFT. So when I transfer ownership, I'm not only transferring legal ownership or control, I'm also transferring the means by which someone can open the door and start the car. You can do the same thing with a house. You basically turn it into an access token, as well as an ownership token. The other thing you can do is use it as a payment endpoint, which means that if I have access to, let's say, I have an NFT that gives me partial ownership of an article that's on a social media or a sharing platform, let's say Hive, then I presumably could make that a payment endpoint so that I could essentially get a stream of dividends or royalty payments that are distributed to all of the holders of NFTs for that unique item as it generates royalties, payments, tips, donations, whatever that may be. For example, you can connect financial benefits to it. So then it's not just a token, it's also a share of a potential revenue stream, which makes it very interesting when it's attached to a singular item. And it goes on and on like that. You can turn it into a ticket that gives you access to a concert, for example. So someone who has an unfungible token that's connected to an artist or something like that or a piece of work, they could use that as a ticket to access a concert or live performance. So you can do all of these interesting things that you can't do with deeds. I wrote an article back in 2016 called Tokens in the Family Car that got into exactly that type of topic around this idea of taking physical, real world keys. And early on, I don't know if you guys remember, but the Dow actually emerged out of this company called Slocket, I believe. And their use case was, again, creating door locks way back at the beginning of Ethereum's history, that you would then use a token as the key and then you would wirelessly connect and sign a message or something like that, prove that you own the token, and then be able to gain access. So these ideas have been around for a really long time. As I said in the intro, the thing that's really different now is the popularity around it. And that popularity certainly has come from the art use case. One of the areas that there's been a lot of excitement about, and which I've heard a lot of excitement about from the kind of non-crypto space from the traditional art world has been the idea of smart contract royalties built into these collectibles. So the idea here is that when you're an artist in real life, you sell a painting. Well, you've now sold that painting. So hopefully you made a lot of money from it because you will not get any money typically from any further resales of it into the market. And so what can happen for popular artists who are in the space for a long time is that they wind up competing later in life against their earlier more desirable works. And so it's created a problem in the art world, honestly, where there's lots and lots of money being made, but very little of it actually goes to the artists. And few artists are able to actually live on the income that comes in from that in the manner that you would expect relative to how much their art actually trades for in the open market. So there's been this big push in the kind of smart contract NFT art world, which really has been a thing for maybe six months, it seems like, to create a way for the person who creates a given NFT to then get money to come back to them. They set a percentage, 10%, 20%, something like that. And then when that piece is sold on the secondary market, then they are supposed to get some of that. I really love this idea. I think it's a really cool thing to do, but I feel like the way it's been talked about and the way it's been presented to many in the art world is not entirely feasible, right? Well, I'm curious what you mean by that, Adam. Why do you think it's not feasible? Is it because the technology isn't there yet? Well, so it's because when we're talking about smart contracts, right, backing up for a second, most of the big sales that are happening right now and most of the places where these things are being offered are on well-funded marketplaces specifically around these types of NFT collectible tokens. So, Rarible is one that comes to mind. Another big one is Foundation. And there are probably a half-dozen to a dozen more of these platforms that are out there that are doing something like this. And basically, as far as I can tell, the problem here is that when you transfer an NFT, well, if you are making a purchase and a sale on the blockchain, then you can see that I sent something to you and you sent money back to me, right?  But a lot of times, people will go outside of these marketplaces, contact the artist directly or contact an owner directly and purchase it from them out of band, right? Or maybe you want to get paid in dollars or something like that for your NFT. Well, none of that inherently travels through the blockchain. And so that means that there's this kind of weakness with these systems, where in order for the artist to get that percentage, the sale has to happen through a channel where that percentage is being collected, right? Which means it has to be a public sale. And it also kind of means you can't transfer these things too, right? Because if you can transfer them and you don't need to give some nominal dollar amount to the artist, well, then what's to stop someone who owns one of these things from saying, well, I didn't sell it to anyone. I just transferred it to them. I gave it to this guy over here or I just changed the address that I was holding it in versus actually paying that extra 15% or whatever the artist has defined. So that's the problem is that there's definitely a code is law element to this and there could be, but there are a bunch of kind of implementation problems that make it so that because it's possible for someone to avoid paying the fee, well, if you don't avoid paying the fee, you're kind of leaving money on the table. Well, yes, but at the same time, it's already possible to avoid paying the fee. So even if you only had marginal compliance to this scheme, which you could do through some kind of licensing scheme, even if you only had marginal compliance, that's still better than what we have today. So I don't think you just throw the baby out with a bathwater just because there are some weaknesses in the first implementation of this and the incentives over time may very well change. You could also get a lot more compliance because art is a very prestige perception driven field. And so the original artist could basically have a taint that they could apply to the token where they have like a secondary NFT or token that they could attach to it, such that if there's a transaction that they believe occurred, and they have a good faith belief that they didn't get a cut of it, they could just color the NFT as one that didn't abide by the social agreement of giving the artist a cut of the transfer. Yeah, let me give you a specific example of that. There's a game and I can't remember what the game is called, where there is a piracy detection mechanism inside this game. It's a PC game. I wish I could remember its name, but it's really funny. So if you have a pirated copy, your in game character wears an eye patch with a skull and crossbones. That's it. Throughout the entire game, you get to watch your character wearing that eye patch. And it doesn't do anything. It doesn't change the gameplay or your capabilities or your enjoyment to the game. But it just tells you, listen, we know, we know that you took our work and didn't pay for it.  