28: Charter Cities & the Evolution of Software Development // Carl Youngblood

Here with us today on our CityDAO Podcast is Carl Youngblood, who is currently spending his vacation in Madrid, Spain. Carl is a Software Engineer for over twenty years, specializing in highly scalable web services and applications. He is especially interested in blockchain technology and smart contracts. For today’s episode, we will have a more in-depth discussion about Charter Cities, Carl’s transition to the blockchain space, his work in AWS (Amazon Web Services), proof-of-work versus proof-of-stake, designing the city of the future, and so much more.

Carl used to be a part of the Amazon Web Services as a Senior Solutions Architect and Blockchain specialist. He is also the Co-Founder of Blockscale LLC, which provides highly-available, reliable, and scalable blockchain services for crypto projects. Blockscale has led the deployment of the Tezos Foundation’s baker infrastructure during their mainnet launch, and continues to maintain it today. They have also released open-source projects and tools for Ethereum and Tezos. Blockscale was recently acquired by Coinbase.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• 2:27 Carl Youngblood talks about his long vacation in Madrid, Spain.
• 4:54 As a software engineer, Carl is always on the lookout for what’s coming up next and he doesn’t want to become obsolete. This type of mindset led him to Bitcoin.
• 6:58 In 2017, Carl left his job as a VP of Engineering and went full-time in the Blockchain space.
• 9:01 Carl started a company with his brother called Blockscale. Some of their customers were MyCrypto and the Tezos Foundation.
• 12:03 In Amazon Web Services or AWS, Carl worked as a Solutions Architect. He shares his main role in AWS and his experiences working at this very large company.
• 16:45 Carl offers his insight on the ongoing proof-of-stake versus proof-of-work issue.
• 17:59 There is one weakness that exists in proof-of-work that does not exist in proof-of-stake.
• 22:12 A charter city is a city that has been planned or has been master-planned from the start, according to Carl. He gives his own definition of a charter city.
• 23:39 Carl has been following a person on Twitter called @WrathofGnon who is obsessed with traditional cities.
• 26:15 A more human-centric charter city is something that Carl wants to design and create.
• 28:06 Eric (memebrains) points out the current big issues that are being talked about within the CityDAO community.
• 31:21 One book that Carl highly recommends for those interested in charter cities is called Order Without Design.
• 32:07 Carl talks about Mixed-Use Zoning, which produces a tight-knit community where people want to live in.
• 33:04 One example of a popular well-designed town is Seaside Florida, which was featured in the movie Truman Show.
• 35:38 One of the early milestones that Carl is envisioning for CityDAO is having a 3D representation of what the community or town would look like.
• 39:33 DAO governance can be difficult and challenging but Carl has a few suggestions to make things easier for everyone.
• 42:51 For Carl, Cooperative Law is more suited for DAO governance than LLC.
• 45:38 Carl offers some governance strategies for tokens that can keep everything balanced and fair for everyone involved.

Key Points from the Interview:

1. “I would design my charter city in a way were we might have a few thoroughfares throughout the city where cars can actually go, but otherwise there are maybe a few large high-rise parking places on the outskirts of town and that’s it. Once you get to this town, you are on foot, or if you’re disabled there’s still ways that wheelchairs and bicycles can go around but pretty much otherwise it’s human-centric.”
2. “I think that any good DAO worth its salt that wants to involve the general public will create some sort of custody key option, right? Where, rather than a person having to be a crypto nerd, they could be a normie and still be involved in the project. And there would be some convenient service that would essentially be like a coinbase for them and it would manage everything in an easy-to-use web interface”

Resources Mentioned: