What did samba, mosh pits, and public blockchain infrastructure have in common? According to Gladstone Moisés Arantes Jr., quite a lot.

In a recent episode of The Future of Trust, Mat Yarger sat down with Gladstone,  Senior Advisor at BNDES, Brazil’s National Development Bank,  for a conversation that went far beyond protocols and into the messy, deeply human terrain of trust: how it was formed, how it was broken, and why the systems we're building today must be designed to work even when that trust is missing.

A Personal Blueprint for Trust

Gladstone didn’t grow up imagining he'd one day be leading one of Latin America’s most ambitious public blockchain initiatives. But from a young age in the suburbs of Rio, he developed a scientist’s curiosity, and a deep appreciation for the quiet structures that held things together. His parents, especially his father, shaped his early understanding of trust through dialogue and example, teaching him that conflict could be resolved without control,  through words, not force. A lesson that, if taught in every household, might have left our current global context looking very different.

It was this belief in negotiated trust that later formed the foundation of his professional work.

From Fragile Contexts to Trustless Infrastructure

Brazil, as Gladstone explained, never lacked intelligence, resources, or talent. What it often lacked was trust, not just in individuals or institutions, but in the underlying systems that governed public life. And that, he argued, was one of the most pressing structural issues in any developing society. “The most scarce resource in Brazil,” he said, “is not money or people,  it’s trust.”

That gap was the driving force behind the creation of the Brazil Blockchain Network (RBB): a public-permissioned blockchain designed to rebuild that missing trust layer, not by demanding blind faith in institutions, but by building systems where verifiability replaced belief.

Trustless Trust: A New Operating Layer

One of the more striking tensions in the conversation came from Gladstone himself: someone who described being deeply trusting, yet dedicated his work to building so-called “trustless” systems. At first glance, it seemed like a contradiction. But as he explained, trustless didn’t mean untrustworthy,  it meant creating systems where trust in any one person or institution wasn’t necessary, because the system itself could be verified independently.

“Trustless trust,” he explained, “is trusting without needing to trust someone. It’s trust built into the system itself.”

It was a radical idea, but not an abstract one. In a society where citizens might distrust public institutions due to historical injustice or political instability, blockchain became more than a technical upgrade,  it became a new social contract.

Mosh Pits, Samba, and System Design

One of the episode’s most unexpected but insightful analogies came from Gladstone’s experience at rock concerts. A mosh pit, he noted, looked chaotic from the outside,  but it worked because of unwritten, mutually understood rules. If someone fell, others picked them up. There was order in the disorder. The same, he suggested, was true of blockchains. Systems with integrity could work without centralized control if the incentives and structures were right.

It was a dynamic Gladstone also saw in samba circles,  informal, spontaneous, but grounded in rhythm and mutual awareness. In both cases, collective trust emerged not through control, but through shared participation.

This mix of cultural awareness and system-level thinking made Gladstone’s work especially relevant, not just to Brazil, but to global conversations about institutional reform, AI integration, and the future of governance.

Crypto Enlightenment and the Road Ahead

The idea of a “crypto enlightenment”,  or perhaps more accurately, a post-enlightenment for the digital age, emerged as a recurring theme. If the original Enlightenment promised progress through reason and institutions, this next chapter might require building trust-minimized systems that didn’t rely on belief in people at all.

It wasn’t just a philosophical stance. With COP30 coming to Brazil in 2025 and growing interest in verifiable climate finance, Gladstone saw blockchain’s role expanding,  particularly in ensuring that carbon credits and sustainability claims were based on tamper-proof data, not marketing promises. Which aligns completely with our vision at Demia. 

In a world polarized by ideology and paralyzed by doubt, The Future of Trust asked: can we still agree on something? Gladstone’s answer was clear, we could. But only if we built systems designed for verifiability, not persuasion.

“Don’t put me in a box,” he said at the end of the conversation. “I chose not to be simple. And that’s one of the reasons I’m building what I’m building.”

We started by asking what mosh pits and public blockchain infrastructure have in common, and we hope by now, it’s clear: all of them rely on shared rules, mutual trust, and systems that don’t fall apart when tested.

This episode was a reminder that trust wasn’t just a human virtue,  it was a design principle. And if we wanted to build systems that lasted, we needed to treat it like infrastructure.

🎧 The episode is now live wherever you get your podcasts. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2FU96p6ArREGZvtZR2o4dE?si=VTPQuKhVTTiPDPm4ZNBpiQ