Close-up: mishaderidder.eth

Kiwi is nothing without its curators.

But these people, who collectively go through hundreds of sources per month to find the best Ethereum gems, have been pretty mysterious. Sure, you can read their Kiwi bio or analyze their comments, but it's just scratching the surface.

So we decided to interview our most active curators, so you can get to know them better. We called this series "Close-up", and today we share the first episode with mishaderidder.

We prepared both an audio as well as text version, so follow whatever format you prefer.

PS: We are going to still send weekly recaps in this newsletter. We will just share these interviews from time to time, so you can learn who picks recap links for you.

macbudkowski.eth

Hey everyone, this is a new format we're experimenting with. 

This format puts our Kiwi community members at the centre of the stage. We've been around for almost two years now, and there are people like mishaderidder.eth, who is with me, that curated hundreds, if not thousands of links. And you might not know much about them beyond clicking on their profile and reading some basic stuff.

So today I want to speak with Misha about a lot of things, but I won't spill the beans yet. 

So Misha, how are you doing today?

mishaderidder.eth

I'm quite good because the weather is great here in Amsterdam where I'm based. 

It's been great for a long time. It's a little bit chilly and cold, but the sun is warm if you turn your face towards it. So yes, life is fine. I just had lunch and a little walk just to enjoy the sun, not sitting inside all the time. 

macbudkowski.eth 

Sounds like a good European life.

One thing that I don't have any idea about is, I always felt like you're an integral part of Kiwi News because you've been around almost since the beginning.

mishaderidder.eth

Two years.

macbudkowski.eth 

Yeah. So I am wondering, how did you even get into crypto? What's your story here?

mishaderidder.eth 

It started in 2020. I've heard of blockchain, and a friend told me about blockchain, and we just went to this science fiction movie Blade Runner, and I was totally in the vibes, and then I had to check this out. I've been interested in privacy and technology and open source for a long time, and I'm also a bit of a cypherpunk. So the whole idea felt magical for me. 

Then early 2020, I started toying around, buying some coins. Then at the end of the year, like beginning 2021, end of 2020, I'm an artist and I've made some short films. I was always selling these films to people on a USB stick. How do you sell that? You make a nice box for them and then sign a contract. It always felt a bit unnatural for me. 

So then I found out about NFTs, and you can just sell something digital, native, like a video, onchain. The whole thing will be onchain, also the contract. It sounded like logic for me and also as a use case to actually not just play with coins but actually do something with it. Somehow then it all went quite fast. I minted my first video somewhere beginning in 2021, and it was bought by another photographer who I knew from outside crypto space. 

But somehow I really got pulled into the space. With a group of photographers, we started up Raw DAO, Obscura, Fellowship, all kinds of collectives, and of course, Assembly, which is currently also my American gallery. I'm trying to really build the photography NFT space. So I've been very active in that, mostly 2021, when it was really going fast. Also, I started DAOing. 

Of course, I mentioned I was part of founding Raw DAO. But earlier in 2021, I was already in Ultra DAO. That's actually my first DAO, and nobody really knew what we were doing apart from the magic of being in the DAO and with these people. We had a lot of, and someone just, at some point we had this idea, just let's do a pfp drop. So we created a whole pfp series, 10k of them, called Woodies. The idea was to have wood blocks on the blockchain. You can find it if you want. 

That was a huge success, and it sold out. It planted a million trees in sub-Saharan Africa. Yes, we allocated part of the funds to this non-profit organisation that planted trees, and they were extremely happy about it.

macbudkowski.eth 

Yeah, I imagine.

mishaderidder.eth 

Then I really got into this idea that this stuff got real power. You can really do world-changing stuff with a group of people you have never met. Because you only are on Discord. At first, we started out on Twitter, in the group DMs. Then we moved to the Discords. It was a lot of fun. I met a lot of people. 

Working in the photography space, I got asked by Obscura DAO to run a channel on Discord. It was a channel about philosophy and technology. So I would be there, asking, helping people, posting stuff, a little bit what Kiwi is. This is also somehow how one of my interests is in Kiwi because I'm interested in thinking about stuff and being critical and foremost also educating people in the space, which I think is most important.

