Hi everyone today. I'm here with Yovanna and I'm excited about this conversation because I'm I've been wanting for you all to Get to meet her. She has been so kind to have interviewed me on her podcast already Which is I'm looking forward to the podcast series itself because the first one was with Derek Sivers one of my heroes as well And that was a really great episode. So I hope you all will check out our podcast, but she's a rising star and You're gonna hear a lot more about her in the future But let's just get into the conversation. I'll kind of weave in a little bit about her background as we as we talk But Yovanna, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me This is such a pleasure your work changed my life last year and made me fall in love with marketing again So it's a great honor to be here. So I think we met on instagram Yeah, that's what I first found out about you on swiss miss newsletter Yes, right sends an amazing newsletter every sunday and i'm a loyal subscriber And she referenced your video That you don't have to feel like do feel right to do good that you need to do good and then you will feel right That is how I found you and then we started interacting on instagram and that's yeah Because I was sharing your content like crazy to my serbian community and at one point you're like Who are all these serbian women? And that's one of the things I've I've really noticed about you is you are very generous in sharing other people's work You're a great support of a lot of people and no wonder a lot of people want to support you back Um, one of the things you've you've ran several programs I think one of them that you're currently Emphasizing is your business revamp program, which has over 1500 people have participated in the business revamp. Is that right? Yeah Uh mostly women there are 23 guys, but mostly women Because I started that program in the ex-yugoslav region, which includes Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia And the women here not all of them speak english well So they had they had like a need for someone to explain things That are relevant here in the Balkans. It's different market than the u.s. Definitely And what's what's your sting? I mean this part of part of your what you've been able to accomplish is that You come from a region where the monthly income is something like several hundred dollars u.s 350.  And so you have a lot of Credibility, I guess to be able to help others turn their passion into a viable Income and a very good income for themselves. You've had you've had the experience of living in How many countries I know seven countries. Yeah seven countries, right? So yeah, new york You've worked you've lived and worked lived and worked in new york before that mont claire in new jersey london abu dhabi dubai Cyprus and lima soul in belgrade. So a lot of places It's mostly due to work and study I love to travel the world. I love to get to know other cultures and I love languages So I've been studying english and french since I was age five And because I was such a nerd like since the early age I heard a selen dion song on the tv And I said to my mom, I need to go to learn english to understand This is such a beautiful song and I don't understand what this woman is saying. So that is what actually started me That's amazing.  I mean you spent three years Traveling the world for free You figured out how to do that and to blog about it Um, and you've learned a lot about that. It's it's uh, I think you wrote that it's not all that it's cracked up to me. Yeah You know sounds so glamorous. Yeah, but yeah, absolutely Tell us first of all, tell us how you did that. How did you travel? For three years, you know for free get to blog about it And what was one of the key I guess lessons you learned from that experience So my parents, uh, always told me you can't travel the world for free. You need to deserve it You need to make so much money and blah, blah, blah And whenever somebody says something like that, I always um question it no matter if it's my parents If it's a professor, I don't really take authorities that they know more They just have more experience and they're speaking from their experience, which is not necessarily mine So I always want to test things and I do my research So while doing my research, I found tim ferris and I found brook soured world wonderlust She was a woman who was solo traveling from australia all over the world And I read the whole blog of hers And she impressed me because I saw that she was really traveling for free staying at these luxurious hotels And I wonder what is it? What does it take to do that? So I read everything what she wrote and then I decided to try and implement because I know that just reading by reading I'm not gonna get anywhere. So what I did is I wrote Over 110 emails to hotels in europe to offer to come and blog about it By that by that time I already had a blog since 2011 So what I did to start get that started like with I wrote 10 posts about the places I've already visited and I describe it really beautifully with nice photos that I took Keep in mind I paid for those trips But I just wrote about it from the heart and wrote a review and on the bottom of every post I wrote jovan amiljanovic was a guest at this hotel, but all my opinions are my own So I was not lying. I was just like making it look nice like If somebody was reading they would think was she paid to do right is or was she like Just writing it to write it because she likes it And I sent those 10 as a reference as a showcase of what I can write and how I present things I didn't expect anyone to take my word for it. They wanted to see results So I showed them the results of the ones I previously stated and of course 90 of the hotels never replied 10 of them Actually did majority said no and one hotel in Budapest which is really close to Serbia. It's like four hour ride by car They said yes, so that was how it all started And that was like september. I think and then in january israel embassy in Serbia took me on a seven-day trip And I just went through all of israel. It was amazing. It was fully covered by them I had the private driver with the wi-fi in the car. We went to tel Aviv hypha jerusalem After that there came other countries. I went to germany After that I won austrian airlines global blogger challenge So that was all like spontaneously. I just had the desire in my heart to travel I wanted to see if it's really like that that you can't travel for free. So I found the way I also followed all the pages of all the airlines and all the embassies On facebook and whenever they announced something like you should write something film something and the award is to travel I would participate and the funny story. It was wow island challenge. I also went to island like that for free So they were offering the free trip to island and all you had to do was to make your island experience and share it with your audience And one man actually won the challenge but they They got another award for me because I was the person who shared it and whose link was shared most And most people in the world applied because I shared to all my friends to all my connections to all my followers And they awarded that so that still brings me chills because it's a proof that there are people who see you know What you do behind the scenes and that you really want everyone to win and we all have equal opportunity And that if I share it With others it doesn't make me have less of it because if it's meant for me It will not pass me And if it's meant for someone else and I bring that joy to someone else Then it's just good karma for me, you know So that was about the travels. Yeah, that was like for three years and after the three years I started feeling Kind of like I was a slave to it So I was not enjoying it anymore And that is why we need to test if our dreams are legit Or not because it sounds better than it is for most of the things in life when you try it you see Oh, now I see it really like 50 50 like everything else. It's not perfection as I envisioned maybe Oh free trips who doesn't want that? Yeah, but who wants to be a slave when they travel who wants to wake up After 20 hour flight and six in the morning until 12 p.m Work and eat food and the photograph but by force not by enjoying, you know So everything there's in tonight mere basically is what I'm trying to say Nothing is fit. Nothing is perfect. Just perfect. They're always second side of the coin That's right. That's right. What you just said, I mean I want to unpack some of this because First of all you sent emails to over a hundred hotels To get one yes And this this kind of these kinds of numbers we don't realize that's really what's happening For those people who are able to do a lot of great things You know, sometimes we send emails to Five potential 10 potential promotional partners, for example, and we don't get any response and we think oh gosh It failed. It didn't work, you know, uh, or I I ran a facebook ad for 30 dollars and I didn't get any clients. So therefore it doesn't work people I find this to be so true people to try things with such little Um, sincerity almost they just dip their toes and they're like they dip their toes. No, it doesn't doesn't work But you really try things Yeah For the hotels you send 110 you got one and I've heard the same kinds of numbers From other people whether it's traveling or whether it's getting people to promote you It's it's that kind of ratio and it's like everybody watching this Everybody listening being willing if you're wanting to say, you know, yes, I want people to promote my business You've got to be willing to send those emails at this kind of ratio And then once you get one just like you said once you got one Then the then then it gets easier then the field opens the field Yeah, because now you have more more case studies more examples to share with people And if you have like 20 then the Israeli embassy noticed me on facebook, you know, it's not like some connection People always say here in my country. Oh, you got to have connections. I'm like, oh, I wish I had 10 connections because I had 10 Embassy paid and travel organization paid trips. So if I was really that well connected, I wish So it's not connections. It's just hard work persistence And it always pays off And by the way, of course with hard work and persistence you make connections and now now you have some connections that But now I don't use it to travel Yeah, right, but you weren't born with them. That's that's the key. No, no, no, no One of the things you also you said was about the the Iceland challenge that that you were You know instead of keeping the opportunity to yourself as a secret Right, which a lot of a lot of people understandably. It's a competition.  