And if you make screenshots or videos or try to share your play with others, which of course now is a very big thing in the game industry, then everyone will know. Yeah, it's like a really cute way of holding up a mirror. And I bet that works. And it does work, exactly. So I think there are all of these social mechanisms that have nothing to do with the code is law implementation. Because at the end of the day, the vast majority of human behavior and moral behavior is not enforced by law enforcement. It's enforced by social convention and peer pressure and expectations. And you can do a lot of that outside of the blockchain. And the other thing about art, of course, is that some of the benefits that accrue to the people who buy art are precisely this prestige, not of being the owner, but of being a patron of the arts. It is almost like a civilizational badge that you get to carry. The Medici family pay a sculptor to make a beautiful sculpture in Venice. They don't make it so they can put it in the living room. They make it so that it goes in the piazza where everyone can see it and go, that's a really beautiful sculpture. Yeah, I know this was a Medici patronage, right? So that's the prestige that then transfers essentially rubs off from the artist to the patron of the arts and vice versa. So I think that's an effect that you can get with NFTs. And it's the same as having a Patreon, right? Which has been a very successful way of solving the starving artist's problem except for the fiat. You know, one of the things that strikes me is that you could also do this from the positive way as well, right? You guys have been talking about kind of the ways to discourage people or to use social conventions and norms to discourage people from avoiding this, but we could look at this from the other way too. You could have a token that's like Patreon coin or something like that, right? That gets awarded to people as they, based on the amount that they actually wind up paying in these splits to artists. It doesn't even have to do anything, right? It doesn't have to be worth anything, but it probably would be worth something if it really did represent sort of prestige or something like that. And then again, one could see almost like a simple leaderboard play, right? Where the whole point of this, since it's all just like mostly social signaling anyways, just like you want to have as many Patreon coins as possible because you want to be the top patron. And in the type of use case we're talking about, these are people who are already trading money for, you know, patronage and prestige on that side. So I think maybe you're right. Maybe it's not about the technology at all. Maybe it's just about putting the right social systems in place to kind of reinforce the behavior that you want in this type of system and discourage what you don't. And this is exactly why it is very important to have a diverse community with multiple different disciplines and crafts and have artists as part of your community. So having artists in the NFT space is making the NFT space better because precisely because it's not about the technology precisely because engineers who make NFTs do not necessarily have insight into the user experience of an art buyer. And so one of the amazing things that's happening with NFTs today is that it's bringing a lot of digital artists into the crypto space and those digital artists are changing the way people perceive the crypto space, but they're also providing very, very valuable perspectives that we are lacking in our industry. And the same thing applies with musicians and many of the other creative arts, which we're sorely lacking. This is one of the reasons why I keep harping on the idea that this is not just about money. And if you think it's just about money, you're missing such a big part of the picture. And the other thing that it does that's really weird is it creates a structure of incentive for the artist to want to incentivize the velocity of their art. So art is a highly illiquid industry and there just isn't an incentive to increase the velocity of art. So the velocity of money is how often money changes hands. And so it'll be very weird from an economic standpoint and then also from a business process standpoint to look at what that would mean and how artists could go about incentivizing the increase in the velocity of their paintings if they start making a cut every time there's a transfer. Did you guys see that Taco Bell released a set of five designs that I actually thought some of them were kind of cool. They had like this, what are the steel balls, you know, where one taps against the other and it's just kind of like a metronomic effect? What's that called? Newton's Cradle. Newton's Cradle, yeah. So one of the Taco Bell NFTs was that but with tacos. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but they're pretty amusing. I'll link to over the show notes. Taco Bell is kind of at the forefront of like very strange ways to advertise Taco Bell. I think like a year or two ago there's a movie that came out called Ideal Home where Paul Rudd is in a long term gay relationship and 20 minutes of the 90 minute runtime is them taking their child to Taco Bell. Okay. So it's like systemically important to that movie. Yeah. Listen, NFTs, very weird ways to advertise Taco Bell. They're at the forefront of maximizing the impression in the marketplace. So there are a lot of people who are quite bothered by NFTs. And I'd like to address that or maybe look at some of the criticism that is arising in this place. I find the critiques to be very, very similar to the critiques of ICOs. And in fact, there are many very strong parallels in the emergence of the ICO market in 2017 at the height of the bubble and the emergence of the NFT market and the enthusiasm behind the NFT market and the vast numbers we're seeing in NFT money that is happening this time round. And I kind of feel the same way about both of those, a bit more so the ICOs than NFTs, which is that in order to truly appreciate what's happening in the space, you have to be able to hold two ideas simultaneously in your head. And the ideas being for ICOs, for example, that we're looking at a truly innovative revolutionary mechanism for funding early stage startups and making investments available to everyone in the globe without borders, the future of finance, finance, 2.0, woohoo, plus the worst scam pit of shit you've ever seen flooded with absolute garbage, opportunists and sharks that are defrauding rubes. And if you can hold both of those ideas simultaneously, then you can really appreciate what happens with ICOs, right? It was both of those things simultaneously. And you have to look at it that way, in my opinion. Otherwise, you're missing at least half the picture. Same thing to a lesser extent with NFTs, meaning that on the one hand, this is a whole other level of what tokens can do, which is much more interesting than the early stage startup funding idea is tied to creative pursuits like the arts. It can truly revolutionize how the arts are funded, how artists are funded, how artists connect to their audience, how the audience connects to the artist, how the secondary markets work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that is just art. Forget all of the other applications of NFTs we talked about. And the degree of ridiculous FOMO that is happening in this space and the oversupply of low-cost money that is sloshing around trying to find yield in the most ridiculous places is also pouring into this market and creating some evaluations that, quite honestly, I don't see any rational way you could justify or even any artistic subjective way you could justify either. And so if you can hold both of those ideas, you can see this as something truly innovative and world-changing and a most ridiculous overexuberance at the same time. I think in both of those cases, we're going to see some amazing innovation emerge from this. And a lot of people are going to be left very salty and very burned. And a lot of the criticisms mirror that. They come from a very kind of sound, money-hard monetary principles crowd who do not see the point of doing anything other than digital gold store value 2.0. It kind of feels like with the NFTs, you're playing the Wheel of Fortune, except your options are like the million-dollar sliver is the one called innovation. And then there are three other boxes called It's the Next Beanie Babies. The other one is called It's the Next Bit Connect. And the other one is called, No, it makes sense because it's all just a front for money laundering. And people don't know when they spin that wheel if they're going to get that little sliver of innovation or if they're really just buying a Beanie Baby or if it's the next Bit Connect or, hey, something sold for $70 million because it's just a way to wash money. But they're all on the same wheel. And you can't pretend that the wheel doesn't also have the innovation.  