But yes, in the centre, of course, is my art because I'm an artist. I also did my own project. In the autumn of 2021, I did my first big NFT drop with Assembly, high up close by. That was a great success. And yes, I invested.

macbudkowski.eth 

What was it about?

mishaderidder.eth 

It was a project I had made here in Amsterdam. It were really abstract images I made in the outskirts of Amsterdam. I had already published it as a photo book, and it had been a show. Assembly suggested, let's put this on Foundation and drop 21 pieces. At that point, that was very logical. And yes, I earned quite some Ethereum, and I started investing in buying art myself. There was so much nice stuff, so I've collected quite a lot. 

Somehow from artist, I also became an art collector, which is very nice, of course. I really loved giving back to the space and had this idea of helping this space build for the future. Part of the money I also invested in an idea. I had a photo series I made called generative by nature. This was a series I really made for the blockchain. I wanted to publish this also on my own marketplace. At this time, we were talking end of 2021, beginning of 2022. There was a lot of discussion about owning your work as an artist, the place of marketplaces, a lot of criticism of OpenSea. 

So I decided to build my own marketplace for my own work. I did that on the API of objkt.com on Tezos, which is very open. They also have really good assistance. So I decided to use that to feed into my website. What I built is, I made the photographs in spring 2021. It was a series of 36 photographs, where you can see the spring coming. It starts early March and then up to the end of May. You see the colour shift in the landscape. My idea, because it's called generative by nature, is this magical algorithm, this algorithm. 

We were all building algorithms and making this stuff. But the magical algorithm of nature, maybe we can't replicate it ever, and we don't need to because it's already there. The ultimate algorithm is just step outside. What I did on this website is that the drop would be gradual. On each day I made the photograph. The website started with a blank page. It was just blank, nothing there. Then each day, at the moment the photograph was taken, the photo would drop, would appear on the website. 

So it was a drop of three months. You couldn't just see the spring performing in this period. It was quite an intense project because you had to do three months of promoting. Each time you had to mint it at exactly this moment. Then you had to plan ahead. It was fun to do. The website is still there and now fully minted, of course. This also lifted off into the IRL world because the work got picked up IRL through my Amsterdam gallery. I recently showed it last November at Paris Photo. 

That was fantastic. I had a solo show at the largest art fair in the world for photography. It was also nice because they also have a digital sector where a lot of my friends, which I met in the space over the years, were also present, which was really, it really felt like a coming home party. We finally did it. We made photography NFTs.

macbudkowski.eth 

Your story is interesting to me because, we talk a lot about what blockchain is for. 

I saw this tweet, I think by Jacob from Zora. He said that, even the fact that you can earn $1 online by selling your art is pretty amazing. Of course, it was not $1 in your case. But the fact that selling photographs became a thing, thanks to blockchain, and that it could help your real artist career, not just only digital artists, but also as you said, you go to the gallery, you can see your stuff, that's nice. 

I like the fact that you went for this artist to art collector pipeline during the last bull run. I felt like a lot of people who made money on art were very happy to spend it on art and support other artists, and that was just a self-reinforcing circle of support.

mishaderidder.eth 

Also, I talked about video, but for photography, it's also very logical. I photograph with digital cameras, so the content is digitally native, so it's only logical to find a way to bring it out online and to also enjoy it in a digital way. 

Think about what the digital means. I've made prints, I made photo books. This feels like a logical next step. Everybody is on their phones, everybody is on their computers. It's logical to also think about photography, what it means for the screen and for the digital. I think it's very important. I'm not finished in that respect.

macbudkowski.eth

Oh, there's still another chapter?

mishaderidder.eth

Of course. Last spring, I was asked to pitch an idea for Fingerprints DAO. They voted my project in to launch with the studio, and this project was called glitch. At this point, I had this idea, only selling photographs is not enough, and also making a website with some features is not enough. I thought that this really needed to engage with the blockchain itself, because the blockchain is, of course, a computer. Ethereum is the world computer, and why not make something that works with the computer? 