This sounds like a great opportunity. You shared it with everybody and This doesn't always happen but sometimes it does and No matter what you say good karma, you're bringing joy. You bring opportunity to so many people But as an example, this came back to you and said they said, wow, we noticed this And we want to thank you and it happens more often than you think but but you do it without thinking about Oh, what's in it from? Yeah, it was not a strategy like come like who could have known that like there was no way in hell That I would know that yeah So yeah, that's how travel turned out to be really not what I once expected it to be and that is fine We should realize our dreams and see that they're not our dreams anymore It is okay because the process and the progress and what we learn that is why we were in it It's not about the results the result came and it wasn't what I was expected or maybe I changed It's okay to not be happy with your result And you've also had experiences. I mean in the process of creating Your ideal work, okay your ideal business your ideal You also had the process of founding a couple of mobile apps Yeah, you you got some seed investment You went and you worked to buy very hard 24 hours a day or something For to try to create this these mobile apps. So tell us about what you learned from that experience and So I came into that world because I was told I don't belong there So when people already kill me or laugh at me and tell me I can't do something Just like my family said you can't travel for free. I'm like, okay, maybe but maybe I can So I decided to try so I prepared my pitch for that competition challenge in Serbia And actually it was only programmers I was the only lady who was pitching and I came out there and I pitched and I won $30,000 seed investment And I was like, wow. Well, this is a sign. You can actually do something You know, if you have a good idea if you have somebody That you will call for help when it comes to development You don't need to have you don't have to know the whole process You just really important because you're not a programmer No, I don't know how to program do design or anything and I've been vlogging since like forever But you are a connector. I mean you are somebody who has ideas and then you say, hey, let's do this together and you're able to kind of And I always bring people with me, you know, whenever I traveled or got a job in another country I brought at least five Serbian people to work with me because I like to spread the knowledge and like help other people Bring them up with me, you know, that's I think my superpower definitely And yeah about that. So we went there to Dubai. I was almost like the only lady there It was mostly guys It was very hard because as it turned out that was not my dream job either So I had this collection of failures for 10 years Like basically as I like to say failing my way into success Because I was just looking at the lights and I was like, oh, this sounds flashy and nice. Let me try it out So I tried to travel blogging. I even I worked as a cabin crew. I tried mobile apps I failed I failed I failed Not necessarily when I say failed, it means it didn't bring me the result that I was happy with in my heart So I was like, okay, if it's not this, let's see what's next. What sparks me. What brings me joy next And I was just following that spark and it was like, no, no, no, no and after 10 years I found the click So it's not realistic to expect that for the first thing that we see and we actually will be the one It's like dating. I don't need it to work 10 times. I only needed to work once and I will be in a happy partnership So we need much less than we think this is really and Because of your willingness to try all these different things You've had 10 years of really rich experiences and you're you're not even 30 yet Now just to give you some perspective. I didn't even start my business until I was like 32 Okay, so so, you know, now I'm 43 and of course I've learned so much since then But it's like you're you're you still have so much time. But of course Yeah, well, no, but even even for those Those who are watching who are in their 60s, for example, or even 70s like these days with medical technology People are gonna live, you know without 100 my grandma just turned 90 in january Wow, congratulations. I mean, you know, people always see the end result and they think of like, oh, it must be easy But when I'm doing this in english, this is my first interview I'm nobody nobody knows about me in the u.s. And I'm telling you in this interview I'm I will be making millions in the u.s. And I will be talking about how I did that right now. I'm making zero Yeah, yeah, and I know that because I know that I'm ready to fail until it works If it takes me 20 years, it's fine. Maybe I'm just slow If it takes me 30 years, okay, I'll get there in 30 years. Am I in a rush? No Yeah, where am I running to you know every day? I mean and and people can see your You're very active on instagram stories, for example And people can see your activities on the day to day basis every day. You are learning You are growing you are you're because and that's to me That's really what life is about life is not about achieving some kind of success You know some kind of numbers or some kind of fame life is about the growth that happens every day And that is what I really enjoy. Yeah. Yeah, you because I know when I reach the end goal I will say ma next And I like I know this I've done it like for the past 30 years. I know this So let's see what can I do that will bring me joy daily because we know the end result is never as we imagined Yeah, the end result is just a milestone on this ever-growing journey So one of the ways of course you learn through experiences, but also you learn a lot through Reading and watching videos and listening to podcasts. I mean you are You read many books a year from what I can tell I read a book a day almost every day like five books per week. That's a must for me. Yeah, since I was a child It was my escape. It was my passion and my parents forced me to go outside and play I'm like, no, it's so much more fun in this book. You know, it's that's amazing It's it's very different because I've actually always had trouble reading A lot of people wouldn't Couldn't believe but yes, I have a trouble reading. I don't have as much trouble. I used to have trouble talking to now I don't but reading is still a bit of a challenge. But so tell us about I mean, there's so many books you've read What's a book that you are reading right now that you are really enjoying or recently Recently atomic habits. Yes. Okay. I love that book James clear is amazing And he is a living proof of somebody who did the work and who sent those newsletters And who put the effort and then the book came out and now it seems like an overnight success Which is not the book is amazing. This is the second time. I'm reading it. So it's really good I always do the highlights. I make notes so I can send it to people And it's a really good book because it's just a constant reminder That we need to enjoy the process to getting somewhere and that we need to actually tie our identity around our goals So if for example, I want to lose weight And I am at a party and everyone is like take a cake. Take a cake. I will not say no, I can't take a cake I'm on a diet. I will say I'm not eating cake.  I'm so sad. No, you're like, I'm not a cake eater Yeah, it's like I'm not a smoker. It's not like I won't have a cigarette right now Right, right, right. So that's one of the points from the book But uh, definitely it's a good book but my all-time favorite book is victor frankl Um, I don't know how in english search for meaning in Serbia.  Which is a bit morbid. I know Interesting the title is very catchy in Serbian and so I found this book when I was very depressive mood A few years ago. Yeah, and it really really helped me a lot And especially after visiting israel and learning about their culture more in depth It's just mind-blowing like I love that book. Yeah, tell what what what did you get out of the book? What what really helped you to You know get out of the the dark place you were in He's the way he Wrote about the experience when they were there and how I remember this sentence where he says the best of us didn't make it The best people And that is like you have this one opportunity in life And maybe if you're the best in the world, you won't get to get to tomorrow So you better use today wisely And that is the message that really resonated with me and also that you cannot Break a human soul. You can beat someone to death. You can Do anything to the human body, but you will never reach to the sacred space That is inside and since I'm religious That's really resonated with me that you cannot break a human spirit No matter what you do and that we are all always safe and protected No matter when it seems that life is pushing us in the corner. It is happening for us not to us So that whole idea This book would not be here now if he didn't go through that experience And this book definitely changed millions of lives and the way he does his therapy now in Austria and also there are therapists that are trained in his Um way of therapy here in Serbia. I think that If we say was it worth it, I would not wish upon anyone to go with victor went through But the result from that is changing millions of people. So just puts things into perspective It's amazing book and it's like like this. Like I think you can read it in two hours. Yeah, it's very it's very Wow, thank you for sharing that um, I want to Talk a little bit about this sort of inner spirit the human spirit because one of the things you said earlier was that When someone says you can't do something You actually kind of rebel against that limitation To to prove them wrong. Now, that's not that that's not usual for a lot of people because um What those of us who grew up saying, oh, you can't do this. You can't do this a lot of us believe that We believe in those limitations What is that something you you think maybe you were just born with this rebellious nature towards those limitations or is there something that you think You know, we can develop To to have that kind of I guess strength or that kind of courage to say well, you know what I think I can break through I'm a big questioner since I was a child and that was really a problem for my family and parents and I was very like um, I don't know where but I was hard to be managed Even today Because I don't take things as they are like when somebody tell me this should be done like this. I say, okay Which can you tell me more like explain why that's the reason I always want I always knew that I will start my own business even as a kid My dad was an entrepreneur and my mom was a professor. She still is in one school And that is something that I was like born with I guess because I always questioned everything And even I question myself daily. I question my choices. I'm not afraid to say that I was wrong Uh, I say it publicly. I'm really I have no shame around it because I think it's healthy It's a human thing We all make mistakes and we should be transparent about it And also what might be a mistake for me may not be a mistake for you. So I don't feel that like my identity is tied to my choices or my results I feel that As a human I'm here. I'm worthy.  