And lots of people are pretending. One of the criticisms I've heard to get a bit more specific, which I think is worthy of an answer is, why do you need a blockchain for this? Why do you need an uncensurable blockchain for this use case? And that is a very fair question. And my answer is because if you understand NFTs as deeds, whether it's for intangible or tangible property, you cannot secure property rights with a centralized intermediary without having enormous counterparty and regulatory risk. And so for the very same reason that I want to be able to transact my money without interference, without censorship, without freezing, seizing, and censorship and all of those things, I want to also be able to do that with my digital art or with the token that represents some other property. Now, that connection is far less tenable if we're talking about a tangible item that is pointed to by reference by the NFT because then you don't have any way of enforcing that. So if I'm talking about a deed to a house, you can say, well, you don't really need an uncensurable blockchain to do that because the actual possession of the house is censorable by that jurisdiction. And that's very true. So for the time being, that doesn't really answer the question in the case of a tangible object that isn't on the blockchain, but it still does answer the question in the case of intangible property for which I can get recognition of ownership through the blockchain. Okay, so I want to take us in one other direction as far as the critiques are concerned. These critiques come to us from Xan, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right, it's xanofblackgirlscode.com. They present two different arguments that I don't believe we've discussed yet, but which I think warrant a little bit of it. And I just searched on Twitter for NFT climate change because I have heard this a lot. And it's been kind of interesting because some of the people on the kind of more woke side of things have really, really started getting aggressive with artists who have started dipping their toes into NFTs specifically because of concerns around the environmental energy consumption. Now, we've heard stories like this before, since basically the beginning, right? The energy concerns around blockchain specifically that use proof of work, you can agree with them, you can disagree with them, whatever. It is the same argument that is being made here, for anyone who's lost on how does NFT contribute to climate change, then they show a video of the computational power needed to solve a block from a blockchain. Then they show like one of those shipping containers that's been put on a site in like a energy generating location, and then it's full of Bitcoin miners or whatever it is that they're mining there. These server farms use cheap and dirty energy sources, coal and natural gas and burn it at a huge rate to get the electricity needed. It's wasteful to the nth degree and becomes even worse as more and more folks adopted as a service or type of payment or trade. Banking energy averages based on 2018 kilowatt hours from ING quote used by 7.6 billion people on the planet as of July 2018 results in 8.4 kilowatt hours. I'll skip the math, but it comes to basically 64 terawatt hours. The current annual energy consumption of Bitcoin was 71 terawatt hours, so more than the banking system used in its entirety, and of course, then they're citing many fewer people. Let's stop there, take a step back and talk quickly about the energy thing. Well, just do it on Ethereum with proof of stake. There you go. Now I really off the Bitcoin maximum because I just gave you a reason why you can't do it on colored coins. But it's not a good answer, but it is as flippant as the question itself, which is there are so many misconceptions, red flags, extrapolations, and non sequiturs in these types of arguments that they simply do not have any weight of evidence behind them. Okay, first of all, ING counting the total banking sector. Do you include the seventh fleet being parked in the Straits of Hormuz in that? No? Really? Because I think that's what the proof of work of the US dollar is. And that's not a what about. That's an actual relationship between how the US dollar is backed. So you can't just pretend that there is no equivalent pollution or energy use. All money is energy. The only question is, the route from energy to money in the minting process, how direct or indirect is it, and what carbon footprint does it have? And then there we can have a real conversation about the carbon footprint of Bitcoin versus the carbon footprint of other things versus the carbon footprint of the US dollar, the euro, etc. Otherwise, we're really not having an honest conversation about this. And the argument that the more people that use it, the more energy it uses is simply not true. I would also say that a lot of artists aren't familiar with dealing with negative externalities because in order to create negative externalities, you have to make money first. Ouch. There's a very simple solution to dealing with the internality or the externality of creating CO2 because you're using Ethereum by internalizing that cost. And that's think about how much of the network you're utilizing. And you know what? In the same way, you want people to live by their values so that you get a cut when they trade it. Why don't you take 10 or 20% of the money you make creating an NFT and buy carbon offsets? Like every other rich person who has a jumbo jet but says they care about the climate. And just to clarify, carbon offsets, that's a fungible token. Okay, so there's one other complaint here or concern that I also think is worth addressing. And this one, I don't think it has as easy an answer. So again, quoting from blackgirlscode.com or Twitter thread by the creator of it. Also, for anyone saying they don't care or find this new crypto uses less energy or is wasteful, I present an argument against NFTs from an art perspective. If you have $1,000 to drop on crypto, consider instead buying a personalized commission directly with $1,000. If the point of the NFT is owning special and personal art, you can just pay an artist to make that for you directly without the non-sense of transactions or computers and servers. Quote, but it's not encrypted and could be stolen. And quote, but I have news for you about art theft. So I think that's a kind of more reasonable point. The question is, what is the argument in favor of buying something or patronizing artists using this type of technology versus just patronizing artists generally? Well, it's not a one or the other thing. Like you could still do both. You can always buy custom art. And I think a lot of people who might be interested in NFTs do do that, but now they have another option to buy an NFT too. And also NFTs can do certain things, like we discussed on the show, that physical art cannot just from a local artist. Ding, ding, ding. That's the best part of the response, I think, and Stephanie got it 100% right.  