So this glitch project is dynamic protocol art. The basis is, I think, 36 GIF animations. I worked together with a developer, Arod, in Brazil, in Sao Paulo. We created this whole mechanism. So everything is self-built: websites, the contracts, the auction contracts, the additions, we all self-made. The idea is that you have these animations. When you trade them, they wear, some self-destruct, you can also. If you sell them once, the animation is gone. If you sell them again, the image fades. At a certain point, there's only a residue. 

Then you can choose either to pay a small amount to refresh the image, to reinstate it to something, to the original mint, or you can choose to burn it. When you burn it, it goes into the real world. With the proof of burn, you can go to my American gallery in Houston, Assembly, and say, I want to buy a print. So you need to have the proof of burn to be able to get a physical. When it's physical, it also can't become digital anymore. 

What's also interesting is that the whole digital series is CC0, so it's totally open, anyone can do it, totally open. But when it becomes a print, it's traditional, you can use copyright, it's enforced. So it's this whole play also thinking about markets and also thinking about, well, what if digital art is perishable? Because everybody is just talking about it needing to be forever, the blockchain is forever. I wanted to make something that was not forever, that could, yes, just to do some critical thinking. Also, the imagery itself were painted over graffiti. So there were erasures themselves already. In the animations, there's also graffiti I found. 

What's also nice is, again, this graffiti, of course, links also to memes, to meme coins, to this popular culture, which I really love in crypto space. Because a lot of people opening up OpenSea and thinking, oh, these pictures. I can remember from the early days that there were artists and also photographers saying, oh, I don't want to have my beautiful work in with all these ugly pictures, Bored Apes. But I actually like that because it's somehow also liberating, to get your art and think about art in a totally different dimension. 

What I also love about blockchain art or about this idea of this dynamic protocol art is that people can engage. You can build community around it. People have to do stuff, they can interact. It is also a standalone. When we finished glitch, we revoked ownership of all the contracts. So it's just out there. Even I can't change anything about the whole mechanism. It's just a sculpture forever baked into the chain. I think this is going to be a great future for art on the blockchain. 

You can make these public sculptures where everybody is free to interact at certain moments, and you can have ownership of parts or partly. There's a lot of play, which I think is also very important. If you want to have culture, you need to play. Playing is creating culture. Having your stuff in the white cube museum, I see that more and more as your art dies a little bit. You can't touch it, you have to have distance. You have to know all difficult ideas, it's also this whole art speak thing…

macbudkowski.eth

And you know, how many people realistically go to museums unless you are MoMA in New York or Tate Modern?

Maybe what, 5,000, 10,000 people will actually spend some time with your art. I don't mean just passing by, but really contemplate it. But if it's online and you manage to get enough attention, this could be millions of people. That's very interesting to me as well. 

I'm not a super big fan of Beeple, but the fact that so many people saw his stuff, it would not be possible if he was just creating traditional art. I wouldn't be surprised if more people saw Beeple's art than any physical art that's not old school, like Mona Lisa.

mishaderidder.eth 

Yes, and also can laugh about Beeple a lot. He's kind of also critical political commentary, but in a really weird way. Sometimes I see he posts on Twitter, oh, there's this new Beeple, and then there's something crazy which is very actual. I always like to have fun also watching his work. 

macbudkowski.eth 

We spoke about art, because you are an artist in the first place. 

But I'm wondering, what brought you to Kiwi then? How have you ended up here? And why have you stayed? Because as we stated, you've been around for a long time. 

mishaderidder.eth

Well, at some point I was also participating in JPG. You've probably heard of JPG. We were there creating a canon for digital art. This whole idea was we don't want traditional curators to capture digital art and write the story about us. We as artists and collectors in the space want to write our story ourselves in our own way because that's all about empowerment, blockchain and blockchain space. It was a great project and very active also curating stuff and creating the fine art NFT. There was a fantastic artist community around it. 

