Author: @ivyFanshao
ZuConnect is back, and I can hear the prelude to a change in mindset.
ZuConnect happened before the DevConnect conference and was a two-week pop-up city, an extension of Zuzalu's activities. The participants in this pop-up city can be summarized as a diverse community of 300 people from various nationalities and industries. Gathering such a group of people in the beautiful and complex city of Istanbul itself creates a magical chemical reaction. The participants and the location themselves are excellent raw materials and do not require much refinement.
Here are some observations from the perspectives of the participants.
Understanding the World from Diverse Perspectives#
This time, I specifically interviewed 7 friends from different countries and regions (Argentina, Bolivia, Ghana, Vietnam, Turkey, Serbia, Switzerland) from the perspective of payment finance, trying to write a geographical account of crypto adoption.
Two of them were particularly impressive. They both started crypto wallet startups in Argentina and Ghana respectively, and later transitioned to the education and training industry in different forms, including offline developer communities and online Spanish courses. These two individuals have clearly received excellent thinking training or higher education. When I asked about the overview of the local economic/financial system, their narratives started from the geographical and political backgrounds and went on to explain foreign exchange and finance in a logical and concise manner. When I saw the local payment tools they presented (such as belo and USSD mobile money), I was shocked several times. It really refreshed my imagination of the world - no matter how limited the resources or how backward the infrastructure in any region, they have their own ingenious ways of solving problems. I couldn't help but marvel at the strength of human survival ability and the wisdom inspired by adversity. People will eventually find a way out.
Image: ZuConnect venue - 5-story integrated building (bookstore + restaurant + co-working)
The Gap between Eastern and Western Education Models: Static Closed Input vs Dynamic Platonic Dialogue#
The earliest cultural shock came from a hiking experience in the forest with 5 Zuzalians from different countries and industries. They were researching bio-tech longevity, interested in philosophy and archaeology, and working on privacy projects. The dialogue between them was highly dense and frequent, inspiring each other endlessly. They went from discussing UFOs and Area 51 secrets to biotechnology, shell man cloning, politics, Bob Dylan, archaeology, views on data privacy, and how human society operates. Different perspectives joined in, and the conversation kept progressing, becoming more and more invigorating. In the car with 5 people, 3 of them had no data on their phones, and it had no impact on their lives. They could go almost a whole day without touching their phones, focusing their attention on their companions. During the journey, I had to resist the urge to take out my phone and browse the news, using the feed to fill the gaps in my mind. At the end of the day, my phone still had 70% battery left.
Another intellectual shock came from a global workshop discussing how to create crypto products for Ethiopia, Argentina, and Turkey. The participants' backgrounds could almost form a United Nations: the Middle East, South Africa, West Africa, Latin America, Turkey, Eastern Europe, the UK, and I was the only East Asian present. What impressed me the most was that the participants were able to express their views clearly and convincingly even without complete context. They naturally entered into debates, while I found that I only had information without opinions. I could only express my views when I had prepared a script, unable to think while speaking and engage in real-time multi-round conversations with others. This has nothing to do with language but rather a lack of thinking training.
For example, when discussing the development in Africa, a friend from Ghana mentioned:
They don't care about democracy, but basic life quality, including food, drink, living shelter. Humans must survive.
And he also acknowledged the rise of China's model.
This immediately sparked extensive questioning from the participants. Someone mentioned the viewpoint of an economist born in Turkey: for prosperity, citizens need "inclusive institutions" to create a virtuous cycle of "innovation, economic expansion, and broader property rights."
Source: Why Nations Fail (Daron Acemoğlu): The Origins of Power, Prosperity, And Poverty
The level of understanding about Africa seemed to have no impact on their ability to express their own views. The conversation gradually revealed the logical thinking and speculative nature of each person's thought process. If time were not limited, they seemed to be able to continue questioning and discussing endlessly. Meanwhile, I frustratingly found that I lacked the process of speculation. Like what Gimmy and Bonecat felt, when faced with dialogues and debates, I often found myself speechless.
Discovering Blind Spots through the Diverse Perspectives of Others#
When the topic shifted to "useful products and their success stories," everyone started discussing a company that surprised me: Binance.
Participants from Africa, Vietnam, and Latin America saw what Binance did well and believed that the company had put in a lot of effort in regional insights, pragmatically providing products that people truly needed in various regions, rather than promoting abstract concepts that many users did not care about. This created a win-win situation between the platform and the users - the platform gained transaction commissions, and the users gained financial freedom.
People don't care about self-custodial, they don't give you a shxx
People care about how to transfer money across borders easily.
Participants from Argentina believed that Binance sold a hope/dream in Argentina. For example, Binance had an advertisement that said, "Earn a salary as a kindergarten teacher during the day, and make money as a crypto trader at night, 7*24h." It sold a beautiful expectation that even ordinary people in their regular jobs could become traders and make money.
Image: Binance advertisement - Argentine businessmen contribute to financial freedom in Latin America through Binance P2P
Participants from Africa believed that Binance had done a lot of education and popularization work around local needs, such as helping local people understand practical methods to achieve financial freedom in the post-pandemic era of economic downturn in Nigeria. In the Telegram community, moderators often say: Your money won't disappear.
Image: Binance's local community promotion ambassador is called a Binance Angel, not a Binance Ambassador, which is very subtle and gives a sense of salvation
When others discussed Binance, I once again felt the bias of my identity. People from the Middle East, South Africa, West Africa, and Latin America had studied the success of Binance, but there was almost no research or reporting on this industry's largest money-printing machine (before CZ stepped down as CEO) in the Chinese-speaking world. This was very strange. One reason behind this might be "native language discrimination": we treated Binance as a domestic exchange and somewhat saw CZ, who is of Chinese descent, as one of us, so we viewed him with a "level gaze." We tend to study objects that we look up to and ignore those that we look at or look down upon, so Binance became the elephant in the room that we overlooked.
Insight: How is Self-discovery Possible?#
In a commodity society, people care about others' evaluations and strive to conform to social norms. Everyone is subject to some degree of training. Training is like a stone pressing on a sapling. When this stone is removed, the small tree can grow into its own shape. This is the process of self-discovery. When a community is inclusive enough, you feel that you are no longer an oddity and feel safe, so you dare to do things that you want to do but dare not do in your daily life, and even a bunch of people join you and go crazy with you. You feel seen, and your identity is confirmed. The role of an experimental community is to remove this stone of training and allow human nature to grow freely, encouraging everyone to achieve greater benefits with their skills and passion. Openness and community quality, how to choose? Perhaps we cannot pursue these two contradictory goals in one community, but there can be many pop-up cities distributed at different positions on the spectrum, each pursuing one end of the spectrum.