The Anonymous Alchemist: Scoopy Trooples | Alchemix

Transcript

Scooby, welcome to the Human Protocol podcast. Great to have you here. >> Oh, well, thank you for having me on. My pleasure. >> I'm glad we're finally getting to do this. Like, we were chatting um before we pressed record, navigating multiple time zones to make this happen. So, I'm finally I'm glad that we're finally able to do it at a time that isn't too bad for you. Yeah, I mean it's it's never really a great time when you're in different time zones than the rest of the world. You know, this is something that I have to deal with with my with my team. We're we're global. We have people spread out

across the world. And you know, every time we meet up or, you know, have to sync and do voice calls, somebody's going to get the short end of the stick. So, right now it's my turn. Well, I really appreciate it and so will our listeners. Okay, so quick kind of short spiel of why this podcast exists. It exists to look at the personal side of building all of the big things that are happening in this ecosystem. I'm very much interested in the human arc in the human journey and really what building in this space actually means or it costs and how you know it shapes us

as humans as we continue doing it and obviously as we have been doing it for a while. Um, the >> research about you. I know that you had a very stable career in education and then found Bitcoin around 2016 and then decided to essentially teach yourself to code with no kind of idea. Okay, is this going to lead to anything? Is this going to actually do much? And I want to know

what that journey was like in your own words. >> Yeah, so I was in education for a while. Well, I was a I was a teacher and I had been doing it for a number of years and it was something I really like, you know, loved doing at first. You know, I loved being in the classroom. I loved interacting with students. I loved having that that light bulb moment go off in their heads and and connecting with them. And, you know, I always, you know, thought I was going to be, you know, like one of the good teachers and everything like that. And I really poured my heart and soul into teaching.

And you know, as the years, you know, kind of dragged on as a teacher, they it started getting harder and harder because, you know, I would devote myself so much to that. I'd be working 60 70 hours a week. Week after week, I, you know, always had a lot of, you know, lessons to prepare for. I, you know, I was like, you know, kind of a hard teacher. I gave a lot of assignments. And then that also means a lot of grading. And I really, you know, put a lot of care into my lesson planning, which was a lot of time to do as well.

And I found that with the planning time I had at the job, that I was just working a lot. You know, I'd get to the school at 5:30, I wouldn't leave until 5:30. And then I'd still have more work to do on the weekends. And, you know, I couldn't live with myself not doing a great job as a teacher. Um, so I couldn't really just phone it in. And whenever I did that, you know, like because I was burnt out or I was tired, I ended up having more difficult lessons with classroom behavior and stuff like that because my lessons weren't as engaging. And so it eventually it made me start feeling like I was trapped, like this is my life. This is what I am resigned to. I'm either going to have

to, you know, de 110% of my heart and soul to this and barely have my head above water or I'm going to phone it in and not be able to live with myself. And those were two choices that just, you know, left me nowhere to go. It felt like I was trapped. And I just, you know, you know, after a couple years of feeling this way, I couldn't take it anymore. It also coincided with me getting into crypto um yeah in 2016 and I was there for the entire 2016 2017 bull run and I managed to get some pretty good exits at that time. So my savings you know multiplied you know

many many times and that gave me a bit of a cushion to allow me to quit teaching and then kind of reassess what I wanted to do from there. whether that was taking a break from it and coming back or do something else. And then in early 2000 I started playing around with different DAPs on Ethereum. And this is my first time using MetaMask, you know, interacting with, you know, potentially shady or suspicious looking apps. I wasn't used to at all using really weird terminology and really clunky flows. But as I was using these apps, it really started to peique my curiosity, really started to

make me think, what else can you do with this? And so I really went down the, you know, the Ethereum smart contract, you know, you know, rabbit hole >> and and I was just like, this is what I want to do. This is exactly what I want to do. I want to be, you know, helping to create and build DAPs. And so at that point I decided that you know I if I wanted to be a builder then I had to be able to build and so I had to teach myself coding at that time and so I did a lot of self-eing I did some smaller boot camps as well and after you know a couple of years I had developed you know kind of full stackability front end back

end and I was kind of teaching myself some you know solidity for that's the programming language for Ethereum applications and and all the while I, you know, started, you know, forming a little bit of a group that, you know, we'd be hanging out with in these various different DAP discords and we would, you know, start thinking of our own ideas and we'd be sharing and spitballing ideas and brainstorming until eventually that led us to, you know, a handful of us to co-found Alchemics together. Mhm. >> Did you ever do any hackathons or anything like that? Because that seems to be a journey that some self-taught obviously solidity programmers took.

>> Yeah. So like by the time that like my skills were actually getting good enough where I was like you know building apps and things like that that was like like just like around 2020 is when I started getting like you know pretty good and then the whole world shut down and it was co >> so no option. >> Yeah. And there was yeah not a lot of traveling going on then you know and so we were all cooped up in our houses with nothing else better to do. And that's why we we built and launched a DeFi protocol.