But at a certain point, when the market really got bad, it was sunsetted. It was very sad. But Maria Paula, the founder, she pointed Kiwi out to me. She said, this Kiwi, you might be interested in that. It's curating news. She knew Tim, and she said Tim is a great guy and you should check it out. So I checked it out and I loved it. In a way, there were similarities also to JPG, this idea of curating, also curating your own news, not letting others curate the crypto news, but letting the space themselves curate. 

This idea of my cyberpunk roots also came up a little bit in the sense that you want to have open information, you want to have the people controlling information themselves in an open way, you can vote and upvote. I think that is a very interesting way of doing stuff. It's also cutting down on the noise because when I came into Kiwi, I was still reliant a lot on X or Twitter, I think it was already X. 

There's so much noise. All these people are pumping and saying crazy stuff. You just want to have a high signal. You just want to read only the stuff you need to know. You also want criticism around it. So people commenting, putting it into perspective, saying, separating fact from fiction in a way. So that's why I liked Kiwi. Besides that, what I already told you, I was running this Obscura channel. I did it, I think, for two years or longer. 

I entered Kiwi at the moment that Obscura was also dying. The story that I say I've experienced so many dead DAOs, I don't want to talk about it, but yes, I've been there. Every time I learned, and learning stuff and reading stuff, next to art, is one of the things I really love to do, thinking. Learning stuff like that.

macbudkowski.eth 

This caught my attention because I always thought of you as an artist.

And then I remember that somewhere in the comments you started talking "Oh yes, I was running an IPFS node", and then you said, "Oh, I was running a Gnosis node". Most artists, when I think about them, are not people who spend time setting up nodes. So I'm wondering what's your story with this technical side of crypto?

mishaderidder.eth 

The longer I was in crypto, the more crypto I became. I really became interested in all the stuff behind it, also because I was writing about it for Obscura at first. I did a lot of research, and all this stuff really made sense to me. One of my early ideas from 2020, when I started out, was this dream of being self-banked, to be your own bank, to detach from the system. I thought that this was a very interesting idea. 

So when I found out about it, I first, this is quite a complicated story. I first started out with Ethereum. This idea that if I would run a node of the Ethereum blockchain, also my art would be on it. I was already running IPFS nodes for all my art because that's what I just started out to do immediately. I was very conscious that if no one, you have to take care of your art because you can't really trust Pinata or OpenSea or anyone. 

You as an artist have to, if you use IPFS, you have to stand for that. I was also interested in building decentralized websites, and I actually did my linktree and have a couple of websites also running on IPFS. Those were really early use cases I really got into. From running the IPFS node, I came to running the Ethereum node. I started out on a Raspberry Pi. 

This was really hard to do, but it was a great learning experience because I really saw, when I had this Ethereum node running, I saw the magic suddenly. Because you see this rhythm of the blockchain, you realise the blockchain is actually a clock. It is just giving the rhythm of the internet in a way, a clock because it's so constant, it gives the grounding for the internet. It is actually a foundational part which you can use to connect, hard connect stuff with.

When you actually run a node, you really see it, you really feel it, and you feel how it works, you see the traffic going in and out. Then at a certain point, I saw this Gnosis Dappnode home thing. I thought, now I'm going to do it, now I'm going to go professional. Yes, I bought this thing. That was great. This is a very powerful machine. 

Then I could also run the Gnosis Node. Because Gnosis has a really low entry port, I could also validate because that's also what I wanted to do. Validating was even more magical, because you really get into the encryption. You have to make all these keys and put them in. It's magic. That's also where I'm really interested at the moment. Awesome. Got into encryption and stuff like that because there's also something deeper to that. In a way, the bottom line is, as an artist, I am an artist working with media, so I work with photography, I work with film, I work with computers. To work with technology as an artist, you really have to love technology.

But you also have to have a good feeling for it. The thing that I'm a good photographer is because the camera is not an obstacle for me, I don't have to think about it. That's the same with computers and blockchain. I have a natural sense for it, and if I feel the magic, I can just do it. As an artist, I mix the technical with the sensical. It maybe sounds weird, but since I'm not really a tech guy, but I'm a tech guy who can feel with technology. That's also why I stayed in this space, because it really excites me.

macbudkowski.eth 

Technology-wise, there's so much going on here.

mishaderidder.eth 

Yeah. I love just new ideas. I love also dreaming stuff. What can we do? What can we build? What can we change? I always have to think about a quote by Buckminster Fuller. I posted it today as a reply to someone. But it's a quote I have always in my mind. This idea: You should not fight the existing reality, but you should build something that is so good that it will naturally replace the existing reality.

