Meet Ryan Tanaka And His Role

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Today's guest is Ryan Tanaka. Ryan has been deeply involved in the Tezos art community for years, helping build and support projects like Teya, Tea Cafe, and the annual Tezcon gathering in Seattle. If you've spent time exploring digital art on Tezos, there's a good chance you've encountered something Ryan's helped shape. Whether it's infrastructure for creators, experiments around on-chain media, or tools aimed at making decentralized platforms actually usable. Recently, Ryan has been working on bringing many of those experiments together, including features originally developed through Tea Cafe, with the goal of strengthening Tea as a platform for artists and creators. Ryan, welcome to Tez Talks Radio. Hi, uh nice to see you again, playing. Good to see you too, sir. Ryan, when people talk about the Tezos art scene, your name comes up in a lot of different places. Tea, Tea Cafe, TezCon. What I mean, when someone outside of Tezos asks you what you do, how do you usually explain it?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Uh it gets it's actually quite difficult because uh, you know, I feel like I'm in kind of like a pretty unique situation, right? Like I'm um I do have my own startup, so it's you know, it kind of depends who you're talking to, right? Like a lot of times I just like it gets too complicated. So I'm like, oh, I work in tech, you know, and then uh if they have further questions, then I'll explain more. But you know, for most people, they're just trying to ask the question, right? But what do I actually do? Right, I'm actually trying to build an open source like community through my uh startup, which is Tea Cafe. So, you know, there's a lot of different intersections of a lot of different things. Like Tea is also a nonprofit, but we're uh you know traditional startup, and then uh so yeah, so but that's kind of like the landscape I'm navigating right now, kind of the the I don't know, the middle parts between like a nonprofit open source project and a tech startup, I guess, right? Using the blockchain, of course, not to mention like Taya itself, right? Runs on a Dow. So yeah.

Rebuilding After Hic Et Nunc

SPEAKER_00 2:56

You were around during the Hick and Nunk era, which was one of the most unusual moments in the NFT space. When that platform shut down, a lot of people assumed the community would just scatter. What made you think it was worth rebuilding something instead of just moving on?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Well, I was actually um I came in at the tail end of that. So I actually I had a friend that uh pinged me towards what was happening on Tezzles. Basically, she said, like, wow, the art here is like really, really good, and you got to check it out. I'm like, okay. And then she was like, just a couple months actually, I was like, okay, you know, she just kept on talking about it. I'm like, okay, well, I'll check it out. Um, but I kind of got in around the time Picking Nun was shutting down, and then I was like, oh, okay, well, what's going on? Like, like everyone's like freaking out for some reason. I don't understand, you know, because I wasn't really looped in. But what draw me into the uh what's now known as Teya, right? The Tea really like was the community coming together and they revived Hickotnung after it went down. The idea of like the community coming together and and reviving it and like building it uh through a decentralized process, that really appealed to me. Like I was like, wow, these people are serious, you know, and especially since I come from a music background, an artist. Uh it was just kind of nice to see, like, you know, you don't see that too often, right? When in the creative communities when they come together and like um try to build something collectively, right? So, yeah, so I just like hopped in and I was there back when uh they were voting on the name, too. Like Teya means uh web, right in uh Portuguese, I believe. And that was sort of inherited from the Brazilian roots of Hickonut, right, in that region. But we could have called it Sink. That was the other contender. There were other, you know, there were other names that was uh proposed, and that was there when they were voting for it. And they're like, wow, like the community actually voted on what they wanted to call themselves. Like um I can't think of um example, you know, like where where it's also on the blockchain, right? So the whole idea of like democrat democratizing the process and like making collective decisions and the fact that they pulled it off, right? I think Hickendunk was only down for like a day or two, and it was revived within 48 hours, I believe. So yeah, and so that was very inspiring, right? I think um a lot of even a lot of people who was like watching it from from afar was was pretty like intrigued by the whole thing. So I just wanted to be a part of it. So I'm still here. I'm still here. Good. Don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. Oh, I'm not planning to how many. Four years. Oh, it's been a while.

Fixing Fragmented Tools And Information

SPEAKER_00 6:17

We appreciate it, man. Yeah, thank you. Now, one thing you've mentioned recently is that over time a lot of the tools around Tea ended up scattered across different projects and websites. At what point did that fragmentation start to become a real problem for the community?