>> Yep. Very >> like what else are we going to do with our time >> from the depths of co and it it was the season I mean it was the DeFi season around 2020 2021. >> Yes, it was a very exciting time. You know that that time spent early in the DAP scene >> really kind of made me early to a lot of things. I was using Makerdo, Uniswap, and Compound back in 2018 when their V1s all launched. Going through the very painful process of taking out a Maker Dow die alone at the time with the the most user unfriendly process ever. I had to read like, you know, guides just to

figure out how to do it. I feel, look, I feel that baptism of fire for a lot of us that early was actually incredibly, you know, not necessarily even testing, but a true testament to how committed we were to explore what was being built. >> Yeah, it was exciting cuz like none of this stuff existed at the time. the fact that I could, you know, put my, you know, ETH into this contract and then mint, you know, the die stable coin and then I could pair that with ETH in the unis swap uh protocol and then earn fees by being an LP or I could borrow D from

Acredal then put it in compound and earn a higher interest rate doing that. there there were these like kind of novel things that that started appearing and then like in 2019 I started getting into synthetics and then and then when they were having some issues with with pegging their their stable coin SUSD they they were one of the first early adopters of Curve which then introduced me to Curve Finance and their stable LP pairs. And so then I got me early to curve which was you know very well rewarded for being early to curve and all these things kind of compounded and you know

and then you know DeFi summer happened and you know for people who are around at the time it was a very kind of magical thing especially since the 2018 and 19 bare market was very brutal for ETH holders all all crypto people in but you know especially ETH cuz you know went from 1,500 down to like 80 bucks and then >> we remember that. >> Yeah. And I remember I I still cuz I was like in the weeds of it. I'm like we're we're building all these really cool things like this is the only ecosystem where like these organic things are happening and you know these apps are actually working and people are using them even though it was a small cohort

at the time. And I I had also sold my house in in 20 the end of 2018. >> And I I just used that to buy up a bunch of ETH at that time, like the remaining equity from it. And so I was buying it, you know, near the bottoms. And so for that to happen and then two years later for ETH to, you know, fly through the roof was, you know, quite the, you know, I felt very vindicated with my convictions, you know.

Yes, that will definitely vindicate you on many many levels and also to your point really enable you to focus on building right having made that decision between the let's say stable option of that wasn't necessarily rewarding anymore but then being able to co-ound a project in the depth of co and have that security to a to a degree to be able to focus on that rather than worrying. >> Yeah, I I credit my wife for this. You know, I was always kind of like the the conservative type where I just wanted something stable and then she was, you know, encouraging me to get involved in investing and that's what led me to go

down the Bitcoin rabbit hole in 2016. And I was like, I don't know about this thing. It could go to zero. And she's like, just do it. It sounds so cool. And I'm like, all right. My wife is the DJ and I'm not. So, she helped me take the risks that, you know, >> really changed my life. Yeah. >> There we go. Credit to your wife. We should have her on the podcast. >> She would be a riot. >> Okay. So, that's basically a little bit about how you got in and how you started building. I'm also before we loop back down to back around to that I want to know the name. So the name that you have

been known for the past what like 6 years 7 years since we've known you publicly let's say it's a Dungeons and Dragons character. You also in your Twitter bio, you reside in the mortal plane, so that's also a D&D reference. Tell me a little bit about how you picked it, why you stuck to it, and also are there elements of that particular character that I'm not very familiar with that kind of have shaped your persona, and have you adopted any of those characteristics? Personally, >> this this is really not that deep. One

of my friends, he was doing just a oneshot campaign, running some just one day we had off and so I had like 30 minutes to come up with a character and make a character sheet and it was just like I don't know, let's just go with Scoopy Trooples. That sounds like a funny name. And that's what I put down on the paper. And that was like a it was a wizard class. And so yeah, I just did that. And then when I signed up for for Twitter, you know, a while back and >> you know, I you know, back then, you know, nobody, you know, really showed their face. Everyone was a pseudo, you know, pseudonym, an anonymous character online. So I was just like, which one

should I use? and and so I just chose that one cuz you know I wanted it to be fairly anonymous and I didn't want to use any of my other tags that like were on other you know you know online platforms that I was on so that those couldn't be easily linked back to me cuz other people knew me in real life from those platforms and so I just on a whim just went with that that obscure you know oneoff D and D character that I made and you know I was just this little reply guy on Twitter until like you know I was just posting about DeFi stuff you know back when it was very novel new nobody didn't know anything about it and I was in a unique position to explain things at the time

so it would be a mix of being a reply guy explaining DeFi stuff and posting and you know like that that's kind of still my Twitter strategy as well I just you know an idea pops up in my head I'll I'll put it down on Twitter a lot of times that'll come from just organic group chats like we we'll be just hanging out in group chats and then one thing will lead to another there. I'm like that'll make a good Twitter post and then you know it gives me an idea and I post it and uh that's really it. And then I just like interacting with people that I enjoy on Twitter and and you know also talking about my project when we have new things that are coming out or you know smart ways you

can use it. So that's that's all. And then when chemics came out, it blew up and then the account blew up with it as well. >> So then obviously just stick to that even though it doesn't have any kind of super deep connotations, but I kind of like it. Just take it. >> It's too late to change it now. >> It's too late to change it now for sure. No, no, we can't do that. Tell me about I mean obviously the idea of being anonymous at the start. what made you kind of stick to it? I mean, protection, etc., etc., but at the same time, did it cost you anything whilst you were

building Alchemix? And to your point, when it started blowing up and when it started getting interest and let's say you're moving millions of dollars, etc., etc., people are asking you on podcasts, did it ever cost you anything? Like, was it ever a hindrance? >> I don't think it was ever a hindrance. The only thing that it might have held me back in is doing in-person conferences. >> Okay. >> The only one that I did where that was recorded, it was at the Osaka World Expo, and I wore a kitune like fox mask during that that presentation to kind of protect my my identity for that one.