That's also why I love building stuff, participating in Kiwi or JPG. If you participate, if you help build, maybe you build the next system. That's a lot better, I think, than going into the streets with a sign and saying "I'm very angry". No, man, if you want to change stuff, you have to engage and build and think.

macbudkowski.eth 

I would say this is a crypto ethos.

Crypto is not a think tank. It's this think and do tank. Satoshi didn't write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, saying that the financial system is bad. He just built an alternative. When Vitalik couldn't build his vision on Bitcoin, he just built an alternative as well. So there is this part of the culture here that people just do stuff. And this is a part of crypto identity.

Which by the way leads me to another question that I wanted to ask you, because I'm really curious to understand what things built on Ethereum so far do you find the most interesting? Apps or movements like d/acc, desci, or whatever, that you find interesting now?

mishaderidder.eth 

Yes, of course, I've always been excited about Ethereum itself. I also started out on Ethereum. Basically, the most exciting, I think, is what I also said: Ethereum as the world computer. This image, this is the potential. Talking about apps, I don't think I can really say this app is so fantastic. Of course, DeFi is very interesting, and there's a lot of stuff. Actually, I'm not really interested a lot in money and DeFi. 

I have become educated over the years in DeFi, which is also really good, because a lot of people don't know anything about finance. I didn't know anything when I came into the space. So I think these DeFi mechanisms, that's, I'm not an expert in it, but it is empowering, which I really like about it. On the other hand, I'm not really interested in money. Of course, I'm interested in decentralized social media. I still think Farcaster is a very good experiment. I've also been participating from day one. I'm also a Purple DAO member and really investing in this. 

Because I don't know where Farcaster is coming, but up to now I think this is the best proposition for decentralized social media we've seen up till now. I also like the crowd and the conversations I'm having. Social media-wise, I spend about 80% of my time on Farcaster. I think that is really interesting. Besides apps, I think, and what I'm hoping for, is the future of art on Ethereum. So, what I said, I like this idea of hyper sculptures, network-aware, programmatic sculptures that can exist on the blockchain and continuously evolving, open to interaction, composition, re-input, interpretation, this idea of dynamic living artworks, enabled by the Ethereum programmable blockchain. 

That is for me the most interesting use case. To name a recent example, and I also curated this on Kiwi News, is PXL DEX by Kim Asendorf. It's a very complex project about pixels on the blockchain and the trading of pixels. It looks amazing, and you build this, it's just amazing, you can just dive in deep. So for me, that is personally the best use case, and I always get excited when people have built something really special. Another thing that interests me is zero-knowledge technology. In fact, it is a missing layer still on Ethereum. 

Because in one way, it's really nice, everything is transparent, and it has great use cases for trust. But also the ZK tech, this magic that you can trust without having to see real proof, that you can prove without having knowledge. I think this trust, and I also wrote about it a little bit lately in Kiwi, is something we have to be busy with, because transparency fosters in a way a society of distrust. It's the opposite actually. 

But cryptography itself, it scales trust. So yes, I actually have an idea also for making new work. Of course, I'm still at the very beginning. I really would like to do something with zero-knowledge technology. There's also this person on Farcaster, he's called July. He's building this zero-knowledge Roc Cam. I ordered one. 