But nevertheless, it's creative work and I have an audience. Well, right now my connection to my audience is always tenuous. It's tenuous because at all times I'm mediated by a platform. And that platform takes away my ability to connect directly with my audience. And one of the reasons I like using Patreon is because it helps me reestablish that connection. It's not about the money. It's not about the transaction. It's about the connection to the audience. So if you understand that, then the difference between paying someone $1,000 for a commission piece of art and buying that as an NFT with a $1,000 transaction is because at the end of the first transaction, the connection is severed. You pay for the art, you get the commission, you walk away, that's it. There's no more connection between the artist and the audience. When you use an NFT, that connection remains. You have a thread that either the artist or the audience can tug on, can reconnect with. And you can use that to do additional things. You can use it to distribute additional royalties to the artist. So it's not a single transaction and bye-bye. And you can also use it to give additional perks to the people who are buying the NFTs by using it as an access token. So the NFT then becomes essentially a network connection. And you can build a social network between artists and their audiences. And that's the real thing. It's not about, well, how can we take transactional art and make it more complicated. It's about how can we take the use of art and turn it from something that is transactional to something that is interactive and long-term. So I guess the only other thing that is worth saying is that there have been, and I think that we may see this trend grow again with these big prices that we've seen come in for these things, we've seen an increasing number of people who are going on to Instagram and finding really nice looking art by just traditional artists and then claiming to be those traditional artists and tokenizing the thing and trying to sell it before anybody figures it out. So definitely, again, like if you are someone who's interested in this marketplace, just be careful as far as the provenance around a lot of these things goes. And again, like that is something that it feels like we will have to come up with or the space will have to come up with a better way to deal with, because right now it is causing a bit of a problem, I think, for sort of perceptions around the industry within a lot of the art world that isn't already on board. Still, as kind of a first step and as like kind of mass market validation, like we didn't even talk about what's going on with NBA Top Shot and just kind of like the craziness around some of the projects that are out there, but it's exciting because again, you know, like for better or worse, this is the closest that we've got in a lot of these ways to these mainstream or early majority type of audiences. So personally, I know we're all pretty excited about this whole NFT thing and it's a topic we'll be revisiting. Thank you very much to the other hosts of the show, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, and Andreas M. Antonopoulos for sitting in on today's session. This episode was edited by Jonas and featured music by Jared Rubens. Stay tuned for our next episode. We'll see you soon.


What is a CMS and which one should you use? We're talking about it on the journey. All right, so today we have a special guest, Alicia from Sucuri. Thank you so much for coming on today. Yeah, thanks. I'm happy to be here. Awesome. So we're talking about what is a CMS and which one should you use for your website? Can you tell us a little bit about what a CMS is? So CMS stands for Content Management System, and it's basically an easier way to put pages live on your website or blog posts, manage your image, media library, all that kind of stuff. Awesome. And now let's go over the top three CMSs. I'm going to be a little bit biased in this episode. I'm just this my disclaimer right there. I'm going to start with WordPress. WordPress is the most popular content management system out there today. Powers over a third of the internet. It has tons of plugins, tons of options, and it's pretty resourceful. And probably my favorite reason for why I use WordPress is the community behind it. There's such a large community that just all just comes together. There's meetups. There's WordCamps. And everyone just helps each other out. For sure. And I mean, with 40,000 plugins almost, like you have no end to the kind of functionality you can add to your CMS. Absolutely. So what are some other CMSs that we can possibly use? For sure. Yeah, because everybody's heard of WordPress. So Drupal is another very popular one. It's been described to me as kind of like a Swiss cheese. You need to be a bit more technical to use Drupal, but it does have a lot of different features compared to WordPress. It has a different user experience and ultimately it's been used for a lot of things like government websites and that kind of thing because of its ability to be a little more secure in some areas. Yeah. And it's definitely one not for like the smaller business type sites. Those enterprises are large corporation type sites. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Joomla is another really popular one as well. It's got a really good community and it's got, I think the second highest market share after WordPress, although WordPress is like 30 percent. And I think it's a giant Joomla is like 6 percent. So just a little bit of a gap there between the top two. But Joomla is also a really awesome CMS to use. You want to make sure that you're using the most latest version if possible. There are two active versions available that you can use. But yeah, you definitely want to stay on the most recent branch of any CMS if possible. Yeah, that's just a best practice there. All right, let's talk about really figuring out which one should you use. Right? Like what are what are some of the first steps we want to think about? Definitely, you want to make sure that you know what your requirements are for your website. So how easy does it need to be for your users to use? How are you going to go about actually creating posts? And, you know, what are the processes that you're going to use as part of that? And then once you have all that, you can kind of look at each CMS and see what are the extensions and themes that are available and see if that they'll match the requirements that you have for your website. That makes sense. And it all comes down to figure out what's right for you. Like I will stand by WordPress all day, but WordPress may not be right for your situation. So figuring out those requirements with those applications are super important. Yeah. And usually a lot of the CMS websites have a great community because they are open source. So tell us a little about that open source. Yeah, for sure. So all those top three CMSs, they're open source. They're also free. It's very important. Open source basically means that the source code used to build WordPress or Drupal or Joomla, it's all open and available and anybody can contribute to it as well. Right on. So that just means it's constantly being improved by the community and the community is also checking to make sure that what's being added is secure. All right. So we want our website to look good, right? So is that something to think about when we're choosing what platform we use and how easy it is to create those sites? Totally. So different themes will have different attributes. Like they may have a sidebar on the left or the right, or they may be all one column and a never ending scrolling website. Different themes will allow you to accomplish maybe what you need by having