But the the main reason I do it is, you know, for personal protection, protection for my family, you know, like there's been, you know, especially over the past few years, we've seen a dramatic rise in targeting of individuals in the crypto space with, you know, ranch attacks and hostage, you know, situations. There was a very prominent ETH account, like ETH Maxi account, JRG. he got, you know, taken like hostage and was beaten and, you know, severely injured and he had his crypto stolen from him that way. and you know and there's countless things especially like throughout Europe when you factor in you know Ledger and

Treasure leaking their customer list and you know addresses and the Coinbase you know hack leaking the customer list you know or painting a target on your back where like if you're just like a normal you know person like who's assumed to be rich in the public's eyes they're going to have a hard time getting at your assets cuz they're like inside of a bank or you know some other hard thing but for people in crypto, it's like, you know, it's one wallet away and sometimes they'll have, you know, several thousand dollars, if not more, just on their phone, you know, and potentially a lot more back at home on a hardware wallet as well. So, I just think that when you are your own bank that you have to take care of yourself, you know, more so

than, you know, the average person does. And I don't want to have to pay for a bodyguard and a security detail or anything like that. I don't want to expose my family to any of the risk that I'm taking on as well. >> And that's a very very fair point. And you know the escalation of incidents like that particularly in the past year or so like you mentioned in Europe as well that is something very real. And to your point, when you're your own bank, there's implications that that comes with.

>> But like I don't Yeah, it hasn't really hindered anything even when we were raising. >> Yes. >> You know, I was a >> I was going to ask about that. >> I was a partner in Egirl Capital for a while. Um, it's kind of wound down for the most part, but you know, one of the more prominent people in crypto Twitter, the CL, the the cat CL 207, he was in there and he was able to make introductions to lots of different like, you know, funds and stuff like that and vouched for me. So, it was that kind of just like proof of like I, you know, my network that I was able to to leverage.

So like, you know, other than like not having in-person, you know, you know, appearances like at conferences and stuff like that, you know, like that's the only hindrance I think there has been for for being anonymous. I I selectively reveal who I am to people when I do go to conferences. You know, it's like that meme like I'm standing in the corner. It's like they don't know I'm Scoopy Trooples. But >> okay, so there's definite chances that people have been in rooms with you. >> Yeah, a number of people know my face.

They'll be able to recognize me and and stuff like that, but you know, my my like especially just don't want to keep that off the internet and have, you know, strangers know who I am because that that's Yeah, >> it's totally fair. And again, to your point, it hasn't really hindered you in any way, particularly from a business perspective. And then that's excellent. >> Yeah. Our team didn't even know each other's faces because everyone on our team was also pseudo anonymous >> until we we we had >> Yeah, we had an offsite and we got together and then it was like you're Gorgie, you're a Scooby, you're a koala.

It's like what? >> Love that though. the big unveiling when was this like how many years into the project >> or >> that was two years into the project that we all met each other face to face for the first time. So it was it was a very you know jubilant moment you know to finally put you know faces to the names and it >> I don't know that there's many other projects that their first offsite is also hey that's what you look like amazing now let's talk strategy >> no like let's get some beers >> now that we can look into each other's

Very cool. Okay. So, with the the growth of the team, so obviously you co-ounded it in 2021 or released it in 2021 cuz I remember getting on it as soon as it came out. >> Oh, nice. Um, yeah, we released it in February 2021, but we got the project started off in it was like June of 2020 and we had a couple iterations that we were like playing around with before we settled on Alchemics, the both the, you know, the overall, you know, idea for it, how it would work, and the name for it. That was in in August of 2020. And

then we were just heads down building until we were ready to launch. >> So how many of you were there at the start? >> There was five of us at the start and I was the only one who knew how to do front-end development of the five. So I was thrust as my first major project >> as a fledgling developer to make the front end for Alchemics V1. >> It looked very good if I remember correctly. What was that feeling like and that responsibility? It was definitely a learning curve because every app I'd been making before that was like a web two using like a yes, >> you know, a SQL server on the back end and and things like that. And then, you

know, suddenly having to figure out how to connect a wallet to the website and how to, you know, parse the AIS and all this other technical stuff that goes into it. it, you know, the tooling wasn't nearly as good back then as it is now. And it it was very frustrating. Things that would take me a couple hours today took me like more than a week back then to to figure out. Uh it's just, you know, an exercise of like, why isn't this working? I must try something else.

And then finally, I get it working. I have no idea why it's working, but it's working. Just leave it alone. Don't touch it. Was there any moment as this was happening that you were like I should have stuck with teaching >> or no? >> I don't think so. Like you know my thought, you know, it was so exciting >> and you know I really was getting hyped for what we were building. Um I didn't think it was going to ever get as big as it did. I you know back when we were developing it like you know you know the biggest protocols were like sitting at around like you know 5 to10 million in TVL. So I'm like hey if we can get a couple million in TVL then that that'll

be really cool. And then, you know, like I guess the launching when we did and it just being so novel and getting a lot of attention at first, it we ended up getting like over 500 million in TVL at one point and >> in this case of how long? >> That was like within like two months of launching. >> Whoa. >> And just that was nerve-wracking in its own way. >> Yeah. you know, because you know, all of a sudden it was hit with this overwhelming success. You know, the the the token was doing well.

