We (may) finally know the identity of Ryoshi and “FREN”?
My speculation for Act 3’s Vimeo video.
Please keep in mind, these are all speculations for now since I don’t have an “Official” statement/announcement from either of the people involved or being portrayed here. But I will present you some hints and clues so you can decide for yourself.
June 13, 2022 was one hell of a day for TehGoldenOne crypto investors. This was the day that “Act 3: Initiate the Movement” had some mind blowing information in the form of a 1 minute and 54 seconds Vimeo video clip.
But before that, I would ask you to read these articles before you watch the actual video clip. This will get you set up on the references that you will find within the video.
Here’s an article from Coindesk.com, Golden.com and Uniswap.org
Here’s the Vimeo clip for TehGoldenOne’s Act 3: Initiate the movement.
https://vimeo.com/720065769
You ready? You have all of those information from those articles digested? Well, buckle up, this will be a wild ride.
The story behind how Uniswap (and potentially ShibaInu) started.
This is how I understood how Hayden Adams started in the Crypto world:
- Karl Floersch and Hayden Adams were good college friends. They both attended Stony Brook University in New York. After graduating college, they went their separate ways, Floersch became one of the “OG” Ethereum founders and Adams ended up working for Siemens as a car engineer working on computational fluid dynamics. (screenshot from Coindesk.com)
-After a year, Adams got let go from Siemens. And this is where it all started for him (screenshot from Uniswap.org).
-Adams then decided to learn how to code to give writing smart contracts a try.
Here’s the thing: Floersch was basically Adams’s mentor when it comes to writing smart contracts. Keep this in mind as this is one crucial information about Shiba Inu.
Now, we go back to the video. The first part of the video (after the Golden Productions), is a scene wherein the two actors are presumably walking out from a store, “Brooklyn Owl”.
Just this first few seconds of the video already sent us hints and clues. If it wasn’t for one of the members of the official Telegram group, I would have missed this very important clue unless I watched the video a couple of times.
The next scenes that really caught my attention were:
-when the two actors walked past a glass window of a pharmacy store, that has a piece of paper on it with a print that says “Bitcoin Accepted Here” with the Bitcoin logo.
The script of the actor on the leather jacket: “that reminds me, did you happen to read the article that I sent you last night?” really got into me.
If you read the articles that I have linked above talking about how Hayden Adams started in crypto, that script should have rung a bell. From this script, I was able to identify which actor is portraying who:
-actor with the eyeglasses and purple(?) button up shirt is portraying Hayden Adams
-actor with the leather jacket is portraying Karl Floersch
You’re probably thinking “It’s too far of a stretch, it could be just a coincidence”, right? Well, that screenshot was at 33 seconds of the video, we still have 1min. 21secs. left to dissect, so lets start digging more.
Next “key” scene for me was the shot that shows Stony Brook State University of New York front entrance (I just assumed it was the front since I am not familiar with the area). Again, going back to those articles, both attended the same university before they went to their separate paths.
Next scene was, the two actors, presumably are on a cafeteria (school grounds?), and the shot was from the top showing a round table. Both actors puts something in the table. Actor in the leather jacket puts his wireless charging case for his apple airpods, and the actor with glasses puts his MacBook on top of the table and puts a composition notebook with a magazine underneath of it. If you noticed, the cover of the composition notebook had initials on it: EF.
Initially, my brain automatically saw this as Karl Floersch’s journal of some sort about Ethereum Foundation. And you are probably scratching your head thinking “this guy is nuts”, right? Well, remember, around the time that Adams got laid off, Floersch was already working at Ethereum Foundation.
Why is the actor portraying Adams has the notebook? Well, remember, Floersch’ persuaded Adams to learn how to code after he got laid off. One can assume that, Floersch working at Ethereum Foundation, would help Adams to learn coding faster and more efficiently, hence he lent that “notebook” to Adams to give him an idea on how to write smart contracts for the Ethereum network. (screenshot below is from Uniswap.org)
And a user from the official Telegram group brought this up, most of the time, when Floersch is doing interviews or Q&A’s, he typically uses Airpods. This is probably why the actor portraying him only puts one item on the table, the charging case for his Airpods.
You want more? Well, as per the articles above, Floersch sent a link for Vitalik’s reddit post titled: Let’s run on-chain decentralized exchanges the way we run prediction markets to Adams.
What am I getting to? The next key scene was at 52secs of the video. Actor portraying Adams opens up his laptop, and then actor that portrays Floersch asks: “So did you read the article?”, again, probably referring to Vitalik’s reddit post. And of course, like I said, this video has A LOT of hints pointing back to Adams and Floersch. Did you noticed it? No? Well, looking at the laptop screen, it shows Reddit’s homepage! (not gonna lie though, my first focus was trying to count how many tabs he has currently opened)
I have brought up to a buddy of mine before that I do not believe that Ryoshi is Japanese. A member from the official Telegram group dropped a quote from Ryoshi saying:
When I saw the word “residing”, it just sealed my conclusion about Ryoshi is actually not Japanese. And from what I have so far, Adams and Floersch are not Japanese.