SPEAKER_01 6:34

It was always a problem from the very beginning, you know. And I remember like um even that like I was there when they revived the site. I would say that that's when I started getting involved. So I kind of saw everything from that point. But I remember like people would be, you know, uh for what it's worth, everyone was trying to help the community, right? But everyone has their own different ways of doing it. So one person would be like talking to each other in a Twitter DM or on Discord or hey, we have these documents. Okay, it's in my uh Google Drive on this email, or it's on Notion, and or it's on Matt, you know, it's just like after a while, um, you should you should look at our uh password manager. Thank God Zero created that thing, otherwise, it wouldn't have you know, at least we have one place where all the passwords are stored. Uh, but if you look at the list, yeah, it's very, very, very long. So um, so yeah, so I've been talking about that recently because um it is decentralized, but it's to an average person out there looks disorganized, right? Because we don't have a unified way of like managing everything. And for what it's worth, uh our members was like so committed that they were willing to endure that, right? It's just a lot that people were were willing to put up with all that crap, right? Just to truth keep it alive, right? And and so it's you know, it's uh I don't necessarily see it as like a bad thing, but I think we're at a point where uh it makes sense to make things more streamlined and uh even like legally, right? Um Taya two years ago we formed a nonprofit around Teya, and that's unheard of, like at least in the NFT ecosystem. I don't know anywhere else that went through that process, right? Because it's it takes a lot of work, it's a lot of documents, it's a lot of uh people having to show up, right? Even though um some people had to KYC themselves to um get that signature, right? And so it could have fell apart at any point, but it did it. So I think that says a lot, right? To the about the commitment of the community, and so now we're very we're better organized, like structurally speaking. And what I've been doing and what I've been pushing for the last uh year or so is to try to get all that scattered information, and it's still out there somewhere. We just want to like consolidate everything and make sure you can see everything and uh on the main site. So we're gonna be doing a lot of work like that over the next couple months, and um yeah, and I think it'll help like uh yeah, people uh especially from like we're trying to also raise money, right? Do some fundraising, and uh we have yeah, I got some success in that area recently. Um, you'll probably hear about it by the time uh this video goes up, but uh yeah, and then it'll give people thinking about donating to uh smart reassurance, right? When when they can see everything. So yeah, yeah, it's a lot of tedious things, but I think I think like it is about time we do it. Like, for example, you'll be able to see a clear list of all the multi-sig members, um, the the budget, the fees, voting records, all the contracts that make Tea run will be right there, and uh we'll also be giving like power to the um to the members uh to update like relevant links and you know all those things like because there's a lot of great projects on Tesla's that are just kind of floating around everywhere, not not just on Teya, but everywhere, right? So so we want to bring it together and give people a place to like uh you know help help with legibility, I guess. Yeah, and I think that'll make a big difference, like because we have the talent here, you know, we just have to like get a little bit more organized.

How DAO Development Ships Features

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Ryan, running a platform through a DAO sounds great philosophically, but it also means decisions and development move through governance. Yeah, what are some of the things people might not realize how features actually get built and shipped in that kind of environment?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Well, um, so a lot of like Tea, what Tea is built upon is really like uh an open source, right? And and we've been using that phrase a little bit more because we used to talk about DAOs and decentralized governance, but like a lot of you know, it's it's hard conceptually, right, for a lot of people to like what is that, right? What is a DAO? A lot of people don't even know what that is. So I think the easier way to think about Tea is that we're the open source community of NFTs, you know, and art, our art NFTs or whatever you want to call it. But so, um, like for example, if you want to make a change to the site, anyone can uh create a pull request on our GitHub, which is open, you know, it's open source. Um then uh you can uh we have a few devs that will review it and push it to production, right? And so that's kind of how it's always worked. Anyone's really open to doing it. Um, if they don't like the uh way we run things that are on our site, they they're always free to create their own version, right? So um, yeah, so so that's kind of like what's been keeping the whole thing going, because yeah, you know, just like real real government, right? Like when you do things in a decentralized way, a lot of times it takes it's slower, right? It takes a little bit more time. Um but uh the I think for what it's worth, I think Tea has always been progressing, you know. Even at even if this pace is a little slower than a traditional startup, like we've always been making improvements, we're absorbing a lot of the um projects that has shut down or you know ran out of uh momentum. So I think uh eventually Taya might just end up end up absorbing everything, you know, because like it's open source, right? Like if you have an idea and you want you don't want it to die, what's the best place to keep it alive, right? Just push it to open source and it'll be there. And we have a community of people willing to keep it running, right? And uh yeah, you know, and if you think about it, like a lot of the um uh developments, even in like things like AI, you know, for a long time AI was an open source project. Like the stuff you see in the last couple years, that's that's some very recent thing. They're trying to commercialize the tech, right? But for a long time it was an open source project, and so I like to think that you know we're we're that for crypto or that for NFTs, and uh at some point people are gonna recognize the value, right? And that's kind of like why uh, you know, that kept me going, right? This is why I'm still here. Like the best is yet to come, I guess.