>> Mhm. >> I mean, we were we had a commitment not to to sell it during that time when it was doing well. And but more importantly, we had so much, you know, being secured by our contracts that it kept me up at night. I was really worried something could go wrong, you know, something would go wrong. And you know, I remember, you know, just like kind of like begging Samson, who's like, you know, legendary, you know, security researchers, like just please take a look at the code. Like, I'm having trouble sleeping at night. And then getting scolded by other security researchers about you're too, you know, haphazard and reckless. And then he's just like, I I'll help you out. And he he reviewed it. And he's like, okay, it looks good to me. And you

know we we ended up you know you know we got we got funded after we launched. >> Yes. >> And we used a lot of that for for auditing and stuff like that as well. So we were able to cuz we we launched just you know as hobbyist and thinking okay this would be cool. Let's just you know do this or whatever. And it got way bigger than we ever expected. And >> so I remember like early in the discord it's like hey guys don't put in any more than you're willing to lose. like saying that so many times to people back then and then the money just kept on pouring in despite me kind of like trying to tell people don't do that but now I wish we they would pour in because our our security practices are I think very

much top tier and you know we really take it seriously >> of course but I mean and circling back to not only the success in two months but the level of respons responsibility that you guys just immediately had to an x degree overnight. Like was anybody sleeping? Was it still the five of you? Right. Cuz >> we had brought in like a couple people at that time and I was not sleeping a lot between the the stress of worrying about it, between the extreme ego trip that I was going through at the time and all that stuff like you know it was just

you know, I was going on podcast. I was always interacting in the discord. We were, you know, like mad scientists in our own dev discord, you know, >> okay. >> And like, you know, there's just a lot going on. It was moving fast. There's, you know, tons of energy and like I I didn't Yeah. like from the time from like our buildup to launch through launch and after that like it had been probably about like six or seven months before I had like a proper like rest like it was just heads down go go go go go for a while and and then I started feeling a little bit of the pressure a little bit of the you know the stuff starts swelling up within me at that

point. >> Okay. So, does that then kind of start cuz you've been incredibly public about this about the burnout and what and how that kind of impacted you. I want to know was that kind of the beginning of it and then it started getting bubbling bubbling bubbling until it kind of reached a breaking point or how did that journey kind of go? Because to your point you were suddenly incredibly successful overnight. So much money coming into this new project that you guys just started as a hobby. Fingers crossed you got 2 million and suddenly

overnight you were like famous on podcasts also worrying and being super concerned about the security set. I want to know what what was that like personally and in your head? >> I mean I was able to manage that. I've I'm pretty chill and down to earth person. What what really ended up getting to me was the internal drama between team members. You know there's of the five co-founders there's only me and one other left and the other ones well the couple of them we had you know one of them was an amicical and fine departure that the other two were you know quite you know you know people had disagreements their egos were also

inflated you know and you know everyone you know we we just you know weren't seeing eye to eye on the future direction or where we wanted to go. Some people were, you know, you know, not holding up their end of the bargain as as far as like acceptable use of the token. Like like one of the like, you know, like team members took out >> like a like a a loan on on was it Rari Capital which was like this permissionless list like lending market and he ended up like buying like like you know very expensive house with that using his his his tokens as collateral.

I was like, "Yo, you're not supposed to do that." And we had squables about that. And and this was also in the time when Garrett Gensler was, you know, breathing down DeFi's neck. >> And one of the guys was always pushing marketing material that was like very, you know, suspect. It's like, "No, we can't say that." And so we had like lots of like these kind of internal battles going on both on the dev side and on the marketing side and also just kind of just code of conduct side of things. And that all like kind of came to a tea by the end of 2021 and saw two of those guys uh leave the project. And you know, one of them was like, you know, one of the like devs who like one of the two

Solidity devs was one of the ones who left. And losing him was tough because we had been friends for a while, but our feelings were pretty sour towards each other after everything went down. And I think that's what was like the first like serious blow to me cuz that that stayed with me for a while and you know I felt bad about it. I had a hard time processing it. Ultimately, we're able to, you know, replace, you know, the talent and get, I mean, get like, you know, the the talent that we lost back and new people and stuff like that. And, you know, things are relatively patched up, but they're not like we're we're on speaking terms, but we're not like buddy buddy like we used to be. And, you know, I don't know if it could ever go back. I

don't know if I really wanted to go back, but at the time, it really did upset me. >> Yeah. I mean, to your point, it's not just losing a business partner or a co-founder. It's losing a friend through >> what you guys created together. >> Yes, it it was definitely, you know, not the best departure how it all went down. And, you know, if I had a crystal ball, I knew what was going to happen. I would have done different, you know, done stuff differently and managed things differently, you know, but, you know, I wasn't like the guy. I was one of the guys, you know, and maybe that that lack of clear command structure and hierarchy was problematic as well because there

wasn't one person to settle the scores. We were, you know, five equal heads. And, you know, we didn't always control the body the same way that it should have been controlled. So, you know, if I could go back in time and do things differently, you know, of course, you know, I could I would. But, you know, that's the that's, you know, why they call it experience and wisdom, you know. You have to you have to have it and you have to grow from it. And I would never have known those things without having to go through it, you know, firsthand, >> of course. And they say actually intelligence, uh, you can have theoretical exper intelligence from theoretical text or knowledge, but then the wisdom comes from experience, right?

