Who You Gno – On the Record with Antoine Breuil

Antoine Breuil, ‘zôÖma,’ is the co-founder of Teritori, an active Gno.land contributor and grantee that’s building key modules and tooling for Gno. A firm believer in equal opportunities, free and decentralized access to information, and helping fellow humans, zôÖma is fascinated by human behavior and how we organize ourselves, holding an avant-garde social experiment five years ago with Teritori co-founder ‘Pop.’ "La Suite du Monde" drew people across France to a small village in the countryside to create a shared community and society—with farmland, accommodation, and tools for common use.

The goal was to form an in-real-life DAO whose members shared common goals and interests using blockchain technology with a token to pay for goods and services and vote on governance matters. While many people participated and were enthusiastic about creating a shared society, zôÖma admits the experiment was early- no one was interested in interacting with the tech. “90% of people, rural or not, found it too complicated,” he admits. “We were a bit naive, but it was fascinating nonetheless.”

A Fascination for Human Behavior

zôÖma has been an ardent student of human behavior since childhood. His parents taught him early on the value of philanthropy and working with people in need. He’s set up several joint liability companies, non-profits, and NGOs to experiment with finding new and better ways to organize society, and one of the things he loves most about web3 is its “experimental” nature. He’s encouraged by how far the industry has come since he received his first bitcoins in partial payment for a website in 2014. “That turned out to be a really expensive website for my customer,” he laughs. He never expected such broad adoption of Bitcoin and a technology that “inspired a whole generation of engineers to experiment with new things.”

Like most creative types, zôÖma is used to spinning many plates in the air, overseeing La Suite du Monde while working as a freelance designer, front-end dev, and Artistic Director for an independent French record label. “Before entering the world of engineers, I founded and managed a collective for 12 years, which brought together artists from all disciplines, hackers, designers, tinkerers, to build some interesting projects.” La Suite de Monde allowed him to explore his passion for finding new approaches to social coordination first-hand. “I explored very radical things,” he says, “like the notion of “accepted by default” where anyone could use the collective budget by expressing their desire to do so three times. I wouldn’t recommend this,” he laughs, “but the experiments were fascinating and still serve me today in my work.”

One really interesting trait about zôÖma is how he harnesses the creative and analytical sides of himself with equal application. Most people are predominantly right-brained or left-brained, yet, zôÖma is ‘ambidextrous’ in this regard. He’s a designer who’s created large-scale artistic events, cultural tours of Paris, and an award-winning independent movie documenting French artist and Bitcoin advocate Pascal Boyart, The Underground Sistine Chapel, (which you should definitely check out!). Yet he’s also passionate about engineering and the future of cooperatives. He’s detail-driven and ambitious, taking his team at Teritori from two to 18 (14 full-time teammates and four part-time).

In his free time, zôÖma, “like all French people,” enjoys fine wine and good conversation. One of the things he loves most about Paris is how easy it is to find like-minded people to brainstorm with or decompress after a long day of work. “We have a very active ecosystem of engineers, cryptographers, etc.,” he says. Paris is also a beautiful city that captures his imagination with its dazzling architecture and impressive art. Even so, zôÖma channels his creative energy more effectively when working from a small Moroccan fishing village for three months a year. He reconnects with nature and humanity, immersing himself in a different culture and surfing in the Atlantic before he starts his day.

New Tools for Social Coordination

Why does zôÖma believe social coordination is so important, and why do we need new tools for it? “We’ve always had tendencies to organize ourselves and tools defining rules for living together, diplomatic protocols for discussing between social groups, or trading goods and services. But almost all the tools that previous generations put in place are outdated. Our entire generation has lost confidence in institutions to allow groups of humans to organize, coordinate, and meet their needs. Our dependence on third parties who do not have the same interests as citizens is immense.”

zôÖma believes that web3 holds the key to unlocking the emergence of new societies through products that are “unstoppable, resilient, and meet a real need,” whether for small villages in the south of France, Africa, or Asia or neighborhoods in Brazil or Korea. “We must have access to the radical transparency of institutions, the privacy of individuals, censorship-resistant tools, and autonomous communication from all commercial enterprises. It is on this solid foundation that civilizations that are more just and equitable can be built.”

Making Web3 More Accessible

Of course, as zôÖma found out, building new tools is easier said than done. Our industry faces an uphill climb when it comes to balancing the promise of the tech with a user experience that doesn’t cause tachycardia. He says that understanding that most people “don’t have the time or inclination to incorporate difficult technical concepts in their lives” has given him “crazy energy to focus on very simple technologies.” In fact, the ‘failure’ of La Suite du Monde is what gave birth to Teritori, “which today provides all the functionalities people asked us for at the time; a social network, communication systems, voting, crowd-funding, etc. We have made great progress, and it’s important to focus on products that are radically simple for the general public.”

According to zôÖma, this means abstracting away the concepts that everyday people don’t need to be aware of, such as networks, dApps, and even blockchain, “and always switching from one decentralized application to another.” Unifying (not centralizing) separate tools, networks, and technologies within a single, simple interface, he believes, is the key to broader adoption. “It's a very complex challenge, in terms of security, design, etc., but it's what I'm passionate about today.”

When it comes to Gno.land, Teritori has already delivered essential DAO tooling and standards, a Moderation DAO module to facilitate social communication and a Justice DAO module for conflict resolution. The team is now focusing on an on-chain project management tool to allow organizations and individuals to manage projects and track tasks smoothly and transparently on-chain.

A Fairer, More Transparent World

In 2024, Teritori enters a new phase called "Chapter II," which involves unifying all its work into a mobile and desktop application that could “trigger superb demonstrations of the potential of DAOs.” He enthuses, “I dream that we will see the emergence of a village that uses Teritori as a tool for internal discussion and co-financing. Will this be real in 2024? Who knows? But that’s where I focus all my energy!”

He believes the internet has been a great leveler, enabling anyone with a connection to educate themselves on any subject; yet, the opportunity isn’t open to all, and free and open access is constantly diminishing. “I am a child of the internet. I grew up with warez, p2p, and an internet which provided me with daily resources to learn freely, everything that interested me. In some countries, it is impossible to benefit from this opportunity, and with the centralization of the internet on different key players, mass surveillance, and the censorship of certain dictators, the internet is losing its very essence, which makes it magic. Distributed protocols can reshuffle the cards and offer tools for the public good.”

zôÖma says that humanity is at a turning point, and we must build the necessary tools now to avoid finding ourselves in a real-life version of George Orwell’s 1984. “I aspire to participate modestly in a world that is fairer, more transparent, and where society doesn’t need a puppet in a suit to improve its living conditions or respond to local needs. Web3 is just a tool, and if it doesn't meet this real need, then for me, it will be a failure.”

Experiment with Teritori today and test its Social Feed, which now includes Twitter-like functionality for posts, Medium-style articles, Soundcloud-inspired music, and videos—all based on Gno and IPFS and totally decentralized. You can also check out Teritori’s GnoModerationModule, which allows you to moderate a social network in a decentralized way. A faucet is available on the home page at app.teritori.com.

Tags: #whoyougno #teritori #community #interview

Written by christina on 11 Jan 2024

Published by g125em6arxsnj49vx35f0n0z34putv5ty3376fg5 to gno.land's blog