NFTs And The IP Licensing Problem

unknown 15:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

You've spent years helping build tools and infrastructure for artists on Tezos. If you step back and looked at the space as an artist instead of a builder, what's something you would still want that doesn't exist yet?

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Well, we're actually working on a lot of those things, you know. Um like the thing that uh the big thing that we worked on last year was the uh the decentralized copyright registration um system, and that's still there, it's still usable. Um so I I think the the challenge for NFTs in particular is intellectual property because if you look at how the uh entertainment and the arts industry works, uh that's kind of what keeps everything running, you know. Like when you go to uh I use this example all the time, but when you go to a movie theater, right? What are you interacting with, right? You go there to see the movie, you're not there to buy the rights to the movie, right? You don't go on Netflix and be like, oh, can I can I buy uh that that TV show, you know, I want in, like, you know, that's really not how most people interact with artworks, right? Most people actually interact with artworks through licensing, through IP, through distribution, right? And that's the layer that really hasn't been addressed yet. And it's not just crypto, though, that's always been a problem, like in the tech industry. Like you go all the way back to Napster, right? And even YouTube, um AI, of course, right? That's a huge uh controversy. Um, you know, regardless of your opinions of whether like how things should be done, it's always been a contentious issue that haven't quite figured out yet, you know. So I think that um, at least personally, it's these sorts of solutions uh are gonna come out of like NFT technology because just because it's right there, right? Like the problem is most relevant in that space. Um not DeFi, not AI. AI is sort of just using the material that's always there, that's already there, right? But NFTs, you have to like confront it directly. So um it's gonna take a while. Like I'm learning that it, you know, it's is gonna take a while, but I do think this is where the solution is gonna come out of eventually. You know, just just because of necessity.

Motivation Through Market Cycles

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Makes sense. You've been building through multiple market cycles now. What keeps you motivated to keep working on this when the excitement around the broader market slows down?

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Well, I've been in crypto since 2013, 2014. Uh, I got in very early, and uh, you know, I'm I've been lucky enough to actually make some money off this stuff. Um, but I do, but so so when that comes with the perspective that things take time for one, and then markets go up and down. Because I remember uh in 2016 or so, um, I was like in Ethereum back then, I didn't know about Tizzles back then, but uh I was in Ethereum, and then the price was like about a hundred bucks, it shot up all the way up to 1400, and then at the time that was like a big deal, and everyone went nuts, you know. And then it and for the reasons that are very actually very similar to the last couple years, is that it people eventually lost faith in it, and then you know they overmarketed and market got saturated, then it crashed and it went all the way down to 100 bucks. So 100, 1400, 100, and it's like a 90 percent loss, or you know, so uh so even this cycle, um you know, I'm looking at the price uh well, the price of Tesos, like I was like, I even said this a few times, like you know, I was like anticipating like even Tesla's going down to like a quarter. So and like I'm you know, and I like I there's no way to sugarcoat it, like sometimes you just have to go through the shit. It's you know, if you look at every cycle, it's just like yeah. If I was smarter, I would try to time the market more, or maybe I'm maybe that's a bad idea, right? Like, maybe I should sell at the top, right? Uh, but for me, like because it was very different. I have a very different relationship to Tezos than I did with Ethereum because Ethereum was just an investment for me. I was mostly like looking from the sidelines. I did a few things here and there, but like not seriously. But with Tezos is different because I was building on it directly, and um I felt like what's the word? Um, you know, I felt I feel more committed to it than I was with other things. So, you know, holding through the the the dips is part of it, you know. But if you if you really believe that this stuff works and this is stuff for his wheel, and we're solving real problems, um it'll come back up, you know, and and you gotta have that faith. Like otherwise, yeah, you're not gonna make it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

So you know, something you said recently struck with me. Yeah. Uh you mentioned that sometimes the struggle of building something is part of what makes it meaningful. Do you think people who stick around in this space tend to actually enjoy that challenge?