That's >> kind of the difference between the two. >> What do you feel you've learned? Mhm. >> from that experience if you were because again to your point we can't really go back the rear view mirror that's why it's smaller than the windshield but if you what would be the one thing that you learned from that experience >> just you know definitely be clear about everyone's roles and expectations that that you know some hierarchy And division of responsibilities in that regard. And chain of command is important even when you are trying to be

egalitarian. And that you know you know power hates a vacuum. And so whenever it's not clear someone's going to try to snatch it. And if it remains you know ambiguous then people are going to get confused and hurt if there is no clear structure because there's no one to you know properly take responsibility for things. It'll end in a lot of fingerpointing and a lot of discord between the you know people in the group if there you know isn't you know a clear leader or leadership in general like and if Yeah. So you gota, you know, really have everyone coordinated and sometimes

that that requires a coordinator to do that. >> I mean, it's it's one of the things that >> as an ecosystem, I think we've kind of learned the hard way, haven't we? of this whole very romantic idea that everybody can be equal within dows and everybody will do their thing exactly as they should or the desired outcome requires but the reality is very different. >> Yeah. And I think there's a happy medium, you know, like I I would consider myself the the, you know, the leader at this point, but I also, you know, like I'm like not I'm more the type of person where I might set the

agenda. I might, you know, you know, set the vision and things like that. But when people have ideas, they have objections, they have arguments, I listen before I, you know, state my case and I try to take in their opinions and their perspectives because I think, you know, I don't know everything. Um, and I am very much prone to having errors and judgment, you know, or even my own theories about how things might work. And you know by including people and you know you know allowing them to take ownership of what they do and I I find like not only improves my thinking and the overall or you know direction of the organization but then it gives everyone

else like kind of ownership of things. It gives them motivation if they have that sense of ownership over things. So it's like okay this is what you want to do. Okay, then you're going to lead this this objective and we'll see how it goes. And you know, sometimes this is against my gut judgment and you know, we'll give them a little bit, you know, of a leash and see how things goes. And you know, other times I feel like my gut is too strong to be overruled and that's when I'll, you know, pull rank, but I try not to do that often. >> Okay. Do you feel your background in education helps with this at all?

I I definitely think it helps me be a communicator and and a planner. I have the ability to explain things simply and make it digestible for people. And I think teaching definitely helped hone that skill. Like I don't get nervous when I have to do public speaking or go on podcasts or anything like that because I've conquered that by being a teacher and being in front of, you know, 30 unruly kids every single day for several years. and >> definitely do it. >> So it's like yeah so like you know I'm cool as a cucumber whenever I have to do anything like involving you know public speaking or presentations or anything like that and I think you know being

able to explain things like complex things in a way that's digestible for people who might not be as technical is it's it's a superpower in its own way too. Well, the amount of times we have that whole meme of explain it like I'm a 5-year-old, right? Or explain it to your grandma, etc., etc. And to your point, there is a very powerful piece in being able to explain things simply and concisely. >> Yeah. The uh physicist uh Richard Feman said, "If you can't explain a concept to a 5-year-old, then you don't fully understand it." And I I really do believe that. Yeah.

You also get a lot of arguments that are or rather let's say viewpoints that are expoused over lines and lines of text and then you kind of look at that and go I don't think you actually know the point or know what you're trying to say >> really. I mean we have that in our ecosystem a lot. >> Yeah. I mean that that happens to me too sometimes where like I'll read what I wrote down and just like what what is this like come back like a month later it's like I could have phrased that differently.

>> I guess yes we are but human all of us. >> Yes. >> And we are on this podcast for that very reason. I'm going to pull the the burnout thread a little bit more because you also said that you got to the point and not just obviously you had the internal drama but then you had a lot of stuff happening on Twitter and people dunking and things like that and you said that you really it really made you self censor and in an effort to be a good ambassador for the project and obviously for the team that was growing and changing and shaping and continuing to grow the project. What was that like?

Cuz that went on for a good few years and then you shut off your DMs. What that like? >> Well, you know, once the, you know, post FTX bare market hit, >> you know, that that like really kind of took the wind out of our sales. you know, tokens been, you know, down in the dumps, you know, since then. And there would be a lot of angry investors and traders who, you know, you know, be complaining all the time on Twitter. And then if I ever called someone out or said anything snarky on on Twitter, people would then just, you know, come at me really hard and call me a scammer,

accuse me of being the one dumping the price and stuff like that when it's very much the opposite. I was the where the yield was coming from you know I still have like all my tokens and and stuff and you know other than the salary I get from you know being on the team and you know contributing you know I haven't realized any of the tokens that you know like sold the tokens you know other than when we first did our our first raise that was really the only time I did any you know selling of it and you know like it just gets to the point where like Twitter used to be like a fun place for me to kind of put my ideas out to vent, to kind of be this unfiltered version of myself, which is

what my Twitter started out being. And then as the the project started doing worse, you know, in terms of both TVL cuz our V2, you know, it, you know, did not meet our expectations and, you know, it took us like a good while to start thinking of ideas how we could make the next version that would fix the the problems that were wrong with V2. >> Yeah. And you know, it just kind of I guess it kind of sapped my mojo, my you know, my kind of, you know, sense of being able to say whatever I wanted to on Twitter because if I did then there would be, you know, these people just, you know, and some of it was annoying because there were other people who were like,

you know, big in in CT who would also kind of gang up on me at times and it's just sort of like, man, this kind of sucks. And so it it you know it made it less enjoyable to be a part of you know the crypto community paired with you know V2 not doing as well as we would have liked and the token you know as well like all those things just kind of started wearing down on me. I felt like the V2 product wasn't something I was terribly proud of. And so I had a hard time even going around and talking about it because I wouldn't say I was ashamed of it, but I wasn't as I wasn't proud. I didn't feel like I could go around with swagger and talk

about it and in an excited way. And if I can't be that authentic self, then you know I, you know, have very little motivation to do it then. Well, it feels like such an effort, right? Because you're contradicting what you're feeling on the inside and putting on a show. And I think some people can do it well. I personally can't do it very well. And I think there has to be a congruence between the outer and the inner otherwise for me to your point there's no authenticity and there's no real matchup. And that can be very stressful to also pretend that you're some feeling in somewhat way that you're not or are something that you're not.