So I don't really get Things so personally like when somebody you can't do something I know that they're speaking Hopefully from the best intentions because they couldn't do it And that also motivates me to show them that as a child or as a Granddaughter or as a girlfriend That I see things differently and to maybe show them that it can be done Since they're still on earth There is maybe possibility for them to do something else and question themselves about what they thought About their own life that can't be done and it's possible actually So I feel that some this is something innate in me that I'm No, I don't know if I'm a rebel because I don't rebel if I don't if I if something resonates with me and if it feels logical I say, okay, no problem But if it doesn't feel right in my heart I have to question it because the last thing I would do is betray myself and that's a non negotiable since I was a Kid and I remember at family reunions when someone comes They want to hug you and pet you basically and I would always say no, no I don't like this And people will say don't be so mean, you know, they just want to hug you That's a Serbian thing like everyone's here. We're very like a huggy But I like my boundaries And since I was a child I'm very passionate and very protective of my boundaries because they both physical and energetical and mental And that makes me be myself like I don't let people into my space If they don't deserve I think you've just uh touched on one of the secrets to success Something that I've noticed as people grow and become particularly successful in their business Is the issue of boundaries is so incredibly important boundaries with Clients with audience members, you know fans with family Family for sure to be able to allow us to to to have the time and space to work With our you know business partners, etc. But with our you know team members employees so What you just said, you know Say more about what you think about boundaries and and how do you given that you've already reached some level of business success?  I get a lot of requests Yeah, I get a lot of requests for money for time for everything just like everyone else. Yes, and um This was very clear because I did my workshops in person So every woman from those 1500 I've met I shook her hand. I talked to her directly I know exactly what she's doing right now in her work And I'm very close to them I have a closed facebook group for the women that went through my workshops 550 are there so half of them are interested in staying in community communicating daily And I have very clear boundaries on the workshop. I tell them So every day I take two hours of my time and I do customer support. I answer two emails I never delegate that and I probably never will unless I really have to So this is what I do and if I didn't answer today They know that I had other priority emails and they will wait until tomorrow. It's never more than two days Also in the facebook group. I go in the evening I cannot let my day be managed by other people on my phone. I never have any notifications I never have any sound. I haven't heard an alarm or a sound for I don't know since elementary school So my family knows that when I'm busy I will not answer And when I see and when I can talk I will answer People never upset me in that way because I understand that something is urgent to them But that doesn't make it my priority I'm very focused when I wake up every day. I don't turn it on immediately. I check in with myself What do I need to do today? Okay, let's chill. Let's meditate. Let's make some tea Let's read something and then journal and then we can see what other people have on their agenda That is somehow related to me and let's see who I should answer now Who is okay for tonight and who I will answer tomorrow I know there is nothing urgent because I've been in a life that situations myself my mom Had three stage cancer in two times. So we've been through a lot as a family So I know what urgent means and business ain't urgent on my agenda ever. So By that, I don't mean that I'm not responsible as I said previously Even when I was in the hospital in 2017 having my right over in tumor removed I was answering emails because I felt okay. I don't know how but I was I felt okay. So when I had time I would just sit on my bed and answer So I don't take it not responsibly I just do it when I want to do it because I don't want to do something and not feel like doing it Then I'm not an entrepreneur that I'm just the corp like the corporate person You know what I mean? Like I came into entrepreneurship because I want to make decisions for my time for my money and for my energy management And if somebody has a problem with that, it's fine Like they will not work with me because by now I think that they feel my boundaries even by reading my copy Maybe it's all crazy. But you know what I mean? Like they see They nobody ever asked me for my telephone number or should we go to coffee? Because it's just they they see how I live. They're like, no Wow, they know they can ask every day if they need the business advice and they will get it And it's just like yeah, yeah, and where where do you you're on different social media platforms now? Of course, you've been for a while. Yeah, which Tell us about your relationship to them. Like where do you like to interact most? I only interact on email and now when I started my podcasts Every friday I have youtube comments But I think I will disable those because I want to redirect everyone to my email I don't want to waste time on people who want to say bravo good job or to advertise themselves or to say You suck because that's not a useful information for me and my brain doesn't have time to manage all the crap So I feel that if somebody has something to say which is meaningless It can be a critique which I'm open to I'm not perfect I make mistakes every day just like everyone else or it can be like a feedback or like Anything they can reach out via email with their name and surname because if I'm putting myself vulnerable online, I don't want somebody Hiding, you know behind the avatar and telling me that I'm doing it wrong Okay, you can tell me that but tell me with your name and surname Don't we're not in high school, you know, so I feel that is also boundaries with social media Yeah, people expect that they can reach out anywhere and it's fine expectations are great But I'm not here to answer to anyone's expectations of my for myself Not even my boyfriend my family and not from a stranger from the internet So I'm okay with that if you're like being just honest and real and transparent Just say like At the end of the video guys, I want to hear your opinion. Shoot me an email. That is the way I like to communicate Why would anyone normal have a problem with that only a troll can have a problem with that because they cannot spam you You know what I mean like I feel that it's all about being honest and transparent and people who are right In the head they will understand and the people who are just mean and want to hurt you. They can be upset I don't have a problem with that The key here to me is that you are clear about how you most thrive in communication and interaction And you don't mind Losing yeah losing disappointing other people who don't want to interact in the way that you thrive Absolutely, you work and that's that's a lesson for all of us. That's freedom Yeah, because it's different for everybody. Some people don't want to do email Some people want to do something else some people want like social media some people like facebook message Some people like, you know, um instagram direct message whatever it may be. It's like you find your way So, um, I want to I want to talk a little bit more about how you work with your Your students your clients You had so much experience now you've worked with over a thousand people in revamping their businesses Um or helping them start so, um I guess there's a big question, but we can go into this in more detail But let's start with this. Have you noticed any patterns? among Among people as you work with them to start or revamp their business. Is there? My clients are mostly women 35 to 60 And especially in these countries now I work with the global market as well I didn't for the first 10 years I just wanted to go in depth In this region because you can't be everywhere everywhere and everything to everyone And so what I've discovered is there like five problems that everyone is Every woman was facing One was that she was not good enough, which we all have as humans. I think it's like a thing And then another one was that she's not perfect. She's not ready She wants to start when she's ready and I filmed just before our talk I filmed a new episode on the podcast Why starting when you are ready is mistake because it is And nobody's ready. I'm never ready. And then another Third one was that they want to feel like And you address that so well on your youtube like I mostly don't feel like doing anything I just want to chill in my bed and put my legs on the wall, you know And watch the white Background but yeah, that's a third thing then the fourth thing is they say they hate marketing and they hate selling because they're thinking of the negative examples And then the fifth one is there the fear of rejection Because they are very aware that with success Comes every new level comes a new devil and they're not ready to face the devils So those are the typical ones of course every woman Depending on the age and the generation had her own issues Like some of them were afraid of the social media, which I fully understand. Sometimes I'm afraid of it and I'm 30, you know So the ladies that were like 65 years old They this is their first time opening an agency in Serbia starting their business I'm so proud of them because They feel so uncomfortable and for a reason that they don't they don't know the world as it is today And they have so much value to share And I'm very passionate about the generation over 60 Just because they don't