SPEAKER_01 21:57

You gotta or are you? It makes no sense, man. Fucking if you if you want to make money, there are so many less stressful ways to do that, you know? And if you're choosing to do this in an in art, especially, right? With NFTs, we're talking about art here, right? We're not talking about like medicine or building a bridge or or plunging someone's toilet, which is can be very well paying, by the way. If you want to plunge someone's toilet, you can get paid six figures, you know, like there are easier ways to make money, but um yeah, so yeah, you if you're still here, you're you you probably have there's something going on inside that makes you enjoy it, right? At least on some level. Um, I'm not saying it's easy, like you're not gonna be like happy all the time, but but at least for me, I won't be happy all the time. I want I want the price to go up all the time, too. But um, you know, but but like for real though, but I've been seeing recently like a lot of the things people are talking about, things people are building, uh, it feels a lot more real, you know, and it's just because there's gotta be something there more than just the immediate money, right? And you know, as someone that actually made money in this space, I I feel like I have to like remind people that it comes later, you know, it's like delayed gratification. Um it's a long time, man, like 16. So markets crashed in 2017, and I had to wait three years before it came back up, you know, back to where it was. And but after that, you know, maybe I did make some money after that, but took a while.

Enshittification And The Next Shift

SPEAKER_00 24:10

So yeah, I don't know. Ryan, the theme for the upcoming TESCON event is and shittification, yes, which comes from the idea that platforms often start out serving users but eventually shift toward extracting value from them. When you look at the internet today, do you think central decentralized platforms actually have a chance to avoid that cycle? Or are we just early in the same pattern?

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Uh that's an interesting question because um these things go in cycles too, right? Like even from the definition. Um yeah, it was originally coined by uh Corey Doctorow, right, in that in one of his books. And it's basically what you just described, right? Like the the process of building and then extraction, right? And so I feel like that happened with crypto already, because in the earlier cycles of crypto, you know, with Satoshi Bitcoin launched around 2010, 2011, around that time. And then uh back then everyone was a builder, you know, and they're still like experimenting and bidding it out. Uh, but even crypto has gone through these cycles of like initification, right? Like there was one that happened in 2017, like the that hype cycle I mentioned earlier. Uh back then it was ICOs. So everyone and their moms are creating their own coins. Uh, and they're like, oh, this is a way to get rich, because it was a way to kind of bypass the traditional startup model, right? So you could just like buy these coins, and then and you don't have you didn't have to be an accredited investor, right? You can just like get some coins, and if it hits big, then you're rich, you know, and then everyone just went nuts. And then uh, but that eventually turned into like an extraction thing, right? Because then meme coins, oh, you lost all your money, oh, here's your fees, right? Like uh, it's like a casino, basically, right? Most people, the house always wins, right? And casinos are there always, yeah, yeah. But overall, right? It's design in general, in general, yeah, and then it it's the goal is to extract money from you. That's what it is, literally, right? So, yeah, even crypto has went gone through that, and but it's not just crypto, it's everything, it's like any technology that gets hyped, right? Like for a while it was like big data, right now it's AI, it's like it's the same pattern over and over. But eventually it loses steam, and then there's a point where people are looking for something different, right? And so AI is a very centralized system, right? Because everything runs through these big data centers, right? And you don't really have much control over a lot of that. I mean, you can run your own node or whatever, but um overall it's a centralizing thing, and and I do think at some point there'll be a renewed interest in decentralization because like crypto was actually a reaction to big data, I would say. Like that was happening in like the early 2010s or so. Uh, I don't even remember. Everyone was like, big data, big data, you know. Like everyone was just like, and their moms are just talking big data. Even my mom was saying that, like, and you know, she's a teacher at high school. I'm like, big data, what? Like, what like what? Like, what data do you want from your kids? Like, you know, I don't know, but but anyway, it was it was part of the hype, right? And then so then, but eventually the people got bored of it, and then we looked started looking at more decentralized things, and crypto was that, so then that became popular, and then people got sick of that, you know, it just goes back and forth. So I think that um right now um there's gonna be a point where people uh kind of start looking for things that are decentralized again. I think it's getting close, like and part of the reason why I'm still in Tizzles is because I I really do think that we're one of the places that are well positioned for that. Uh especially Tea, because Teya, we are decentralized, like, no, nothing other. Like I don't know any, yeah, like we are really obsessed with doing things in a decentralized way, and uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

So you know, the Tezos Art community has served uh survived multiple market cycles while a lot of NFT platforms have come and gone. Yep. Do you think that happened because the technology was better or because the culture was different?

