Ric Moo, the creator of Ethers and Firefly, joins the Human Protocol Podcast to talk about his path from early software work in Canada to becoming one of the most influential open source builders in crypto. He shares how a failed Kickstarter, early Ethereum meetups, and a practical need for lighter tooling led to Ethers, then reflects on what it means to maintain critical infrastructure used by millions. This conversation also goes well beyond code. We discuss funding, open source sustainability, capture in crypto, AI’s impact on development, and the personal values that keep Rick grounded: be kind, be thankful, and touch grass. Key topics: - Ric shares his early career at Waterloo, Blackberry, Amazon, and a short-lived Kickstarter experiment that taught him how expensive fulfillment becomes once shipping and rewards are added. - How a hackathon side project and a chance visit to a Bitcoin meetup introduced him to the Ethereum community, including early conversations with Vitalik, Jeff Coleman, Anthony Di Iorio, and others. - Why he built Ethers: Web3.js felt too heavy, so he wanted a smaller, cleaner stack to power his own wallet and a lightweight JSON RPC style interface. - He recounts the early days of Ethereum development meetups, where people synced entire blockchains on laptops and deployed smart contracts live in the room. - The emotional and operational responsibility of maintaining a dependency used at massive scale, especially when releases can affect millions of downloads. - He warns about npm supply chain attacks, explains why he is cautious about publishing small changes, and describes defensive habits like isolating credentials and using bait wallets on sensitive machines. - The conversation turns to sustainability in crypto infrastructure, with Ric arguing that funding has increasingly shifted from grassroots public goods toward captured, VC aligned behavior. - A philosophy for fair systems: rules should keep changing enough that people cannot reliably min max them, because static systems get gamed. - How power concentrates, why most people are not the problem, and how asymmetric incentives let a small group distort entire systems. - Rick closes with his non negotiables: be kind, be grateful, and preserve the habit of treating even small living things with care.
Timestamps
00:00 - Welcome to the Human Protocol Podcast
00:30 - “Random developer from Canada” and Canadian humility
02:27 - Before crypto: Waterloo, Blackberry, Kindle, Amazon
03:43 - Why the Kickstarter failed and what it taught him
05:33 - The hackathon project that was not about crypto
06:27 - The Bitcoin meetup that led to Ethereum
07:42 - Why Bitcoin mattered for people without access to banking
10:12 - Learning crypto by building wallets and writing BitcoinD in Python
11:01 - The risky early Ethereum wallet and the 1 percent bug
12:17 - Why Ethers was built to be smaller than Web3.js
13:09 - Making Ethers work without syncing the whole blockchain
14:21 - When Ethers first shipped publicly
15:18 - How Gitcoin made open source funding feel real
17:09 - Why growth felt gradual instead of overnight
18:31 - Speaking at Devcon and becoming known in the ecosystem
20:21 - The burden of maintaining critical code with millions of downloads
22:42 - What he wishes he knew before public releases became high stakes
23:26 - Why API changes are painful and why older versions linger for years
26:07 - What anonymity and doxxing feel like from his side
28:08 - What he sacrificed, and why he feels net ahead overall
29:03 - Programming as a lifelong pastime
30:19 - Woodworking, DIY, and buying land in the middle of nowhere
31:48 - What happens if he stops tomorrow
34:06 - Why AI will reshape the developer market
36:19 - The frog he accidentally hit and still feels bad about
37:33 - What ecosystem capture says about crypto funding
39:33 - Hoping for a future ENS DAO reboot
41:17 - A randomized system for resisting rule gaming
44:00 - Why most people are not naturally greedy or predatory
48:21 - Culture, marketing, and why values get reinforced early
50:40 - Non negotiables: kindness and gratitude
53:45 - Final takeaways: be kind, be happy, touch grass, be less worse