have Tools like in they didn't have tools like internet. They're not, you know Social media savvy they have so much wisdom to share That I'm so sad that that wisdom Just goes somewhere without others having access to it because this woman cannot use the social media and doesn't understand Plain and simple how to make a proper or how to outsource. Obviously. They mostly outsource a proper website I organized the photo shoots for them because they need support. They need community. Nobody is doing that in 65 in Serbia Here in this country after 40, you're like done. So, you know for them to be so brave They have a lot of judgment from their families. They're like, why what are you acting? What are you playing to be, you know, who are you to do this? And somehow the community I've built around this idea Is what helps them because they know now they know they have other partners in crime other women that are 50 60 Who are starting their businesses and that life doesn't finish after your 40 Yeah, so that is that is the the typical ones is amazing. Um, there's a lot You could do a podcast episode or five on every single one of these But I want to ask about a couple of these here um The the the not good enough is a really and it's connected to who are you to do this? Okay Yeah, well It's true. It's like one of the things when we encounter social media is look, there are already so many other people Who are doing the kind of thing I want to do and they seem to be so polished and doing it so well Why should I even? Do it or yeah, like why should I bother and Is anyone gonna watch or listen to me? What do you what do you say to that? What's what's your encouragement or your advice to them? There is this song. There is this quote don't die with your song still in you. So that's the only thing When you're on your deathbed, you won't be thinking about all the other youtubers You will be wishing you had your own youtube channel and said something that the future generation can listen to and the My reason for doing this is the legacy that I'm going to leave for the next generation to listen to me And maybe they will laugh at me. Maybe they will say, oh, this was smart.  It will never be it can be stupid to some But if you have the drive and the desire to create something You should not just put it in the corner to wait for better days or To wait for everyone else to disappear so you can have an open stage because that would be or That would be an excuse that you would say, oh, but nobody is doing it You know, you can never please the people that have excuses Because they say, oh, everyone is doing it. Who am I, you know, and then you have the opposite Nobody is doing it. How can I now create a market? Well, let me tell you it doesn't matter If nobody's doing it if everybody's doing it there is place for everyone And you know, I'm selling basically marketing and sales Doing it your way like who everyone is selling marketing and sales And then people pick me because of my content and my personal brand They don't want to work with someone else And if I was thinking, oh, but mario forla does it. Amy portifil does it Yes, so what? Yeah, like okay and and I mean I never had that fear of I don't believe in competition And I don't believe in like Somebody's going to steal your content and they say that to me all the time here in Serbia Like oh, what if I post something and then somebody steals it Nothing what like this is internet everything has already been said and done get over yourself. You're not special snowflake It's not about like Being so revolutionary, you know your video which was about You don't have to feel right to do good Resonate it with me and put me back into my groove to start my Global expansion basically That advice has been spoken by From Seneca, you know Yeah, so, you know, and I read Seneca. So why didn't it resonate with me then? Why did it resonate when I heard you talk about it for a reason? We don't know. I don't know. You don't know So why would you not show up from some stupid excuse? and prevent That message By law of universe by god sending it to a person that needs it in that moment I needed to hear that video of yours in that moment. I never click on all that she sends I click on two things.  I clicked on yours So I believe in this you need to put the energy out there and also When I don't do that, I feel very Stuck and like the opposite of abundance When I don't give Yeah, now you have been able to create And a really good income Uh, especially compared to the people in your your region the people in our industry Um, you have like workshops in the digital course ebooks journals So seminars Yeah, and of course you're active on social media And and still you have time to be active. You work out. You kind of keep yourself healthy Of course, we talked about boundaries being so important But because of all these activities, um You know, let's talk about this, right? You you you mentioned in our um one of your podcast interviews like you You know as a kid you learned I think it was from your grandfather to to you know, when even when you don't feel like doing something Uh, you don't have to feel like it that you just you just do it Yeah, like it was from my dad But he learned it from my grandfather that sadly passed a month before I was born But all the messages are still here. I see I feel them He was a military pilot and uh, they were very disciplined around everything So when I was a kid my dad would say, okay, clean this or you know, do this in your room Do the homework or anything? And sometimes I would say, uh, I don't feel like it and just to you know to protest and he would say Well, it's okay. Don't worry. You don't have to feel like it. You just have to do it And he would laugh and I would be so upset because first he was joking So you can't actually argue with someone who is laughing That's a problem and you're still upset as a kid because you didn't win And then I would clean it, you know, and I would be thinking what should I tell him next time this didn't work And that was actually a good lesson because I'm very persistent Persistent. So I was repeating that same excuse. I feel like it and he's like every time he'll be like, it's fine You don't have to feel like it. You just have to do it And I just remember that and every time in life when I don't feel like doing something I know it is good for me That is the belief that I've created and as a kid the belief was Dad will be happy mom will be happy the trash will be out the I don't know I will wash the dishes. This was not every day. This was just like once a week or something, you know But I would remember those that what I do when I don't feel like it brings good results and makes me Satisfied and proud and makes those that I love happy So Yeah, that was also a part of it is not becoming a people pleaser. You know what I mean because that's a that's a little Next like it can be a problem if you're all the time pleasing others, but I don't I don't have that situation But yeah, that was what made me happy as a child and that is what I implement now I always every year I try to embark new challenge two years ago I started the bodybuilding challenge because my body was very weak I had an accident in the gym. I broke my sacrum and hurt a three vertebra And I couldn't move properly for a long time. I couldn't sit. I couldn't block for one hour and It was horrible. I couldn't sleep from the pain for one year And then after that I was doing physical terrible rehabilitation everything And I decided I want to go back to the gym and pay a trainer and do bodybuilding to build some muscle And one year I was going five times a week and it's amazing amazing the result that I've made and after the one first year That was 2018 and then I said not last year It was a November and I said now I need something new I don't find this challenge anymore. I feel good in my body. I feel strong And then I rolled the kata yoga teacher training Because my whole motivation in life is to do what feels uncomfortable because then I'm on the right path Like I don't have to feel like it's in order to do it Which is very lucky for us humans because most of the times we are slops and we don't feel like doing anything Like if I could just eat mac nuggets the whole day and just lie in bed I think that would be a dream But the good part is that you don't have to feel like anything and you can do everything like how amazing is that I think that's like a blessing is Well, I mean the way you say it I think a lot of us don't realize that a lot of us think Especially for it says interesting because especially for those of us who are more spiritual We somehow have this not all of us, but I know sometimes I have this idea that well Maybe if I don't feel like it somehow my intuition and my spirit says I shouldn't be doing it But it's like okay. What what part of that is an excuse That's actually my mind playing But you're right if I could just sit on the couch watch netflix eat popcorn That's what I'm great. That's wonderful. But I show up here. I blog I make videos I create courses just like you do And our life is so much more meaningful and rich because of it So one of the things that when we start to put ourselves out there right and you you said this This is one of the the key reasons that people don't do it They fear rejection. They fear Shaming blaming criticism physical danger Yeah, yeah, especially for women right like like but but it's also connected this this criticism I think is connected a lot with the with the inner critic Maybe they like we might even get 10 positive comments And then we get one comment from somebody who is anonymous who says We're ugly or who says That that was that was foolish or whatever it may be How do we Yeah, how how do we deal with that? How do we think about well, but the fact is we are going to get some rejection And yeah, you get it the moment you shop Yeah, go ahead You get it the moment you show up and I showed up when I was 21 and very insecure About everything as every other girl that is 21, but I feel that it's a muscle and it grows with use It's like in the gym You come with the muscle that is atrophied in the gym You come with your muscle that is atrophied with criticism. You don't have a thick skin You don't have a short memory and then the more you are in this business the more stones people throw at you So I was very severely harassed for the past years. I had been physically like followed online attacks bullying Stolen identity try money extortion. So I've seen it. I've seen it all in the past two years Thanks, god. I'm not no longer living full-time in Serbia. So I don't have that kind of trouble anymore So I was very I was suffering with that. I went to psychologist every week I was in fear honestly my boyfriend was following me around because I at one point when it was severe I couldn't like I didn't feel comfortable to go To walk alone in the dark or something like that. No, I'm good. But that was for a whole year So this I think is a it's a process I don't think that I would be able to Scale to bring my business and personality to the next level If I didn't go through that and there are a lot of women and people Generally, who would maybe give up and if they did give up if I give up gave up I would not judge me and I wrote in my journals last year a lot about what his been happening to me And I said to myself it's okay if you give up after this you this is not the only way you can make a living You're very capable You can make money from anything and you're very persistent and hard-working if this is not If you have pros and you have cons and if the cons are so strong It doesn't have to be hundred it can be one that is a deal breaker for you It's like in a relationship if it's a deal breaker for you If you're a vegan and the guy it meets and that's a deal breaker then it's a deal breaker It doesn't matter like the other 90.  