>> Yeah. I'd say also the the direction that crypto took in like 2024 also like just the whole memecoin pump fund, you know, direction of crypto I thought was very cynical and very, you know, extractive and net negative for the space. And I I kind of, you know, didn't want to associate myself with that side of crypto. But as that became a larger and larger and larger part of crypto, it became harder and harder to distance yourself from that. So it was almost just like, man, like what do I tell people? Do I tell people I work in crypto or do I tell people I worked in fintech? You know, because technically I do financial technology. So like, you know, people ask me what I do for a

living, I work in fintech. And just be very vague about it. Okay. >> Yeah. And so like you know now I I you know I say I work in decentralized finance. I feel you know I'm feeling like we're we're coming out of it. I'm very proud of V3 and what we've built. It has been growing. So we have reversed the the negative you know flows that that V2 was slowly kind of moving towards. So things are heading back in the right direction. I'm feeling more optimistic. the team is everyone gets along great. We're we're really like, you know, productive, working well together. No drama anymore whatsoever.

And so, you know, like after we launched F3, that was like a very big herculean effort. And and that did burn me out a little bit. And I was going through some things in my personal life and and that kind of all coincided together. And I had a little I had to take a little break this summer. And then when I got back from my break, I've just been feeling great. I've been, you know, it's been, you know, a joy coming to work and working on things. And, you know, just the way that everyone's working together and we have plans for expansion and plans to, you know, continually improve the protocol. We have like our own internal roadmap and so we have lots of things to look forward to going forward,

you know. So, you know, things are definitely really good. I'm feeling good. And, you know, one thing that one other major thing that happened was what was it 3 years ago? >> Okay. >> Curve finance. They're they got hacked. >> Well, when you mentioned Curve, I was waiting for the moment where that >> Yeah. They got >> Yes. >> And that was that was that was a major thing that that was like a serious blow. >> Yes. I had actually just moved countries to like a new place.

>> Okay. >> And it was the it was literally got off the plane and got to my hotel and fell asleep and within an hour of me falling asleep, everything went down. So I woke up to fires in our Discord and our community and on Twitter. I'm just like, "No, what happened?" And then it was like, you know, we had to negotiate with the the hacker and, you know, we had we played the we had the strategy to play with it and it was to talk to him and things like that. And we ended up being able to get everything he took back.

>> Yeah. Cuz you never actually lost any user money, have you? Well, the LPS in curve did lose some because when he when he did it, he drained the ETH in the pool, right? >> And he left the the synthetic token, we have Al E in the pool. And then the way that the curve pools work is like if it's severely imbalanced, then the side that has a lot more becomes a lot cheaper. And if you have like 0.1 ETH versus like 10,000 AL E >> on the other side, that means AL ETH is basically free.

>> And then so people, you know, scooped that up, embedded it to different pools. The the block when that drain happened had a 500me fee that they earned on it. >> Okay. >> Because of that feast and Coinbase got it. And no, they did not offer to give us that 500 in in fees that they earned off of that that that block. No, they did not. Despite us asking for it very nicely and you know, but but Curve did help out with that recompensation. We were able to get about 80% of the value back through their recompensation fund.

So LPS ended up losing it took about was about 10 15% on their positions because we were also redistributed the the ETH that we recovered from them uh from the hacker and and that was a whole ordeal getting it back from the hacker and that was like this very intense essentially hostage negotiation and I was the point man of that after I had just moved to a new place I had no furniture so as I was shopping for furniture I was carefully crafting messages to you and working with a a team that we had assembled that came from other people in in the ecosystem that eventually became part of the SEAL team 911.

>> Yeah. >> And stuff like that. So, there's a lot of people in crypto that that helped us to get those funds back. And, you know, one thing led to another and we were able to find out who the guy was. And then once we we had negotiated, you know, very stealthily, like labeling it as a a white hat bounty and letting him keep 20%. And after we got the 80%, we're like, "We know who you are." And we pinged him on every single one of his social medias all across the internet. And he's like he's like and then like 5 minutes later the rest was sent and he deleted everything. It's just like Yeah.

So, >> wow. >> Yeah. We know who you are. Send us the rest back or we're going to report you to the authorities. Yeah. >> So, how long did this process take? How long did was this war room situation happening hostage? >> It was a little bit over two weeks >> back and forth with him. He was taunting us on Ether Scan, but then that also clued us into who he was as well cuz people, you know, they leave clues >> and especially if you had the SEAL team on well what then became the SEAL team on your side. I'm sure they were able to pinpoint a lot. They're very good at

doing that. >> Oh, yes. We were very fortunate to have the support of the wider, you know, Ethereum community to help us through that really hard time. Without that, we would be dead. Yeah. The project would be over. So, thanks to them, we're we're still kicking. Uh, but that that whole experience after we got the money back, I went out, celebrated with some drinks and and, you know, thought everything was good. And then I just literally like just crashed and went into a deep hole for several months after that. Like I think I never got diagnosed, but I think I had some form of PTSD from that whole experience.