custom backgrounds or custom menus. So you want to look at the options for your theme and you also don't want to discount like premium themes. A lot of premium themes out there will add extra functionality. So you're essentially paying for the theme, even though the CMS is free. That's an awesome option. There's premium plugins as well, depending on what you need. The default themes that come with it are sometimes a little restrictive. So you want to take a look at what the default themes are, try some different free themes and see what the options are to get your site to look the way you want it to. Yeah. And what was kind of controversial at first with WordPress and 5.0, remember Gutenberg? Oh, yeah. Gutenberg is essentially the new WordPress editor. The whole point is kind of mirror kind of the printing press of just blocks and everything else. Yeah. What you see is what you get. So as you're typing... Wizzywig. Yeah, Wizzywig. Thank you. Yeah. So as you're typing, yeah, you see exactly what you would see on the website. So that comes default by WordPress and it has made the experience, especially for first time users, easier to create. Then there are page builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder or WP Bakery Builder that makes that user experience a little bit easier if you're going on the WordPress realm and really want something that's pretty customizable and you don't have to be a web developer or guru to build that website. For sure. CMSs are having to make things a little easier. You know, there's a lot of different places out there that are creating website builders that are super easy for people to use. And so it's helpful for these open source CMSs to make the user experience a little easier. All right. So another thing we probably have to think about is the hosting requirements we're going to need for our applications. Talk us through a little bit about what that looks like. For sure. So most of these are running on PHP. So you want the most updated version of PHP, especially if you want the latest features and to make sure that you're getting those security updates. So that's really important. A lot of hosting companies will offer a one-click install for most of these major CMS applications. Some hosting companies, especially when I first started creating websites and I was on a super budget, but also very secure host, it took me a long time. I took like three days to install WordPress and they have a famous five-minute install. So you want to look and see and maybe talk to your hosting company about what the options are for getting the CMS installed on your server. Right, because taking three days to get a website going just the beginning is not something you want to do. There's a lot of places out there that will do managed hosting, especially with WordPress. There's managed WordPress that has just already magically installed some extra security features. And then what most people end up going with is like a C-panel type hosting. So it does have that one-click install with install a Tron or Softaculous, whatever they're using. Totally. That couple clicks of a button and then it's there and you can start building and designing however you want. All right. So the real reason I brought you on to this episode is really talking about security with CMSs. They're open source, you constantly have to update them. So there's lots of things that we need to really think about to make sure our stuff is protected. Totally. Well, with it being open source, not only are all the good people contributing code, but all the bad people can also look at that code as well and find vulnerabilities. That's something that a lot of people are concerned about, especially with WordPress being so popular, it is a large target. The CMS itself is actually quite secure because there's a great community checking things out. But you want to make sure that you're not installing more plugins than you need. Trying to make sure that you're keeping everything up to date. If you have a managed solution, they'll do it for you, which is awesome. You want to make sure that you have something, some kind of security plugin that's monitoring your site and letting you know if there is a problem that they detect. There are some that can also add features for protection, like adding two-factor authentication, which is a second password on your phone. That you need to enter in order to get into your website. There's all kinds of cool security plugins, security utilities that you can use with your CMS. Yeah, I know with WordPress, the top security plugins that come to mind. Of course, security has a security plugin, but there's also WordPress friends. And then with having an SSL on your site, super important just to encrypt that password because you have to log in. The beauty with CMS is that you can access them anywhere, right? So you want to make sure that wherever you're accessing them, your password isn't being sniffed out by someone in the middle. Yeah, you want to be careful. You don't want to maybe do it on an airport or coffee shop Wi-Fi unless you're using a VPN.   So what about Firewall? I've heard that it should be important, should be added to the site. What's the validity with that? Definitely. One of the nice things about a website of Firewall is it'll virtually patch your CMS. So if there is a security issue, essentially the firewall is taking care of that. It surrounds your website. And if somebody's trying to exploit a vulnerable plugin on your site, the firewall will catch that attempt and block it. And they'll see a blocking page. Meanwhile, all of your legitimate visitors are being sped up because of the global network of the firewall and content delivery network. So we figured out what CMS were wanting to use. We've got it installed. How do we go about documentation and learning the program itself? There are some awesome resources out there. You talked about WordPress. I think WPBGinner has some awesome training guides and tutorials. There's an awesome community for all of these CMSs with very active support forums. That's a great way to go about it. And then obviously, if you have a developer or something like that that's helping you get some customization, they can usually help you. You wanna make sure that you're documenting everything as part of your website as well. So it's just gonna help you later on down the line if you know you have a list of all of the users, all the plugins and that kind of stuff, and you're keeping that up to date. Yeah, especially if you have people on your team that needs to access the site, give them documentation on what they should be accessing, what they shouldn't be, because sometimes the wrong click can make just chaos happen. Totally and good user passwords, making sure that you've got the right role levels assigned to your users, whether they're just an editor or an author or contributor. Those roles are usually built into the CMS to allow you to make sure they can only access what they should be allowed to access. You only wanna grant admin privileges to somebody for as long as they need it and that kind of thing. Now with this website, I know many of the entrepreneurs or even solopreneurs out there with their stuff has many hats to wear, right? Sometimes maintaining it isn't always something that they have time for. Yeah, it might not be top of mind. Right, what should we be doing with those updates? Yeah, definitely. I would say that it's very important to make sure that you always retain access to your property, your web property. So I've seen cases where a developer will leave a client and leave with the passwords and then you can't get into your hosting account or you can't get into WordPress. It's not ideal. So make sure that you always have access to those things and make sure that you're just practicing