I think nobody talks about it, but I was on the verge I was like thinking maybe this was not for me because I'm very as everyone else. I mean I'm sensitive.  It's a human thing. You get thought loops.  I don't think that oh, we should shame people that give up after that No, they're just taking care of yourself and taking care of yourself is always the best thing and the first Thing that you should be thinking about not about likes not about money not about what will people say I don't care what will people say people never say what I want them to say So that's like why bother and the only question was am I feeling them? Drive to do this anymore and then you I found you And that's why I'm here not in life, but Social media and On the internet and that's why I invested like $5,000 in my us website and energy and money and time in my content That's why I started this weekly podcast because I know I'm here to stay Okay, like bad things are gonna happen again And maybe I will give up and that will be okay So I'm not here to impress anyone. I'm here to do this because if I feel this is my mission and my purpose And that I bring joy and I bring knowledge to others and inspiration I will be here and if god or universe wants me out They will force me out They will have to force me out And I thought I was happening last year. I I really was but then somehow I came back And I'm here now. I feel great now. Like, you know, it was a phase I'm I'm glad you're here. Um your audience is glad you're here So I'd love for For people to know How Of course, we're gonna have the links for where to find you on social media your website, etc But um, what kind of person would you love to work with as a client? You know, how how can people work with you? Basically my deal the client is a woman that is 30 to 60 years old that Maybe she's living the corporate world and she just needs that help with marketing and sales in her own way Not somebody that will make somebody do something I will tell them what needs to be done And then we will find how we can do it so that their soul is happy because I hate Doing things because they have to be done. I want to work with people that question me because I'm a questioner So if they say but why do I need to do a facebook ad? I will say no, you don't need to hear 10 other options And if they say no, no, no, I'll say okay. What about this? What about this? And if we go through everything and they say I still don't want to do this, then I will tell them, okay What's the least? Thing that you feel least resentful to let's or let's see why do you hate something because I do that to myself as well I don't like instagram and now I made a challenge two days ago to post for 100 days And let's see if I like it because if I have such a resistance towards something There is something there. So let me learn about myself by doing what I feel like I hate doing So I will try to always with my clients see why is the resistance there because it's both like business coaching and consulting with me It's not a program in english. I don't have a film course. It's all customized to you So you send me an email. I tell you if I can help you and trust me I'm honest because 90 of the people I reject in Serbia because I see they're not for me And that's just the way I do business as I said, I'm very religious person I believe that in my integrity if I can sleep at night Know that I did the right thing. That's the only thing that is important because I know that money will come I'm good with money. I love money and money loves me But I don't want to sell something to someone that will not help him or her because they will not be satisfied They will not recommend me and that's not how I build this business And that's not how we'll build my next one. So basically anyone who needs help with marketing and sales and feels stuck And another thing that I can offer since I have this huge network of 1500 women that've been through my courses in like Eight or more countries now at this moment I can bring them the community that they need and I can also bring them all the people that can help with design development facebook ads that are much cheaper because I'm originally from Serbia So those are the things that I offer. It's nothing that is special that you can't find anywhere else But the reason why somebody will pick to to work with me is because they Why with my energy and that's the only reason because the knowledge I have is just accumulation of Tons of books I've read and tons of courses and it can be found even on google like everything else But for somebody to give you that knowledge in one hour that I have accumulated for like 15 or more years I think that's worth every penny because that's how I learn personally. So You're absolutely right.  So that's very important. That's how I find my teachers If we don't have the same values, I don't care that they're an expert in their field. They just don't click with me Yeah, yeah, yeah Well, Ivana, thank you so much for sharing your story it's it's been an amazing journey that you've had and You've been able to to share a lot in this interview. I mean a lot of lessons a lot of Sort of like little stories that we can keep in mind to help us move forward. So thank you so much And I'm just I'm looking forward to sharing this with my audience Thank you for having me and if anyone needs any help, just send me an email and yeah, let's make sure your email is Can you say your email for everybody? Yeah, it's j o v a n a dot m i l j a n o v i c at gmail.com Yeah, we can link it. Yeah, we can put it below. Yeah. Yeah, cool. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Ivana


How's everyone doing today? So this has been absolutely great, hasn't it? I mean, we waited three years to come back to DevCon. The talks have been absolutely incredible. I just can't stop smiling. I'm seeing so many friendly faces, so many new faces. I'm just so happy. There have been many themes of this conference. The merge, of course, is the highlight. We have a lot of L2 development, ZKs, DeFi protocols with their financial primitives, and many more. But we can't forget about governance. After all, governance, or lack thereof, has a massive dependency on the success of our protocols. So today we're going to talk about our governance structures, why they're failing our DAOs and protocols, and how to approach fixing it. I might have a small live throughout the presentation, so I hope you can spot it. But yeah, again, I'm Charles St. Louis. I'm the Chief Operating Officer at Element Finance and head of governance. I previously worked at the Maker Foundation as the decentralized governance architect, and today I'm talking about how to fix our governance systems from the failing our DAOs. So, of course, Element is a fixed-rate protocol for variable and yield markets, but today I'm talking about a governance protocol that we also built. So our company is very focused on research and development, and governance is very dear to our hearts. So we spent a lot of time countless hours on this governance research, and we came up with something called Council, which we'll get into a bit later. But before I talk about all the challenges and things we dislike about governance, I just want to do a quick, little fun journey down history lane. So since humans have existed, there's been some form of governance and coordination. Let's say it starts with tribes and clans three million years ago, where people started grouping together to make resource gathering a lot more efficient. Give or take a couple years later, we had kingdoms, and that came with kings, taxation, and better resource defense for the resource gathering that we developed over the past thousand years. The next came empires, which introduced a large amount of hierarchies and power inequality. But the thing about empires is that they always fail. From empires, we came to democracy. It didn't come easy. There was a lot of battling and fighting to make this happen, but it truly introduced the first concept of the vote, where everyone in society, or at least some people in society, inclusivity didn't take that much time to develop through that. But each person had a say in their governance decisions and how things move forward. So democracy was great and all, but it also had some problems. Tyranny of the majority and also bad decisions getting pushed forward because people just simply didn't want to vote.  