Andre Cronje interview at @ETHDubai 2023 with @GAINSAssociates

Transcript

[Music] yes [Music] I'm with the OG Andre cronier he was big in Phantom keeper Wi-Fi as well behind many G5 projects so I wanted to ask him wanted to ask you and Drake what is your advice for D5 Founders right now it's pretty erupt right I mean it's obviously a turbulent time so it's hard for a lot of people but I think the best advice to give any founder currently is don't found anything dunk launcher protocol don't build

anything don't deploy anything don't update anything if you already deployed something look away from it for a while get yourself disconnected for it because like the problem right now is but there's there's always been issues like like exploits and all of these things there's already a lot of risk and there's already a lot of stuff you worry about marriage emotions or deposits and these kinds of things but aside from this and aside from reputational risk it could potentially add wind inevitably you watch a token and it goes down a little bit and people are going to attack you and all those things also not worth it there's the psychology and stress of the user deposits and things the whole time but but even excluding all of that there's now a new proper being added of regulatory version like there's not a single current defy team in the space

that has not received a letter from some regulatory agency whereas at a questionnaire or something now you've got regulatory pressure you've got export pressure there's very little upside you're basically doing it for free at the start if you're lucky enough for a token to actually do anything I mean I guess if you have to do it do it or not um but short of that and like then your object has to be fantastic which is another thing to worry about because like most people going online isn't just opening up a pro to mail account and opening account of Twitter there's a lot more that goes into that in terms of like your footprint and where you commit and like there's a lot of stuff the best advice right now is really just just don't like if you have something to bold keep it in the drawer

um weights I think until there's there's some jurisdiction that's actually friendly to this but other than that it's it's a big turn Okay so the main constant for you is regulation right it's always going to ask you okay wait but wait for what you know what's going to change in six months in a year to make the environments better for fundus the regulations we're seeing clear steps some good some bad like EO video worked like a good exception now there's people they launched a little bit if he was the access controls you have within the stuff and another problem is because one of the other jurisdiction hasn't gotten a strong foothold the US is kind of pushing itself into laying everywhere irrespective of the other jurisdictions so like you need another jurisdiction to

almost protect you to be able to to fight against that I'm not saying competing it out of this place insane way I'm saying buy your crime rate but but right now is a good time to be building behind closed doors do you have an opinion on cbdc's do you think cbdc's can maybe help crypto because there's many going to be some kind of like wallets or everything or do you think is going to be worse but the one thing to understand is that a country's ability to control its monetary Supply is 99 of its power when you remove its ability to be able to influence its citizens via monetary policy there's very little you can actually do against that so if that's your most powerful

tool function that you have would you willingly give that up and the answer is just now so there's no way that any cvdc and I'd be there will be cbc's to some extent but it'll be centralized controlled issuing stuff it similar to like usdc or usdt or stuff like that they're they're basically cities there will be stuff like that but it won't be cbdc service you know the world it won't be decentralized one of transparency and and I do believe that it will be attempted to be used as a tool to gain control over crypto so I mean if you look at something like USB to your usdc today if if the U.S states stayed at the middle the better they could have used those to actually gain control of crypto because I mean you could control those

by virtue of the amount of liquidity and stuff you decide you're going to draw that out of the ecosystem you're destroying the ecosystem so so they had an immeasurable amount of power they could exercise by controlling these Assets Now luckily they haven't yet but presumably eventually you know they're fighting sort of thinking they can stop it right now but eventually they learn they can't stop it so we have to do something else and that's when they start trying to control it and then they realize you'll be gone before the software of the content of all the people what else can we do in there have to gonna go after the essence so I do think we're going to see what we now call cbdc's but it's not going to be anything that shows the whole PM people think it's going to be so it's not going to be a good magnet

you are famous for in your Twitter bio Cloud I testing product is this a meme to what extent is it a meme what does it mean is it some kind of like advice for Founders the original reason when I started coding decentralized finance apps and weird for any of that stuff there's money I don't have anything so I couldn't actually pay for orders I added the I test in Florida as a warning slash disclaimer to people to say hey I tested abroad I I don't have these security things there'd be dragons here please be careful and it was meant to be a a warning that hey please trade carefully and and do property delegation like I've done as

much as I can but like there's there's always limitations to how much you can do and the fact that it kind of turned into this degenerate slash yellow mentality well that's the pro just go for it just throw the stuff and chain like like it became the antithesis of like what I intended with it um so like I add a little bit of like a cringe whenever anyone brings it up because you know it was meant to be a things to be responsible and it ended up being the exact opposite what's your view on VC backing in the space in general um good old Monger show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome a VC's incentive is not decentralization it's not open source it's not any of these things it's making money for the

helpings it's profit and profit and and a lot of what real decentralization is a lot of what the real open sources is altruism altruism are Prophet it can match I think we tell ourselves it's a necessary evil I kind of wanted to disprove that by like launching here without any funding or any backing or any of that stuff like show people hey you can't do this we're just like coding your spirit condom and figuring it out of these things work and by like you know creating about the fair launch which again turn my Heights but anyway you know like talking out of nothing and then using that to like propagate your system it's a lot easier that path to walk if you have initial funding if you have an initial backup and building out your protocol and