SPEAKER_01 29:39

It was definitely the culture, you know. Uh you know, the saying like the the taller you are, the harder you fall, right, Nick. Um we like to joke that, well, like at Taya, for example, our budget has pretty much been zero the whole time, you know. So we have nowhere to fall, right? Some places they like raise a ton of money, millions and millions of dollars, and they like hire these expensive engineers, and you know, they got nice things, but then they have a huge runway, right? And they say they go up and then they all come crashing down. And the thing is, when you come crashing down, you go underneath the ground, you know, it's not just zero, right? You just don't you don't go to zeros, you go underneath because uh yeah, you might go into debt, even if you don't, like it's still like it you know, it hurts the reputation, right? There's all these negatives. So with with uh Taya, at least I can't speak for other platforms, but we've been running pretty like evenly for a long time. We've been very e efficient with our resources because we've had so little. Um so but around that is a culture of people just being there because they want to be there, you know, and and then a lot of it is like expectations too. Like um people may agree or disagree with this, but we've turned away money many, many times because we wanted you know, the keeping the culture of Taya was more important than you know, whatever that guy wants to like it's uh give us opportunities. So um, yeah, so uh we've been doing that for four years, but um, I I think now that the culture part has been solidified, uh we're ready to move it into the next stage of like so now uh we realistically can get more funding, like substantial funding, right? And um uh I think we're better equipped to handle that sort of thing because I've seen a lot of places where an injection of liquidity or or money really destroys the culture of it. Like, you know, people have been like, oh, you know, uh it brings in people, different kinds of crowds, they're there for different reasons, and if we don't have a way to manage all that, especially with people's expectations, right? Um, a lot of times it turns into a disaster. So yeah, that's kind of where we are right now, you know. And um since we're starting from ground zero, we did pay off our debts um from last year, which is great. And so we have the only way to go is up, and and I think uh yeah, we we have enough uh checks and balances to where I feel like the money won't corrupt our mission.

Success Metrics And New Platform Features

SPEAKER_00 33:03

So yeah. So if we fast forward a few years and everything goes right for Teya, the tools you're building around it, what does success actually look like? Is it scale, culture, or something else?

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Uh ideally the culture will stay the same, but we'll have more money to do things. So uh we're working on a lot of the features that are adding is uh we're adding like uh usable features. We just added a blog system that that should go live in the next couple of days, I think. Um, we're adding like things like calendars and like wikis and uh uh on-chain messaging, which is what's coming next. Um and you know, like we're hoping the fees from that will add up enough to keep our treasury going. Right now we have enough to just keep it running bare bones, but if we have a budget to work with, and you can use the Dow to um uh allocate budgets, then then we can start thinking about like, well, maybe we can pay people for work or uh we could put on events around the world. And uh yes, it'd be nice uh if we can reach a point where we're self-sufficient and we don't have to rely on external funding because everything's just running on its own. And um, you know, just provide opportunities and and work for artists, like that really for me, that's the biggest goal. Like, I wanna I want Taya to be a place where artists can find like you know, like realistic ways to earn a living. And so excuse me. Um uh we have a long way to get there, you know. It's gonna be a long road, but we are making progress, and I think we're in the right direction. So now we're gonna see how far we can take it. It's kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

All right, Ryan. So, final question. What's something about the Tea community that someone on the outside probably wouldn't understand until they actually spend some time inside it?

Links, Thanks, And Closing

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Huh, it's interesting. Uh we check the receipts, we hold people accountable. We use the ledger for what it was intended, you know. If someone asks you a question, uh if you ask someone uh question relating to a transaction or or something related, you know, you're having an issue, they will ask you for ledger records, you know. It's kind of interesting because part of the reason that what made me like uh committed to Teya was really like I've had experiences where they asked me, yeah, they asked me for receipts, and I'm like, whoa, this feels weird. This hasn't happened anywhere else, you know. You think if you're some if you're working in the web 3 or blockchain industry, you think that if you're gonna make an argument or you know, claim claims, uh, you'll be you'll be willing to show the record of it because that's literally what the blockchain was designed to do. But if you look on Twitter or anywhere else, like people are just talking out of their ass all the time. Nothing, no receipts, no nothing. And it's just like, just trust me, bro. You know, I'm like, no, no, that's the whole reason why we're here is because we didn't want to say that anymore, you know. Yeah, yeah. So so that's the thing. Like, if you're if you wanna do stuff around Tezos, just understand that. Um, yeah, we're gonna hold you accountable. And and that's a good thing. I hope. I think so. I think I hope so. I hope people see that as a positive, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Yeah, Ryan, really appreciate you taking the time to join us and share some insight into what's been happening behind the scenes with Teya Cafe and everything you're building.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Oh, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

For everyone listening, we'll include links to Ryan's work and the Teya platforms so you can explore the projects we talked about today. Ryan, thanks again for coming on Tes Dogs Radio.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

Yeah, thank you. See you around, man.