So how can we expect this to be an efficient system? From democracies, we had republics, which weren't too far away from each other. As you can see here, like, they're not mutually exclusive. The only difference is that we're essentially trusting people who are paid, compensated to be experts in their area to make decisions for us. And obviously, with republics came constitutional republics and so on. It is paraphrased history. So today, many forms of these governance systems exist. They're emulated, they're improved upon. But we also have new forms of technology that have evolved our governance systems. The internet, of course, blockchain, and many more. So at this point, I hope you can kind of see some similarities between what we've done in the past and what we've learned and how they translate directly to our systems today in DeFi and crypto. So the first one, I mean, direct democracy, I think it's pretty self-explanatory here. I think the closest one that we have is the one token one vote. We have the new system of reputational voting, where you have non-transferable voting power based on your contributions to your community or your society and whatnot. And then we have an emulation of representative democracy, which is token-weighted voting with delegation. We even have republic-like dows, where teams are voted in to do their areas of expertise and basically deliver, like, finance work, operations, and all that, but we trust them to do that work on behalf of our dows to push it forward. So by now, I'm sure you're all wondering why I gave you this weird history lesson, but I swear I do have a point. And that point is governments fail. They failed and evolved over thousands of years. It takes time to find out what works and what works often changes. Nothing is permanent. So why are we building our governance systems as if we're getting it right on the first try or first deployment? It's pretty silly, isn't it? It's not realistic. It doesn't work. The rules are complex. People don't want to vote. It's just not working. So these are some of the pioneers of the governance systems that we've seen in Ethereum and generally in blockchain. And I'm not picking on these protocols at all. They've done so much for the entire ecosystem, but there definitely are some challenges in these systems around adapting to slowly or not at all. We have a lot to thank to Maker. They were the first on-chain system in Ethereum and they've done so much great work, but at the same time, they aren't easily adaptable. They have a smart contract system that was deployed once. In order to change anything, you'd have to completely redeploy the system. You'd have a token migration. You'd have a lot of technical debt, user disruption, and much more. So it's not simply easy to evolve. In a similar case with Compound, yes, they did master upgradeability of smart contracts, but that also comes with the technical debt, user disruption, every time they want to add a feature or a security feature. And that is a problem because a lot of protocols in this space have actually forked compound governance. We've gone from Alpha to Bravo. Projects like Uniswap and Gitcoin are both following that system, and they have to upgrade their systems each time, too, unless they fall victim to vulnerabilities, security, and lack of features. We also have a big favorite here, Yarn. Their protocol is absolutely awesome. They have this upgradeability via a modulary system in their core protocol. However, on the governance side, it's still a little lacking because it is relying on a lot of semi-centralized parties with multi-sig executing transactions. Lastly, not so related to DeFi, but we have Aragon. We had one of the projects who invented the term DAO and really brought it to the market, and they've done a lot of customization with their projects. So you can do a lot of different voting systems, different types of quorums, et cetera, et cetera, but because it's so customizable, the smart contract structure suffers a little. It's too upgradable in a sense of smart contract upgradability, not just modularity. All right, so here's the little lie that I told you about. So I'm not going to tell you that there's one solution fixes all our problems. There's way too many to address there, but there is something that we can do to help significantly improve the failure of all our governance systems and help them adapt way faster. And that is to build adaptable governance systems from the start. So that's vague, but what we've done at Element is to build a very minimal core structure at the foundational layer and everything else is modular. That way you can upgrade quickly, you can remove things if you don't like them, and it evolves more quickly with the political dynamics of your protocol or DAO. So the hope with Council is to reinvigorate the standard model for governance while keeping decentralization at the forefront of governance, but also allowing our DAOs to scale better and make decisions quicker. Outside of the adaptability, there are a few other goals that we strive for when building Council. And the first is to continuously strengthen inclusivity. The one token, one vote just simply can't work, especially when it's a capital burden to acquire that. There's many flaws of that model because people with tons of capital can capture tons of votes and they can sway governance, activist, investor style. What we can do is allow the actual people in the trenches on our GitHub, on our Discord, speaking on community calls to have a say in governance as well to equalize that capital burden. The second one applies to all of DFI, of course, in governance, and that is to make voting not a burden for people. Voter apathy and voter fatigue are real and actually can be detrimental to a governance system and protocol. People stop caring, bad votes come in, systems fail. So the last one is the most important point that I want to get to. And I know upgradability in a smart contract sense is a highly contentious topic, but this type of upgradability is built on a very minimal structure at the core and everything else is modules you can add on and off. So we want to design a system that can actually adapt as we change our minds throughout history instead of having to redeploy and fail and fail. So this is the core. It's very simple. That's it, that's all. All this does at the center of the governance system is to define the voting process for those with governance power in the system. It tracks proposals and counts their voting power and it retrieves user voting power from approved sources, which I'll get to in a quick second. So that's it. That's all the core system does. Everything else is a tooling or tool belt to use in current situations, future situations, and much more. The modules or tools I've selected here today are my favorite ones and we've decided to choose these for very specific reasons. But keep in mind anything you can come up with can be added to the system, whether it's a new form of delegation, rank choice, expiry. The possibilities are endless. So the first one here is kind of a take on traditional corporate governance where board of directors are trusted, voted in, compensated to make better decisions for the organization, and obviously scaling decisions making a lot faster. There is a twist here, but I'll leave that for later. The second one is my absolute favorite, voting votes. In a way this allows you to assign voting power to any person use case, position, etc. So it breeds inclusivity, but also capital efficiency which is a huge problem with D5 voting, governance voting. The next is optimistic grants and that's kind of a twist on optimistic rollups but also the literal sense of the word optimistic. Because many grants programs with those organizations are very pessimistic. They assume the grantee is going to fail at their work. So this takes the opposite approach where it assumes they're going to succeed and if they do they automatically vest their payout but if not it can be clawed back at the discretion of the governance system. The last one is Dow teams with authority and this one is really important but it's not a module itself. It's an addition to the same structure that the GSC has and that is giving your Dow teams authority over their areas of expertise. If a Dow team has to go through the regular governance process that everyone else has to go through, decisions take forever, processes are developed, kind of become outdated and it results in a lot of people just not wanting to get their daily work done because it takes a month, three weeks to pass a vote. So a little more on the governance steering council. Like I mentioned it was definitely inspired by traditional corporate governance because we can't discredit that. It's worked for generations, it's been battle tested. I get that we like inventing new things and trying new things but this stuff works so why don't we try it here? The way it works is you become a GSC member by getting delegated votes from anyone here. Once you reach a certain threshold you're then able to join the GSC and what that means by joining the GSC is like you're given authority over your work. People trust you, you should be able to do things. The authority we've baked into this is the ability to push votes on-chain automatically so without having to go through that long strino-governance process so they can make the calls for people at the top level. The second one is they can spend part of the treasury up to a certain limit but they can still do one off-brands, bug bounties, you name it. They don't have to pass that vote through like a month-long process to spend some of the treasury which is good in some senses which is why it's capped at petty cash levels. And the last one like I mentioned other councils within the system can be formed using this smart contract structure. Dow teams can have authority over their expertise so a treasury management working group could spend the treasury without a resistance or a protocol team could basically deploy things to the protocol without having to be burdened with the rest of the voting process. All right, so this is my favorite and it is voting votes. And the main reason we developed this system is that a lot of governance systems today make you lock your voting tokens in the governance contract. All you can do is vote. If you're a small minnow in a sea of whales, your vote barely matters. Why wouldn't you go use your tokens and put it in DeFi or make some capital out of it? So it's really inefficient from that standpoint. So what we did here is we allow you to assign voting power to those types of positions or reputation and those people are automatically given votes in the system. So it balances out the capital barrier of people just buying tokens. And they're also modular and upgradable. So what I mean by that is let's say you assign voting power to GitHub contributors and you find that their voting power is too little or too high. You can change that through governance. You can also upgrade these things quite easily. And I get that this is very theoretical. So I did highlight a couple of examples to make it real for everyone. The first one is probably the most interesting and that is a compound of a maker voting vault. So like I mentioned before, you have to lock your tokens in those systems to get voting power. But in this system using counsel, you can essentially borrow against your collateral in these systems but still maintain the ability to vote or delegate. So you get the best both worlds. In a similar case, you have the LP vault. So you could be in a liquidity provision and still maintain the ability to delegate or vote. And lastly, the identity verified vault is pretty cool. So you could verify your identity on-chain and get voting power for that. Or even a reputational thing where it's an aggregate score of your work in GitHub