I'm really curious what I can do with it. I'm really interested also in this idea of proof of reality. How can we make this connection of reality and blockchain, but also proving maybe something is real or not real?

macbudkowski.eth

Yes.

mishaderidder.eth 

It also touches on the idea, is anything real? Yes, that is, I think this is also very interesting. Also to integrate this zero-knowledge technology into a camera. I'm really curious how that works, if you mint instantly on the blockchain if you take a picture or something. I'm going to see it.

macbudkowski.eth

Do you know when he's going to send it? 

mishaderidder.eth 

He's building it. I follow him on Farcaster. Once in a while he posts his progress. I think it's quite a project because I think he got a lot of orders. He's making it all himself, all these 3D printers. I think it will take some time.

macbudkowski.eth

It sounds like a pretty big hobby project.

mishaderidder.eth

It's a big hobby project, exactly.

macbudkowski.eth

Misha, we have to wrap it up. But I'd like to ask you about one thing at the end. That's totally unrelated to crypto. What kind of movies or TV series or books of fiction have you read lately that you could recommend to our community?

mishaderidder.eth 

I haven't read a book of fiction since the summer because mostly I'm reading philosophy books. I recently read Undinge by Byung-Chul Han. It's about responding to a world of digital alienation and non-objects entering the environment and displacing objects. It's an interesting philosophical book. I don't agree with anything. 

Also a really great read is Summer of Protocols Kit Reader. But it's, of course, still Ethereum related. Something really off the scope would be, I recently went to Nosferatu, the new horror film. I went there in a night session with my girlfriend, and I really had a great time. I really recommend seeing the movie. It's not the best movie ever, but it's very enjoyable. At times even scary.

macbudkowski.eth

I was about to ask if it's scary because it's like a movie from what, 40s?

mishaderidder.eth 

It is actually the first horror movie they made. And they call it, it actually is Frankenstein or Dracula, but they couldn't call it Dracula because of copyright infringement, so they called it Nosferatu. But in the end, they got a lawsuit anyway, and they were banned. But then it became cult status. I think over the years, there have been five different versions already. People like to make remakes. Werner Herzog, also a great filmmaker I love, he made a remake of Nosferatu. So it's a cult thing.

macbudkowski.eth 

So watch Nosferatu during the night so it's more scary. That's the recommendation here. 

So Misha, I'm glad that we could talk because we used to talk a bit on community calls, but these were not directly related to you and the things that you do. I'm wondering if you have any last words for people who are going to listen to it.

mishaderidder.eth 

Yes, I have some last words. The thing is, I'm a bit worried and a bit discouraged maybe about the meme coin hype, the capturing of crypto partly by government. The fixation on the number go up, code down stuff, I for now I'm staying with the trouble also because I love the Ethereum project and I really want to help build this. On the other hand, I hope crypto can also get all these grifters out and make something useful. I hope it won't get burned down to the ground by idiots.

macbudkowski.eth 

Yes, I hope it won't. I would even say I'm pretty confident it won't. I mean, it has been around for 10 years now and went through all these different things and problems. It's still here. I gotta say, of course, I'm always very bullish on Ethereum. But I was never more bullish because we have new leadership at the EF, we have a lot of new use cases getting rolled out, prediction markets actually proved useful. So on top of DeFi, we have another use case. I saw there's this app where you can buy some Pokemon cards and different collectibles, and they make hundreds of millions of revenue. 

mishaderidder.eth

I think it's bigger than OpenSea. 

macbudkowski.eth

I think it's called Courtyard?

mishaderidder.eth

I'm not sure, but I heard it's bigger than OpenSea.

macbudkowski.eth

Yes. So it's also that makes me very bullish.

I spoke with a friend today, and the thing that we take for granted, a few years ago, many people thought it was impossible to scale blockchain while preserving decentralization. It was considered a research question, and we are actually in a process of doing that. We might not have reached Stage 2 when it comes to L2s, but we are going there. That's something that we take for granted, but you remember the last cycle, you wanted to mint an NFT and it was $200 in gas price. The UX was terrible, nothing worked.

So I think we made a lot of steps in the right direction.

mishaderidder.eth

Yes, and I also have now this Gnosis Pay card. I'm paying for my groceries each day with crypto. Also my girlfriend has it. We're the crypto family. But that's one of my dreams that has really been realized, that I can own my own bank. And because I run the Gnosis nodes, I also have my own RPC. So no one can stop me.

macbudkowski.eth

Yes, you're like a real, unstoppable citizen. So Misha, thanks a lot. It was a pleasure. See you online and onchain.