Anyway, there are still A LOT of hidden messages on that video that I want to dissect. Here’s one example:
Around the 1:06 mark, if you pause the video, you will see this overlay. Looks familiar? Well, its the mouth part of the Shiba Inu logo.
Why is it there? Well, I saw this as, “Ryoshi” saying that the idea of Shiba Inu started when he visited Japan. From the start of the video up to 1:06 mark, Ryoshi is basically telling the story of who are involved and how Shiba Inu project started. There’s still a lot in that video, but I might make a separate article for it. For now, these hints and Easter eggs are enough for me to conclude that the video is referring to Adams and Floersch.
Who is Ryoshi then?
Well, with all the hints and clues that we have found so far, there are two main people that we can try to connect to being Ryoshi. I am still conflicted on which one is “Fren”. I have two(2) speculations in my head.
Here’s why:
Speculation A:
If we go along with the hints that we found in the video and “Act 1” of TehGoldenOne’s website, between Hayden Adams and Karl Floersch, I can easily point out that Hayden Adams is “FREN” and Karl Floersch is “Ryoshi”.
— “He had the idea”- Adams had the idea of making a “True Decentralized Exchange”, UniSwap.
— “I had the vision, the money and the experience”- Well, between the two, we can safely assume that Floersch is more successful and saw the potential of where crypto could go, had more money than Adams, and more experience as he started with Ethereum Foundation right after college.
With that, as per TehGoldenOne’s Act 1, this would make sense.
Speculation B:
Here’s where my brain got all messed up. When speculation A was still running around in my head, something did not add up since I was following Hayden Adams’s “activity” since he got laid off (as per UniSwap.org’s blog post).
-July 6, 2017 — Adams got laid off
-October to November 2017 — Proof of concept for UniSwap smart contract and website
-November 26, 2017 — Floersch demo’s Adams proof of concept on Devcon 3, met Pascal Van Hecke
-January 2018 — Uniswap’s major smart contract issues had been resolved.
-March 2018 — Karl, Hayden and Uciel Vilchis built a fully featured demo of Uniswap
-April 3–4, 2018 — Hayden flew to South Korea for Devconomy 2018
and Karl personally introduced him to Vitalik Buterin
-May 2018 — Hayden flew to Toronto for Edcon
.
..
…
I stopped in the middle of listing all the dates and places where Adams went. Something was not right. I remember seeing something on Ryoshi’s (now deleted) medium article.
“First thing is I had a Fren that I met at DevCon last year in Osaka who has some influence in the space, we talk sometimes about Crypto philosophy and I told him the vision and he agreed to help. So he made a token contract and put half of it on UniSwap with 10ETH pair (he is successful business man so 10ETH is nothing for him) and threw away the liquidity keys so the ETH or the tokens can never be withdrawn. He then transferred the rest to me to do my part.”
DevCon 5 happened around October of 2019. It’s publicly known that both Adams and Floersch have known each other since their college days. Adams got laid off in July 6, 2017 and it was that time when he told Floersch about what happened to him. You see what I am trying to point in here? In Ryoshi’s medium article, he said he had a Fren that he met at DevCon in Osaka. This brought up a question in my head:
“Adams and Floersch have known each other prior to Devcon 5 in Osaka. Ryoshi said he met Fren in DevCon 5. Who the hell is Fren then?”
This question instantly lead my brain into possibly Vitalik Buterin being “Fren”. He fits the “I had the vision, the money and the experience” description by Ryoshi on his medium article. The problem was, again, Ryoshi said he met Fren on Devcon 2019. Floersch knows Adams since college days, Floersch started at Ethereum Foundation way before 2019. Adams met Buterin in Deconomy in South Korea in 2018 (as per his UniSwap.org blogpost). Again, Ryoshi said he met Fren in 2019. For this speculation, I was leaning towards Adams being Ryoshi because he fits the description of “having the idea”.
Of course, there’s the possibility of typo on either Ryoshi’s medium article and TehGoldenOne’s website. If it was just a simple error, my speculation “A” will fit the best with what the video have hinted.
But now, instead of an answer, I got more questions in my head. I got two different scenarios depending on which information I follow. Act 1 of TehGoldenOne’s website? Or Ryoshi’s medium article? With speculation “B”, who the hell is “Fren” then? A Fren who has MORE experience and money between Adams and Floersch?
With this new question in my head, I decided to move on to other questions since I am pretty confident, be it Adams or Floersch being the dev behind GOLD 1, I am pretty sure I am in good hands being an investor.
Now, let’s go back to the video. The very first scene where the two actors are walking out from the Brooklyn Owl store, someone from the official Telegram group quickly brought up that the Brooklyn Owl store has been closed since 2020. So I went ahead and checked, sure enough, their last day was Feb.23rd of 2020.