discourse, community calls, working groups, and it scores it into signs of voting power. And the last one is an NFT. So if you own an NFT, you could basically map that to voting power. In the element system when we launched, we gave a gift to the community and that was the LP versus NFTs. So right now someone in the community is building a voting vault to give anyone with an NFT voting power in the system. It really spreads out the inclusivity of the whole community, which is absolutely amazing. So dry here. All right, so the next is optimistic grants, which like I said, it's an optimistic twist on the pessimistic view of grant systems, whether it's just from an organization, a DAO, and whatnot. So the base, like the TLDR is that you can set a schedule and a time expiry. The grantee can claim that grant if the time expiry is hit without it getting clawed back. So when the grant is allocated, it contains that expiry date. If it isn't removed by that date, they can withdraw and get their grant. If the governance system or the GSC realizes that they're not making their milestones, they can claw it back. So what does this entire system look like? Like I said, it's modular, so there's many options. The first one being what we chose for element DAO. And it is a refined form of representative democracy. So with the GSC, it's basically like representative democracy. But as you can see here, this is only the core contract. It tracks the proposals, counts voting power, retrieves the voting power from the defined voting vaults, and basically the time lock up here can add new quorum or change the voting vaults as we go. So all of these things here are modules. This is the only core. I really want to emphasize that this is the base core system, and very little things can impact that. Your system could also look something like this, which is liquid democracy. So you take away the GSC because you just want simple delegation. And the last one I want to show is just inclusive governance. I also took out the time lock. The time lock is definitely a recommended security feature because it has a pause between when you make execution and calls. But if you want things to happen quicker and you don't care about that risk, you can remove it. It's like DeFi Legos, but governance Legos. So by now I've talked about the long history of failing governments and how it takes so long to improve. I've talked about our considerations with how we built this system and the core and the modular aspect of our architecture. So now I just want to talk a bit about the council protocol in action. So we launched governance for element on March 31st of this year and we were really excited to just see the traction happen. I mean, a lot of this was a big experiment, right? The GSC, the rolling delegation was very new. So we weren't sure if it was going to work. But today I'm happy to say that the GSC has nine people and they all have together pushed forward quite a few proposals to improve the system on the social layer but also on the protocol layer. We also have two voting vaults, a vesting one and a locking one. The vesting one essentially allows like the core contributors to create this protocol, investors, advisors, key partners to have voting power in the system but a lower multiple. So the community outweighs the actual core team which is a pretty cool balance of voting power. Like I mentioned earlier, we also have the LVNFT voting vault that's in the works so there will be three coming up quite soon. I've talked mostly about the on-chain and smart contract aspects of the system but the social frameworks and DAO structures have also moved really quickly and that's because we've designed that proposal framework to actually adapt really quickly. So people can make changes to like the proposal process or how we want to onboard assets. And that's already happened twice already, without friction. So we're all really excited to see how the governance theory council evolves. Right now, I mean, they've pushed proposal forward. They haven't spent any of the treasury yet. We have to see if it actually helps scaling these decision-making processes. And if it doesn't, we might go back to the direct democracy that everyone else uses where everyone just has the ability to delegate their vote or vote themselves. So what can you do with council today? Well, you can do a lot.  It's all open. Any DAO or protocol can use this for their own governance system. And like I mentioned, the system is very upgradable. It's modular. It's literally built for experimentation. We want people to try things, add it to our system, create a voting vault so that your governance protocol can have vote in ours and vice versa. The possibilities are endless. So you can use this system or you can add more to it. So with that, I've gone over all the problems with governance, how we can adapt faster, and the architecture of what it could look like if you were to adopt this model. But right now, I just want to say that governance is evolving as always. It's going to fail as always. So we should build these systems to adapt quicker. And for us, governance systems are literally the make or break for our protocols. I think the best is yet to come. And thank you to everyone here for being a big part of that and for caring about governance and being here today. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah. Finally, some water. Thank you. That was super interesting. I'm really amazed by the way that you're thinking about governance and the upgradability of it. And so my question is a little bit philosophical. Sorry about that. Delegation, I see it as a way to handle this problem that people don't want to vote, right? But delegation can't always work, because if people don't care, it can very easily turn into popularity games, who do I know that I can delegate my votes to? So we have this problem that people don't want to vote, and delegation is not really a solution to it. So how in your experience can we have people engage more, be more socially responsible and all of that? And I have a second question. I don't want to monopolize, so feel free not to answer. But I also think that reputation is kind of a very key element to solving governance issues. But I think that reputation itself is not a solved problem, as far as I'm aware. So I'm wondering how do you approach reputation in element? Yeah, so for the first question, delegation can definitely be a popularity conference, especially with big people on Twitter with previous experience being delegates. I think the best way to do that is just have accountability layers. So if these delegates are just doing nothing or abstaining from votes, you have to kind of have that, like, disincentive there or transparency reports. I think Gcoin's doing a pretty cool job with their report cards on how their delegates are behaving, how they're participating, and all of that. I don't think there's a quick fix, but there are two things that I do want to see more in delegation systems, and that is rank choice delegation.  So it just kind of plays more to that human level of governance, like people have their lives, they're not always going to be online and so on, but also adding the time expiry of delegation. So if I delegate to you and I forget about it for a year, my votes are basically just wasted, especially if you stop voting. So if the delegation actually reverts or expires after a year, it puts the omen on me to actually find someone I align with more. As for the reputational thing, it's definitely a tough one. Mager did a really cool experiment with SourceCred, where they had a custom algorithm that took months to kind of filter in their discourse forum, but it assigned incentives for those participation people. I think the reputational layer can definitely be gamed, and whenever you add metrics to something, there's definitely risks. But if you could aggregate certain scores and for my involvement in Discord, my involvement on community calls, or the more tangible things like GitHub commits, and you aggregate into a score, I think it can kind of give you some level of their participation in the system, or if they own an NFT. So you kind of have to pull from a lot of different sources to even vet if they're an active member versus the gamable aspects. But yeah, it's definitely a tough subject. I can't give you a great answer. Charles, you talk about, here. You talk about delegation expiring after certain amount of time. I'm wondering, are you guys creating certain rituals, or let's say, re-elections every certain amount of time? And yeah, I'm asking this is because, as you said, some people use delegate, and then they forget about it. And yeah, there's no rituals. There's no way for coming back. As we do it in traditional governance, we have, let's say, governments, we have four years' re-elections or stuff like that. Are you guys thinking to do something similar amongst those lines, or what? Yeah, so when we originally came up with the governance steering council, the idea was to have election styles every six months in the beginning and then maybe every year. But there is a big problem with that, and it is the off-boarding of a member who is a big delegate or a council member. You have to create a very strung-out process, involves governance. So that's why we went with the rolling king-in-the-hill style with a delegation threshold. So if someone were like that to just kind of abstain from everything or do something malicious, they would simply just drop in delegation and then someone could kick them off the GSE. So it's a little more like dynamic. When you say someone, can you explain that? So if a GSE member were to fall below the threshold to be on the GSE, anyone in the community or anyone on the internet in a wallet can kick them by clicking a function. So it's immediate off-boarding basically. So is that kind of like a liquid democracy where you're essentially like, I don't like this delegator anymore, I pass my votes to another person once the threshold is below a certain point, basically they can get kicked out. Yeah, so it's representative democracy mixed with liquid democracy. That's a mouthful. So it's a group of people on a council being able to do things. If someone does something malicious or they're just not doing a great job, people stop delegating to them. And then once they fall below the threshold, someone kicks them, they're no longer in authority position. So it's a lot quicker than having to do an off-boarding proposal where it takes a month to off-board someone where they can still do bad things or be inactive and get compensated for it. We'll see if it works. The election style is not out of the question. I think it's just a worthy experiment to try for sure.