>> Wow. >> And that took a lot out of me. And you know, I'd say I'm still living with it a little bit at times, but I'm mostly better now. >> If I ever hear I somebody ever texts me you up, I I have a a little mini panic attack. So don't do that. Don't ever text you you up or message you on any kind of platform you up. Okay. >> No. >> Yeah. >> Okay. I was going to say we should name the episode that, but absolutely not.

No. No. We cannot do that. >> No, I'm joking. >> That's fine. I gave you permission. That's fine. >> You did. You did. cuz recognizing that is incredibly important and very indicative of a level of self-awareness or rather even if it didn't happen immediately but you being able to kind of work through that and potentially take some time out to rebalance yourself. What >> did that look like? Did you just step away from everything and then let the team handle things? did you need to kind of have, you know, do some therapy, etc.

Like, I'm asking this because of my own experience with burnout. And by no means was it anywhere near the experiences that you've had, but I know that that's what I had to do is quit most of the things that I was doing and then take a step back for about 6 months and then very gently and major boundary setting exercise come back into the fold. No, I I was stupid. Like I I you know, took a little break for a while and then once I started feeling like decent, you know, stringing together like a good week, I was like, "All right, I think I'm ready to come back." And then I'd be working. I'd be energized for a few weeks and then, you know, the stress and the burnout would come creeping back in

and within like a couple months, I'd be like, "I need to peace out again." And take a couple weeks off. And I'd be like, "Okay, I'm good again." And then the cycle repeated for for a while. You know, part of what happened with curve is it it, you know, the extreme stress reaction kind of solidified into chronic pain. I had a really hard time like untensing and then that led to chronic pain. But over the past year, I finally did do some therapy and also doing a lot and I've been doing physical therapy for a while, but I really stepped up the intensity of it and paired it with personal training and all that stuff. And you know, the mind is feeling good, the body is feeling

good now. So things are, you know, finally, you know, back in place. And you know, I'm not who I was before, but you know, I'm not a shell of myself anymore either. So, I'm feeling pretty good. >> Good. I'm so glad. And I'm so pleased that we, you know, I I know when you pinged me going, "Okay, I'm ready to do this cuz I feel good now." Which is, it was so good to hear that you're in this much, much better place. Did that kind of coincide with, you know, after shutting down your DMs and all of that and coming back online?

That was what end of last year when you were like, "We're so back. I'm back." Reopening DMs and so on. Was this as you were starting to feel a lot better or was it still during the time when you were coming back for two weeks and being like, "Yay!" in the note. >> That was one of my many comebacks. That was not really a comeback. Yeah, I'd say the real comeback was >> was probably actually just like in in July is when I think I started actually feeling back back back because like you know we we were getting ready to launch V3 and that was the thing that kept on making me you know feel like I can take a break. I need to be there and I wasn't able to really you know unplug and really you know do the things I needed

to do for myself. And then after V3 came out, I I did take about six weeks off over the summer. And you know, then paired that with, you know, a new level of self-care and help. And, you know, the chronic pain is finally like very manageable. It used to be like, you know, a seven out of 10 pain like all through my shoulders and back like on a day-to-day basis. And now it's down to like a zero or one on a day-to-day basis. And >> okay, >> you know, like I would be very frustrated cuz I'd get to my computer and I'd start working and then after about an hour I'd just be like getting flare ups and then feeling fatigued and having to go down for naps and just

feeling so frustrated I couldn't do the things I wanted to do, you know. So the physical part it became mental, you know. >> Yeah, of course. >> Even if my mind was back, the phys my body wasn't back. you know, I've been keeping up with the the the training and the physio and everything like that for the past few months and it's it's really paying off and you know you know definitely feel my age a bit at this point but you know don't you know I think you know there's there's this a little bit of an older head's like this 50-year-old guy he's like there's two kinds of people in the world people who have back pain and people who will have back pain. I was like I feel you. I'm too young to be feeling that.

But yeah, I understand. >> But it's like so much of the the body, you know, I mean, there's the book the body keeps the score and all of that. I mean, so much of the inner state and the mental state will affect the body, right? And if you're repeatedly ignoring it, particularly as again many many many of us do in this society because it's just not acceptable to kind of be like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.

This is not good. It's making me ill. I need to address it in a way that is beneficial to me as a human to be able to continue doing the things that I'm doing. and I need to pause and I need to focus on getting myself better. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's very true. You know, whenever like anybody who's, you know, getting into a project and they they want to take a call with me, I'm always like just reminding them to, you know, it's exciting. You know, you you know, you want to like you work all the time on it. you want to devote everything to it, but like you know, also pace yourself and take care of your body like it, you know, speaking from experience, you know, so listen to your

body and take care of it and and also, yeah, just slow down when you need to is like some of the like advice that I give to, you know, new founders and stuff because like, you know, especially when you're you're younger, you know, you can kind of push past all those things, but you know, the longer you stay with it, the harder it is, you know, to sustain it if you're not taking care of yourself properly. >> 100%. 100%. Yep. >> Yeah. Good. That's great. Great advice. Okay, we are This is such a fantastic conversation. I want to know before I ask you the last two questions that I ask all of my guests. Tell me about the what's happening with Alchemics. Tell me all of the exciting things that