getting users is a lot easier when you have those incentivized people I think for maybe like a Grassroots VC there could still be value the big guys you know the the Paradigm color button a16z or whatever you know it's it's about their LP thing like like they're not they're not managing the projects they are just identifying projects that can grow they're fun you're managing that will be fun that's their goal you're you're smaller guys like framework back together is a good example there were very very invested in their teams and then actually wants to see their teams grow and like that obviously had the benefit of because they put that time and energy and it's gonna show come both later in their in their LP performance anyway thank you would you have any last words any story anything a good for it

um the one the one sort of moral I was like leaving people with is something is information narrative spreads a lot faster that technology develops so there's there's a place mismatch between how fast people expect things to happen and a bit of space and how quickly it's actually out to use an example like around 2017-2018 we started talking to like institution Zone governments and these kinds of things and that didn't even respond to our emails around like 2018 2019 you know we'd get a meeting with some entry level guys by like the end of 2020 to 2021 we were actually like meeting like Island public sex and directory stuff now that's taken a step back again due

to all of the Fallout and everything it makes sense where we're not pushing up Pursuit but but the the point is you know like everyone's sort of trying to force production once right before seeing Siege everyone's trying to sort of fit the square peg into the round hole as hard as they can and like it's it's not about what you just you need to take that step back you need to understand these things are going to take so much longer than anyone thinks it's about to take um but if you have that patient it's definitely worked the right you were saying information spreads faster that real technology adoption and this is funny because I've been studying these quite of this because we actually like have a social network for means and I was thinking what if they just spent

five million out of their 200 million right they can give rents with the remaining 195. to hire 50 people to create a ton of meats and spread them on Twitter right how much bigger would they be and I think it's it's a case for it so it's maybe shorter maybe hype and so on but I think it's a bit like the VCS right maybe you need a bit of that bit of fun bit of like you know spice to it sometimes I think most of the teams are currently missing the the ball in terms of what they're spending money on because the the reason why I think then adding out those big Brands to this team is is kind of on the same level as like doing that mean thing is because it doesn't

create retention it's going to create an initial Spike like when the new protocol launches with its new token there's a spike but then the retention quickly falls off like our our churn rate and blockchain's way too high and I think trying to work on that churn is the more important thing it's it's why aren't our people sustainable more so than how do we attract a lot of people so I I'd rather you know let's let's say right now we keep five percent of D5 people in the D5 E3 system I don't push that number up to 10 of that same pool of people without any new people then trying to attract that same percentage of people externally and and like it's a lot harder to attract them in any negation I mean if I can't if I can't

fix my churn on the small base guessing you're not going to fix it on a bigger bonus so so the problem right now is more is more again the scumbag comes back to a trying to force seduction right now but like it's not fun yet but it's not really yet we've proven the concept and the concept The Sovereign but without the product we don't have it in an MVP yet so like everyone just needs to show back with it knit the base letters continue improving our performance inflative so that Dash fees income balance input can deal up people could start building more complex apps you can do more complex VM logic and then we can have new apps that allow more use up here you know it's it's equivalent to saying back when we only had IRC as a

communication Channel why didn't the whole world use IRC email you not everyone had a computer data connectivity was hard you used to understand a lot of modems and then you needed to be able to figure out where to find this app in this protocol and connect today everyone has a chat app no matter who it is because the technology has advanced to a point where we could remove all of those barriers of entry and make it that easy for adoption come forward should option all you can do is remove barriers to allow the adoption you're talking about user retention sustainability is making me think it about all these D5 farming with extremely high apy and the starts and then which obviously falls down and so everyone was spinning these Farms jumping from one to another but at the same time if you give a 10 boring

apy no one cares so I'm just wondering maybe us humans fundamentally we like the exciting stuff so how do you attract users in a sustainable way if she does make them excited with something interesting in the short and money how do you balance this out you you stop rushing the short drive like sure it's going to take long and like the the 10 one if you if you look at its active depositors and users in a year from now it'll be more than the one that did a thousand percent for the first week so like the problem is everyone Compares that that time slice right like well at each Peak it had so many deposits doesn't any of them the 10 one sure it had much less but it has now and like

that's that's been a thing that I found really frustrating with the space was often you have to fight against those unsustainable numbers because people are like oh why would I want to deposit with you I didn't deposit there for 10x more and then you're like well because it's not going to be there next week and it's unsustainable blah blah blah you know that's why a big thing with Europe for example was was deposit and forget you know because you don't need to go switch it every week because every week There's a new thing you need to go into um and and it's just it's it's that it's it's Instant versus delayed gratification everyone wants it now versus I can promise you the 10 one wins it just wins over a much longer time so so slow down to go further thank you Andre that's awesome

appreciate cheers [Music]