At the Closed Gate of Justice By James David Carruthers Read for LibriVox.org by Bruce Gachuk To be a negro in a day like this demands forgiveness. Bruised with blow on blow, betrayed like him whose woe dim dyes gave bliss, still must one succour those who brought one low. To be a negro in a day like this, to be a negro in a day like this demands rare patience, patience that can wait in utter darkness, tis the path to miss and knock unheeded at an iron gate. To be a negro in a day like this, to be a negro in a day like this demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag which is to us white freedoms emphasis. Ah, one must love when truth and justice lag. To be a negro in a day like this, to be a negro in a day like this, alas, Lord God, what evil have we done? Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst. But I pass by the glorious goal on one merely a negro in a day like this. At the Closed Gate of Justice by James David Carruthers Read for LibriVox.org by Caitlin Buckley To be a negro in a day like this demands forgiveness.  To be a negro in a day like this, to be a negro in a day like this demands rare patience, patience that can wait in utter darkness, tis the path to miss and knock unheeded at Niron Gate to be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag which is to us white freedoms emphasis. Ah, one must love when truth and justice lag to be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this, alas, Lord God, what evil have we done? Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst, but I pass by the glorious goal on one, merely a negro in a day like this. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. At the Closed Gate of Justice by James David Carruthers Read for LibriVox.org by Ethan Hurst To be a negro in a day like this demands forgiveness.  Still must one sucker those who brought one low, to be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this demands rare patience, patience that can wait in utter darkness, tis the path to miss and knock unheeded at Niron Gate to be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag which, to us, white freedoms emphasis. One must love when truth and justice lag to be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this, alas, Lord God, what evil have we done? Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst, but I pass by the glorious goal on one, merely a negro in a day like this. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. At the Closed Gate of Justice by James David Carruthers Read for LibriVox.org by Newgate Novelist To be a negro in a day like this demands forgiveness.  To be a negro in a day like this demands rare patience, patience that can wait in utter darkness, it is the path to miss and knock, unheeded, at an iron gate, to be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag which, to us, white freedoms emphasis. Ah, one must love when truth and justice lag to be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this, alas! Lord God, what evil have we done? Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst, but I pass by the glorious goal on one, merely a negro in a day like this. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. At the closed gate of justice by James David Carruthers, read for LibriVox.org by Leanne Howlett. To be a negro in a day like this demands forgiveness.  To be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this demands rare patience. Patience that can wait in utter darkness. Tis the path to miss and knock unheeded at an iron gate. To be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag which, to us, white freedoms emphasis. Ah, one must love when truth and justice lag. To be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this. Alas, Lord God, what evil have we done? Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst, but I pass by the glorious goal on one, merely a negro in a day like this. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. At the closed gate of justice by James David Carradas, read for LibriVox.org by товарищ. To be a negro in a day like this demands forgiveness.  To be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this demands rare patience. Patience that can wait in utter darkness. Tis the path to miss and knock unheeded at an iron gate. To be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag which is to us white freedoms emphasis. Ha, one must love when truth and justice lag. To be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this. Alas, Lord God, what evil have we done? Still shines the gate all gold and amethyst. But I pass by the glorious goal on one. Merely a negro in a day like this. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain.


Hey folks, Adam DuPay here, and in this video we're going to be doing a live hack of the Poneable.kr challenge Lotto. So let's dive right in. So Lotto says, mommy, I made a Lotto program for my homework. That's good. Do you want to play? And so here now, we actually have access to a system. So when we SSH to this system, we can see we're back on familiar territory. We have Lotto Pone. We have a Lotto executable, which is set UID on the owner bit by Lotto underscore Pone. And where Lotto underscore Pone can read this flag, and we have our Lotto.c. So now everything makes sense in the world, and hopefully we're back to some cool, nice challenges. So we have a decently large application here. So let's look in. So we have a global variable submit that's six characters. So we have a play function, which as we can see here, some kind of win, which is good. We want to get there. We have a help thing. So this is interesting. Let's look at this. It says Lotto rules and Lotto is consisted with six natural random number or random natural numbers less than 46. Your goal is to match Lotto numbers as many as you can use this might be a crypto one. If you win lottery for first place, you'll get a reward for more details. Follow the link below. Interesting. Mathematical chance to win the game is known to be one out of eight million. So hopefully we will not have to do that many. And if we go back, this is a two point challenge. So hopefully not that much. And so clearly this should have nothing to do with this page that they just linked us to since it is clearly in Korean. So one of the interesting things, so this clearly means that, hey, this is just kind of like this is a realistic thing that they actually wrote, which is cool. I always like it's always interesting when people take realistic vulnerabilities and put them into challenges. So just check out our main menu. So we have an unsigned in menu. So while one, so forever, do this, select menu, play Lotto, help, exit, scan F into menu. So scan a number into menu, switch menu, one play to help three print F by and return zero to get out of this crazy loop. And then we can play. All right. So let's look at this play function. So it looks like that's where the all the fun is. So it says submit your six Lotto bytes and then an F flush. And then it reads in six bytes into this submit buffer. So this buffer is again going to be in six bytes. Interesting. Okay. So read from zero, five descriptor zero standard in, then Lotto start. So generate Lotto numbers. So good. We're reading from dev you random now. That's good. And if it gets there, please tell admin, hopefully that won't happen then unsigned character Lotto. So read from this file descriptor, dev you random six bytes, if it's not equal to six, that means we didn't read six values. And what is this doing for, let's see, I equals zero, I less than six, I plus plus Lotto bracket, I is equal to Lotto, I mod 45 plus one. So the idea is to change every value in the lottery from one to 46. Let's see, then calculate a Lotto score. Interesting. All right. So match J for I zero to less than six, J less than zero, if interesting, why is this a double loop that may be the problem here? Okay. This doesn't make sense. So, okay. So the idea is we want to match. So it's checking if Lotto I is equal to submit J, then match plus plus. And if match equals six, then we win. So the idea is we are trying to, what it wants is it wants to see how many of them are correct. But I believe this loop is definitely, I mean this jumps out, this was not the way that you would check this, right? You'd check to see if the bytes actually matched. So this means that if you get any one byte correct, it will count that for however many times it's in submit. So I think if we just set it to, let's say all ones, if we just pass in six ones, then we can keep trying this. And once we get one that has all ones, we should hit it. I think that'll work. Let's try that out. And what's it going to read from? It's going to read from us, from standard input. Okay. Cool. And so we can do Python dash C print zero X zero one dot dot dot times six, pipe that into a lotto. Oh, okay, okay, okay, I see. I see the problem. So we should be able to do one. Let's see. How is it reading this in the menu? I forgot about the menu, okay. So just looking for an int. So great. So we can do one, a new line, but then is the new line going to be considered as part of that? Let's just do, and that did not work out too well. Okay.  Oh gosh. It does not like this, it does not like this, okay. Let's go one new line, three new lines. All right, because so the reason is why aren't we, I believe you random. So the character special files dev random and dev you random, right in their face, the kernels, random number generator, file dev address, made a choice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, when read the dev random device, we'll turn it on by it's only within the s and number of bits of noisy, I read from the dev, okay, okay, well, we may be fine there, I read from dev. So dev random is a blocking pseudo random number generator. So these devices slash dev random and dev you random are seeded by the kernels. The kernels will add entropy to this and they will check. So dev you random will not block, but that should be fine because we probably still can't guess it anyways. I think this should work, I'm not 100% certain why it would be a good approach to use. I think let's do this, we will create a Python script because I love talking about how awesome it is to write Python scripts and.py and I actually want the connection to be and let's see I can actually debug this locally. So so need conda receive until three dot exit and then send line one, we want to play our game until you give me the flag man. This is what I want to see, send line one, receive this until and then my six bytes, and then zero one, six, I'm going to send six bytes of that 123456, oh, it's because I sent. All right, let's see what that does. All right, let's see if we are six ones. Okay. So now we want to debug this process and see what's going on here. So I think the part, the problem is going to be the problem that these are global variables. No problem is that lotto. Okay. So mod 45 plus one, yeah. So it should just take 45 guesses to get that right. Yeah, because as soon as anything mod 45 matches, that should work. Oh, let's see what happens if I do a receive until there we go. Got it. Okay. Okay. Great. So yes, this definitely works because they are doing this double loop to count, which means all we have to do is wait until anything in lotto. So if lotto is if anything mod 45 plus one, so all we need to do is try wait 46 times and then that number will hit every single one in our match. And so it will get incremented six times and so match will be six and we will get the flag. So I believe we'll need to change this connection from here to home lotto, lotto, lotto make directory temp, Adam D Ludo apparently cat, no such file directory. Again, we have the same problem. So now we I mean, so now we need to make sure we have a home lotto flag flag set up, Python exploit that and get sorry, mom, I forgot to check duplicate numbers. Wow. Yep, that is a problem. Cool. That was a really fun potable. Yeah, these type of logic problems are really difficult to identify programmatically. And so these problems are super interesting to me. So that was super fun. And I hope you learned something and I will talk to you later.