obviously have V3. Anything else coming? What are you excited about? All right, I'll give you a scoop. So, yeah. Yeah. So, we are right now we are team is all full like running full cylinders trying to get ready for our upcoming deployment on base. >> Okay. >> This is going to be a new deployment there over there. It's going to be an isolated one. So, like the the ald token is going to launch on base and it's going to be isolated. So you're not going to be able to bridge it from mainet or arbitrum or or optimism. And the reason is is that we want to have a different set of parameters that are over there for the V3 system that lend

itself better to looping and leveraging your yields that you can get in the system. So, and we're going to do that by having a like so in V3, one of the ways that we manage the peg is through a redemption system. And these are fixed duration redemptions. And right now on mainet, they're rather long. And on optimism and arbitrage, they're long. They're like 6 months. So, and the way that that works is you can, you know, buy the the asset off the, you know, the market and then you can redeem it one to one for its underlying collateral. And so you can realize the arbitrage, you know, the spread from that. And that creates a fixed yield, you know,

product. And this has been something that's been relatively big in V3 and we're seeing lots of usage and very a lot of popularity in this product. But, you know, since we have long durations on on our mainet, it has led to the pegs being a little bit softer than we would like. So they're not quite tightly at, you know, not super well like pegged, which makes looping in the system unprofitable, >> okay? >> Because you're taking essentially like an upfront loan cost when you sell it at a discount. Um, but on base, we're going to have four-week long redemptions, >> okay?

And so we're predicting that's going to have the peg kind of averaging at like 99.5 cents per al USD which is very tightly pegged. And then that creates a lot of scenarios where looping your position can be quite attractive. You can you know essentially multiply your yield in there. So you could, you know, you could have the base 5% yield, which is what we're targeting and what it looks like it's going to be, and then, you know, boost that up to, you know, maybe a 15% yield if you leverage it enough.

So, and and by doing that, we can have an attractive yield product for USDC, which is, you know, very much in short supply because those yields for USDC are kind of capped at around 5% like wherever you go, maybe 6% here or there, but like they're they're not as good as some of the more exotic stable coins that are out there. Mhm. >> So by doing that we can you know you know make it more attractive for for loopers and it'll also be more attractive for people who are trying to earn a a fixed yield as well because you can get you know like you know somewhere between a five and 10% depending on you know how how cheap you buy out USD off the market fixed yield with with a

4-week maturity which is a lot shorter than you know other you know fixed ones where it might be 3 months or 6 months for maturity for other fixed yield products. This one will be four weeks and so >> I think with those kind of attributes in the base ecosystem that it can really show off the the true potential of the uh the V3 system in in a different way. So we can have, you know, people who want more of a slow kind of self-repaying loans like more similar to the V2 system and V1 system on mainet and then we can have more of this kind of yield looping and higher churn, higher volume, more activity, more

active version on base. And so we're going to be kicking that off with some good incentives on Aer Drrome, the the Dex Aer Drrome. So, you know, LPS will be, you know, hopefully feasting not only on arrow rewards but also volume as well. So, >> very cool. >> That's what we are we're aiming for. So, that's that's our, you know, next immediate term plans. And then from there, we have a number of other things in the work that are not quite ready to be shared yet.

>> Okay. Exciting. I can see why you're excited. >> Yeah. And this is going to be sometime in September. We don't have the the set just yet, but it will be in September for sure. >> All right. Mark September in calendars. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Final question. What are some non-negotiables that you now have that you didn't have before in your kind of human protocol? I think it's just like the the focus on on wellness overall like not just myself but like the team is kind of being sensitive to when other people might be

overworked or you know going to they're doing too much without taking a break you know and really kind of being in tune with that and and forcing them sometimes to you know take a little bit of time off here and there especially for people who have been like you know sprinting really hard for a while. So that's one of my negotiables is just take care of yourself, take care of each other, and we can take care of the place by doing so. >> We love that. Excellent. And final final one. Is there anything that you have not said publicly but would like to?

>> I'm kind of a DJ at heart. One of the those apps I was talking to talking about I got into in 2018 were kind of like you know early Ponzi apps. >> Okay. >> And I am actually as a little side project I'm doing on the weekends developing this thing. I'm calling it positive some Pepes. And it's a mishmash of all my crazy ideas I've had in my notebook over the past like several years. And that is fairly close to actually being launched. And you know, I'm kind of, you know, rationalizing that this is okay in my mind because I think it's far fairer and far less extractive and than the whole memecoin

space. It's actually like an anti-mecoin memecoin, >> okay, >> in a sense, uh, because of the different mechanisms that are involved in it. And it's also going to be built with using some alchemic V3 parts in it as well. So it it it will in a roundabout way benefit the project as well. So >> interesting. Okay. So there's a little bit of alpha there. Do we know when that's happening? >> I've currently have a test net going. I can I can send you a an invite to the test net if you want to try it out.

>> Yeah. Let's >> and see see it. It's it's it's a very silly very cool app. I would say it should be. >> I would expect nothing less. And yeah, it's it's it's a direct response to, you know, the memecoin culture. >> Okay. >> You know, >> all right. I look forward to seeing it and giving you feedback on it. >> Yeah. I look forward to hearing your feedback. >> All right. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you so much for this. This has been a super interesting conversation and thank you so much for sharing all of the things that you have shared. I really really appreciate it and I think a lot of people will benefit from hearing them and hopefully taking

those lessons and applying them. >> Well, thank you for having me on. This has been, you know, a nice podcast. I've enjoyed talking about these things and hopefully people can learn from my mistakes. >> 100%. Thank you for joining. >> All right. Thank you. >> [music] [music]