safe security practices throughout all of it. Right on. And with WordPress and Jumla, everything else, we talked about it earlier. Make sure you're at least going in there every now and then to update it to the next latest version. It's not only for performance, but it is for security. Yeah, for sure. I mean, with some CMSs, there might be different branches that are still being actively developed. So having a firewall can virtually patch and make sure that if there are any vulnerabilities, you have a little bit of an extra window because whenever there's a security update released, the hackers are looking and going, okay, here's the old file. Here's the new file. Oh, look, there's the security flaw. Yep, and they send all their bots out. Totally, it can be a matter of like minutes, hours after a security patch is released before there's active attacks in the wild. So definitely update your sites as soon as possible. Auto updates are amazing. WordPress has auto updates on most hosts. Yeah, and or you can hire developers, like most designers or developers will have like a website care plan. So you can have them just do it for you. If you're using WordPress, go to any pro sites or manage WP has the one click updates. You can update all your plugins and your themes. You have a set safe update option. So what it does is it'll update your site, take a snapshot of it before and after, make sure they're all the same. And if there's an issue, it'll retract back to it. That's a free option for you. Yeah, that's perfect. You hit on a good point. It's not a set it and forget it thing with the website. You need to make sure that you're maintaining it and that it's, you know, it's part of your business. It's how your business looks. So you should definitely make sure that you have some kind of plan for keeping it up to date and maintained. All right, the last point that we should really talk about is really your time and investment with the CMS of your choice. August, we're loaded up about that. For sure. Well, you want to go in and realize that, you know, it's going to take you time to set up all the pages that you want. Right. It may take you time to find the right plugins. So you want to kind of think through whether you want to hire somebody or get some help with that to find the functionality and the look and feel that you're after. Definitely budget when it comes to free CMSs. Well, you don't have to pay for the CMS. So that's helpful. Right. But it's customization and security and all those things that you definitely want to consider as part of the whole package of having a website, ongoing costs for domain, who is privacy, SSL certificates, all that kind of stuff. Totally, yeah. There's a lot of accessories that go on with having a website. So you want to figure out, like I said at the beginning, what those requirements are and then make sure that you have a plan for how you're going to budget and the timelines around when you want to launch. Perfect. And with Drupal and Juma, they are, they do have that smaller market share. So there's really specific requirements of when you want to use those applications those developers that you hire for Drupal or Juma might cost more than a WordPress designer as well. For sure, yeah. And you want to make sure that you're really looking at the work that the developer has done and make sure that it matches what you're after. There's lots of great websites out there that can tell you more about how to pick a developer depending on what you're after. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today and helping us figure out what a CMS is and why we should use one. You've been awesome. Thanks, my pleasure. Well, if you've liked this video, go ahead and smash that like button. Add a comment below on something that you've learned and subscribe to this channel and ring that bell if you'd like to see these episodes. First, this is The Journey. We'll see you next time.


Aaron Alec Manon was tough on you guys first couple times through your home run really seemed to change the energy of this game How were you able to attack him and that about? Man, you know Alex, man, he's one of the best pictures in the game right now You know great to see him a foreseen fastball can throw a nasty wipeout slider at any time You know honestly got up there, you know sitting on slider sitting on slider I was able to kind of spit on a couple until I got a good pitch of hit, which was a fastball, but You know, I don't know. I was just trying to do what I came for the team and You know everybody in the lineup was grinding even though we weren't really, you know putting up the numbers Everybody was you know trying to grind them out a little bit when we worked his pitch count up And then you know luckily I was just able to get one over the plate and do something with it Eleven game winning streaks do not come around very often. What is your favorite part of how this team is rolling right now? Just it's a different guy every night. It's on the same person every single night You know last time we had Glabor-Torres score all our runs You know tonight a lot of guys contributed, but you know pitching staff picking us up So I think just collectively as a whole, you know, just the team picking each other up and That's what's gonna take when you're playing 162 against some of the best teams in the game And you gotta everybody's got to contribute Marwin hasn't played a whole lot tonight He gets in there gets a couple hits drives and run it somehow wheezes away ahead of that that run down there We see on that Well, you know Marwin man, he sees a ball player. He's a gamer, you know and Just with what he can bring, you know playing you know all the infield positions play some outfield for us come off the bench And do what he does, you know come in, you know Like you said not playing every day and then come in and face one of the best pitchers in the game like that stuff to do But he you know, he came up big for us and then on that rundown, man I gotta he's got teach me some things man. I was I was I was pretty slick right there Eight home runs for you in 10 games the last time you accomplished this was in 2017 And we know what that year was died like for you. Is this the best you've been at the plate since 2017? It's tough to say, you know I think the biggest thing is just you know being healthy and being out there and being able to do what you need to do You know when you got nagging stuff going on, it's tough to be it be at your best But I wouldn't say this is the best I felt but you know, we're we're getting there We're gonna say about this 10-game span this, you know particularly with this 10-game span that you're performing so well and you know accomplishing probably what Yankee fans particularly like you to accomplish It's tough to say I'm just trying to do what I can you know when I got you know Anthony Rizzo John Carlos staying behind me Aaron Hexel may you in front of me man They you know, they push you a little bit, you know, because they're always getting on base We're always having good at bats so it just you know it motivates the team motivates me to go out there Like hey, I see these guys raking. I gotta I gotta try to do the same thing as them