Well, of course, that information brought up a question in my head, and probably not just me.
“They have probably made the video before February of 2020 then. They kept the promotional video for Shiba Inu project this whole time? Why? And why release it now?”
Well, I got another speculation on what happened. Half of this will make sense, the other half, well, is a bit of a “stretch”.
So, if they made that video before Brooklyn Owl store closed down in February 23, 2020, it’s safe to assume that they shot the video after DevCon 5 in Osaka happened. If you continue the video after 1:02, it will show hints that they both flew to Japan, presumably to attend DevCon 5.
After the “video editors” finished up the video, everything was ready for releasing Shiba Inu project. What happened and they decided to not release the video then?
The problem probably was, what happened to Dogecoin after Elon Musk went to SNL and referred to Dogecoin as a “Hustle”.
Now, we all know, Ryoshi’s vision is all about “True Decentralization”. He wants us to be responsible for any financial decision that we make in the crypto world instead of blaming someone if the decision resulted in something that is below our expectations. Which I completely agree. This is why DYOR and DDD is VERY IMPORTANT. Once you’ve done those and you are still confident with your decision to invest, well, whatever happens, its on you. Of course, the crypto space changed A LOT after 2020, but DYOR and DDD is still very important.
That SNL episode aired on May 9th, 2021. Shiba Inu was released on August 1st of 2020 (as per CMC’s chart) . “Ryoshi” probably saw that, if you are making a “True Decentralized System”, putting a figure above it will have a similar fate with Dogecoin. If one entity can “dictate” what the price of a token by a mere tweet, well, that’s the opposite of Ryoshi’s vision.
Anyone can point the (potentially) promotional video for the Shiba Inu project back to them with hints that they have dropped until the 1:02 mark of the video. They probably realized this, and decided to just not release the video.
Now that Ryoshi officially stepped down from Shiba Inu project after the conflict with Shytoshi Kusama (I made a twitter thread about my speculation on why Ryoshi stepped down) , he probably decided that he can use the video to drop hints on how it all started and how his “vision” was ran by a “visionless” person who became greedy right before his very eyes.
EDIT:
This is why I love the TG community. And I completely forgot about this since there was so much information going on in my head last night when I was writing this.
A member from the official Telegram group (thanks @Peeking Duk!) brought up the possibility of the part of the vimeo video where the two actors are walking out from the Brooklyn Owl store, was done in CGI. That is another speculation that is valid. With the technology and software that we have currently, that is very, very possible! And if this is the case, my first speculation above can be completely taken out of the equation.
Again, these are all speculations. You can think one for yourself, but this is how I saw the clues and hints. All I know right now is, June 20th, 2022 will be one hell of a day. As per TehGoldenOne’s website: “Become 1”.
I can’t wait to see what the this project is all about. DAO and a DAPP will be publicly announced on that day.
Again, all are speculations for now. If I somehow “piqued” your curiosity, I would suggest that you join the official “TehGoldenOne” telegram group and read through all the pinned messages by “Nobody”. All I ask is be respectful when you’re asking a question and tag a “Chosen One”. Everyone in there are all respectful towards each other.
I made a few twitter threads about all the hints and clues that everyone found when I first got in to GOLD 1. If you are interested on those, here’s part 1, part 2 and part 3a and 3b.
I would like to apologize if this post is somewhat “messy” as this is my first time making something like this. I have never been this dedicated on any crypto project that I have invested in for the past year and a half. I will try to do it better next time. This was the most fun crypto project that I have ever invested.
If you have your own speculation/s, I would suggest that you either leave a comment or join the official Telegram group as I would love to hear those.
Well, it’s been another long one, thank you for reading through it. Again, this is NFA, DYOR and DDD, always!
P.S.
Here’s a little fun fact:
Ryoshi has been using the word “Teh”. Before Act 3’s video release, me and my buddy decided to try and understand what it actually meant. This is where my speculation about Ryoshi not being Japanese again.
If you Google Translate the word “Teh” from English to Chinese, it will give you the word “SHI”. But someone from the Telegram group, who was a native Chinese language speaker, called me out and said it was wrong. Which I kind of agreed. I chucked it to “Google probably auto-corrected the word and gave me the result”.
But, if you actually put in the word “the” properly, it will give you a different translation.
And so I told him “See? My theory about Ryoshi not being Japanese kinda moves up a little bit, doesn’t it? What are the odds of him trying to come up with a word that he can use as part of his vision?”.
Another fun fact:
On the Vimeo video, around the 1:06 mark, you will see a shrine and A LOT of Torii gates. Most of the people that I know thought that this was shot in Japan. It’s actually not. It was in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It’s called “Hinoki Land”.
Thanks to Swazzy for the Ryoshi medium article screenshots! You’re a life saver!
Well, that’s it for now! Until next time!
~Azuma