as they are arrested. You know what? It is a beautiful ending because they are freed from prison. Call it there, a little introduction here. We are the platoons, primary A class. It is our privilege and honor to bring these children some. With me here is Andy, Steph, Gracie, and his phelix, Amp teacher Steve. Now back to our story of Paul and Silas. Thinking about it, Paul was never to preach in Philippi, but he found himself preaching in Philippi. Andy, how did Paul find himself preaching in Philippi? Had a vision that a man telling him to come and preach in Macedonia. Oh, Paul had a vision of a man telling him to come to Macedonia and help them preach. Elas Christians, we have that wonderful hymn that Macedonia called. Did he go? Did Paul go? Yes Gracie? Paul went to Macedonia. Oh, immediately Paul arose, prayed for the journey and left. You know what? When he went there, one sabat, they went by the river side, that was the custom to go and pray there. And as they were going to pray, a lady, a slave girl followed them and this slave girl had the spirit of divination. Do you understand that spirit of divination? Do you know Steph? Divination is when you can tell the future. She could foretell the future and the masters took advantage of her and used her to make a lot of money. But Paul and Silas were very kind to this girl. Know what Paul and Silas did? Know what they did? What Paul did? Andy? They said, in the name of Jesus Christ, get out that spirit. Oh, Paul commanded the spirits in the name of Jesus and they left the girl. And the girl was quiet because the girl had been healed. So Paul did very good things to this girl, Paul and Silas. Do you love it when people are kind to us? Do you like it? Yes. But you know what? Paul and Silas were very kind to this girl. But not everybody was happy. So they said, we are going to do bad things to Paul and Silas. Know what they did? Do you know what did they do?  Oh, no. They grabbed these people, took their outer garments, they scored them, they whipped them. Then they brought them with a charge that these people are preaching things that we, the Romans, can't believe. Then they handed them over to, to who? To who? To who, Andy? A jailer. To a jailer to take care of them. And then the jailer placed them where? Which part of the jail? Yes, Gracie? The era part of the jail. You know, the most inner part of the jail so that the cool note is kept. And then they were kept there. And now this jailer, first time they are fit, time tightly in the hands and they were in a discomforting position and now they were crying, they were crying. But this night, you want to talk about it was not the usual life. You know what they did? Can you guess what they did? Yes, tell. Oh, like our key text. But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. But the other jailers were listening to them. So this night it was the unusual one. So the jailers said, ah, every day it has been them weeping, weeping. But for today, people who are tired, you never point, speak. When they were singing hymns to God, the other prisoners were listening and then they asked for themselves how can these people sing when they have been wept?  How can they sing praises to God? But now they kept singing and suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly. Ha, ha. Suddenly an earthquake came to the out and sometimes fell down.  But I don't understand earthquake. Oh, and you understand what's an earthquake. And sometimes it shakes in the out. Oh, the out was shaking in the middle of the night. It was shaking and all of a sudden, the doors to open and the windows and everything. But let us go back to the jailer. So the jailer, the jailer, ha. The jailer was from sleeping. So the jailer woke up, deep sleep hold, so the jailer thought they are these kids. Reached out to his ward and...  Shouting? Stop, do not do any harm on yourself.  Hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. Very good point. The jailer shouted, Hey, we are all here. Then two pole ensailers outside and then ask pole ensailers a question. A question, yes, Steve? How to be saved. Oh, sas, what can I do to be saved? I don't know whether there was an answer or not. Was there a greasy? She said, believe in God and you will be saved. You believe in God and you will be saved. I don't know whether he believed, did he? Oh, Andy? He believed and his entire family was after him. Wait, believe in God and you will be saved. So he believed and him, Andy says, and his entire family was saved. After pole ensailers shared the word of God with them. Right? Yes. Now I'm wondering, I'm wondering, basic. Lidia also invited them to her home. Oh, we are coming to Lidia, just back in Hidunia. They were called and then when they learnt that they were Roman citizens, they became afraid and then the magistrates apologised. But now, can you revisit the position of the jailer, pole ensailers singing in prison? Can you revisit? Yes. If you ask me how they prayed, I don't know what prayer they made in the prison. Was it the Lord's Prayer? Which song did they sing in the prison?  I don't know. Gracie, might you have any idea what these people say in the prison? I don't know, but I think they were singing. Rejoice in the Lord always and again. Rejoice in the Lord always and again. I think they were singing. I'm happy today. So happy. And roll them in the sea. And roll them in the sea. Oh, Jesus took my burden. And roll them in the sea. Never to remember anymore. Whichever song, whichever prayer they made there, what I know is prayer in some very, very powerful. It's one of the tools we can use as children to minister or reach out to fellow children. Are you people in Kula Skoral? Yes. You sing there. Yes, all the songs we have learned there we can use to reach out to fellow children. Now let's fast forward and see how they were released from jail. But they released from jail? Let me tell you about the magistrates. The magistrates sent word and said, set those people free. And when they heard, they said... What did they say? They say no because they didn't want to get a fair trial. Thank you very much, Junior. But did they say these people scotched us publicly? They said you scotched us publicly. You have beaten us publicly. Now you want us to live secretly. No, no, no, we will not live secretly. What a point. So they called the magistrates and they came. But you know what? The magistrates also learned that Paul and Silas were Romans. And so they apologized to them because they had mistreated them before. They apologized to them and they left and went to leaders place. You remember we mentioned leaders? Yes, they went to leaders place and they encouraged the brethren and then they also left. Now let's finish. We have learned several lessons. Many many many many many many many many many. But I want to just around think. Who go first? Junior. What lesson have we learned from this story of Paul and Silas? Nothing is impossible. Oh, nothing is impossible with the lord is a lot of old flesh. Imagine they were tied in jail midnight. But they sang hymns to God and prayed and the doors were open. We listen to us, and those watching, some of us are parents, and they too are children of God. Please, do you have a message for them? Now parents, remember when you're facing trouble and your heart is... ...and your heart seems to fail. Remember Paul and Silas singing in the jail? The Lord will surely help you when you call on his name. God is our refuge and strength. Now children, meet us next time. See you there.


Back-to-back champion of the world, Bartosz Marslik, the Gooter is off-gain to improve the Gooters made a textbook start, absolute beauty. Now here's the gate four from Smaslik, that's why he's gone from gate four, because he's got speed, he's long-tracking down the back straight, Kelvin Tatum style. The leader is at Atom Leguta, and Bartosz Marslik has got speed, Smaslik's wagging it on, he's putting pressure on Leguta here, we've got a good race on our hands, here comes Bartosz Marslik! That's why he went for gate four! Wow, that's just fantastic, isn't he? He turns his knight around, the Gooters firing back at him, but Bartosz Marslik, when it really matters, he's turning on the style, down the back straight, hanging off the back of the bike, looking a million dollars out in front now Nigel, just about crept through on eight points, fires himself to the front, looking for his third world championship.


The Sentinel-2 mission has the potential to provide accurate and reliable data for crop leaf area index, LAI, mapping. This can be achieved through the use of a lookup table, LUT, or Artificial Neural Network, ANN. Both methods have shown similar accuracy in retreating LAI, but the LUT method is more robust and less sensitive to changes in band selection. This article was authored by Guido D'Urso, Tobias B. Hank, Wolfer Mauser, and others.


Charles Munger once said, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. And this remains as true today as ever. Understanding the structure of incentives in the system is key to understanding how and why it operates the way it does and why it continues in the same path, irrespective of what the stakeholders say. We need to get an understanding for not just the points of possible collaboration but also the points of competition and where that lies is largely a function of the structure of incentives. Incentives can be both positive and negative. Positive incentives are rewarding while negative incentives are punishing. A positive incentive would be like a bonus payment for doing something, while a negative would be, for example, a fine. A subtle combination of positive and negative incentives are used by organizations to direct us in different directions. For example, as part of environmental regulation, the government will use a combination of negative incentives such as banning certain polluting activities but will also use positive incentives such as subsidies for certain activities that are seem to be beneficial to the environment. If we want to change the system, we need to be aware of how those incentives are working to either resist change or as potential sources for enabling it. To dig further into this, we can use game theory to gain a more rigorous analysis of the structure of incentives that people find themselves under. Likewise, behavioral science can be used to better understand how people really behave. Game theory works by seeing the interactions and organizations we form part of as games. A game tries to capture the dynamic where autonomous agents that have their own goals are interdependent in affecting some joint outcomes. A game has three major elements. Players, strategies, and payoffs. A player is a decision maker in a game. A strategy is a specification of a decision for each possible situation in which a player may find themselves. A payoff is a reward or loss that players experience when all the players follow their respective strategies. Games are played over some mutually desired resources. The resource is whatever is of value to the people in the organization, the agents in the game. A key consideration shaping the overall game dynamic is whether the total value distributed out to all agents remains constant, irrespective of their actions, or can it grow or decrease depending on their capacity to cooperate. Constant sum games are games in which the sum of the player's payoff add up to the same number. This makes for games of pure competition. What one gains, the other loses. Zero sum games are a special case of constant sum games in which choices by players can neither increase nor decrease the available resources. One can see this in the game Paper Rock Scissors or in most sporting events like basketball. In zero sum games, the relationship between the agents' payoffs are negatively correlated, which is called negative interdependence, meaning individuals can only achieve their goal via the failure of another agent, and this creates an attractor towards competition. These games are called strictly competitive because there are no incentives for cooperation. For example, basketball is a strictly competitive dynamic as only one side can win and there is no advantage from cooperating. Non-constant games or non-zero sum games are those in which the total value to be distributed can increase or decrease depending on the degree of cooperation between actors. For example, through the members of the business working together, they can create more value than working separately. Thus, the whole payoff gets bigger. Equally, the total payoff may get smaller through conflict, like in an arms race between two gangs in a city. In non-zero sum games, the outcome for agents is positively correlated. If one gets more, the other will too. If one gets less, then the other will too. With non-zero sum games, we can get positive interdependencies between the agents, meaning members of a group come to share common goals and perceive that working together is individually and collectively beneficial and success depends on the participation of all the members leading to cooperation. A cooperative game is one in which there can be cooperation between the players and they have the same cost. Thus, cooperative games are an example of non-zero sum games. This is because in cooperative games either every player wins or loses. Cooperation may be achieved through several different possibilities. It may be built into the dynamics of the game, as would be the case with a positive sum game where payoffs are positively correlated. In such a case, the innate structure of the game creates an attractor towards cooperation because it is both in the interest of the individuals and the whole organization. A good example of this is the mutually beneficial gains from trade and goods and services between nations. If businesses or countries can find terms of trade in which both parties benefit, then specialization and trade can lead to an overall improvement in the economic welfare of both countries with both sides seeing it as in their interest to cooperate in this organization because of the extra value that is being generated. Equally, cooperation may be achieved by external enforcement by some authoritative third parties such as governments and contract law. Here we cooperate in a transaction because the third party is ensuring that it is in our interest to do so by creating punishments or rewards. Likewise, cooperation may be achieved through peer-to-peer interaction and feedback mechanisms. For example, rating systems on eBay work to ensure that the sellers act in the interest of the buyers because they have the power to leave negative feedback if they don't, which will affect their future sales. A non-cooperative game is one where an element of competition exists and there are limited mechanisms for creating institutions for cooperation. This may be because of the inherent nature of the game we are playing. That is to say, it is a zero-sum game that is strictly competitive and thus cooperation will add no value, as is the case, for example, with the game chess. Non-cooperation may be a function of isolation, lack of communication, and interaction with which to build up the trust that enables cooperation. We see this within modern societies. As these societies have grown in size, they have transited from communal cooperative systems based on the frequent interaction of members to requiring formal third parties to ensure cooperation because of the anonymity and lack of interaction between members of large societies. Lastly, there may simply be a lack of formal institutions to support cooperation between members. An example of this might be what we call a failed state where the government's authority is insufficiently strong to impose sanctions and thus cannot work as the supporting institutional framework for cooperation. Incentive mapping is important because it lets us see the somewhat invisible fields of incentives that are acting on all of us every day. It tells us about the underlying structure of why and where conflict, competition, and cooperation arise and why. It also points us in the direction of possible ways to realize new outcomes.