Bootstrapping a Career in Crypto w/ Nick Westlake

Transcript

[Music] thank you hello and welcome back to the strangewater podcast thank you for joining us for today's conversation in this industry so often we jump straight to the technology and the rapidly shifting ecosystem that we often skip past the behind the scenes Dynamic that underpins all Industries the careers of the folks that will their ideas into reality crypto is particularly interesting because we're not hooked into the traditional system that push people into their life's calling life's calling there's no trade school or recruiting

system to break into being a builder in these early days each one of us needs to find our own way to the blockchain and then each one of us needs to figure out how to build a career centered around it today we will be speaking with Nick Westlake about his path to where he is today at off-chain labs in this episode you'll learn a lot about what it means to work your way from a random Discord participant into one of the best and most well-known connectors in defy Nick's story although still very much in its opening chapters is a reminder to all of us about what it takes to be successful passion in what you're building the ability to think big based on real world

experience and above all a fun friendly and generous attitude before we begin please do not take Financial advice from this or any other podcast ethereum and decentralized finance will change the world one day but you can easily lose all of your money in the process alright let's get started Nick thank you so much for joining me on the podcast hey my pleasure Rex I'm glad to be here awesome man so before we kind of get into it um can you just give uh myself and and the audience a little bit about your background and maybe not how you got to where you are today but how you got to crypto it's a great question

right it's a a unique question that almost everybody has almost a very different answer to because this is such a young I guess uh the most annoying question with the most interesting answers exactly right I've heard the most Wild Things of all time but mine's not wild in the in the least very straightforward um uh mid-2010s I was in college um trying to you know surfing the internet Etc uh and I mean to be the most Frank as possible Right like we were trying to order some uh stuff off the internet that you just couldn't order with a credit card or a bank account quite frankly right and that led us that government treasury bonds right or government treasury bonds correct so that led uh that led me and my acquaintances if you will to find

alternative methods of of payment and it It ultimately led to a a peer-to-peer Bitcoin network of trading and and whatever you want to call it and uh that was my first little introduction right and uh I didn't really understand you know being a stupid dumb college kid I guess you could say just didn't really understand the um what the potential was for a lot of this stuff right like ethereum had like just come out not really knowing what a smart contract was or you know the the programmable money aspect of it if you if you will right it was just like oh Bitcoin just it's internet money and you could just transact with things on the internet right um I don't know fast forward uh out of college I worked very mundane boring uh gig telecommunications I was selling

uh fiber connectivity like failover solutions for like mid-sized uh firms whatever business firms Etc and then I I got into like a uh an on-chain Tron project to be honest yeah it's wrong holy [ __ ] you are actually the first person I've ever heard that organically is Tron it's got its use cases but um but yeah I worked for for a little project there for a while that was kind of my end and then it just kind of sprouted right from there so to where I'm at today so yeah and again your journey from you know like putting your toe in the water and trying to uh you know off chain and like the I mean like we're still all at the

beginning of our careers we're at the beginning of this industry but exactly anyway that that that's a story we need to get into but um like I guess while you are in college um partaking in e-commerce like what were you studying and like and you I guess I guess like it's interesting to me that you interact with this technology for a real use case and didn't see the vision and then came back to it later um so yeah what were you studying what were you thinking about at the time that's a great question um college man I I went into college not knowing what I was going to do can I curse um no no I came out of college not knowing what I was going to do um I went for one just like a like a business degree I literally graduate with a

business admin degree like what do you do with that I guess you go do random business things right um and then after college again I had no idea what what I wanted to do and um it was that whole 2018 2017 2018 run where I went oh okay I think no this can actually go somewhere I always had an interest in financial markets and things of that nature but it wasn't like privy to Investment Banking or you know Financial advisory whatever you want to call it right and uh this was kind of like the uh the end for me I guess you could say and then as I got smarter and more mature quite frankly I was like okay there's actually some utility to this in different types of use cases and things of that nature so um and that's when I I know I started

going on online and venturing off into various different Discord chats and telegram chats and kind of just not educating myself per se but I guess you can call it that but like immersing myself into the to the culture quite frankly right and that kind of pickled my interest to a certain extent where I decided I was like okay digital asset that's a cryptocurrency are what I'm what I I'm most interested in I haven't been interested in something like this basically my entire life besides like I don't know video games when I was 13 years old right and um I just gravitated towards a man and it almost came natural it felt natural to me in that sense and um and it was it's been uh basically game over since then if I haven't looked back yeah yeah and I can tell from your beard you are either uh you're either a

lumberjack and I've never touched a video game or like you care deeply about them and I just I think that all of us who have like grown up gaming um like this technology is like so much easier and it's part of it's part of the story of ethereum right it's like 13 year old or whatever vitalik like getting mad that they took away as well in World of Warcraft and you know I just I vividly remember when I was in college um my dad was friends with the the dad of the guy who started Riot games which is like League of Legends and so we we went there and went to go visit and I'll never forget as we were walking out of um Riot games who was already like a 100 million dollar company and like weeks later would be a multi-billion dollar company he looks to me goes can you

believe that they built a business selling things that aren't real real tangible right people have a hard time in my head I was like I mean yeah like what do you what I do think that there's just something about like the way we grew up and um what one great example of this honestly is um I was a big RuneScape guy yeah and the grand exchange was like this peer-to-peer Marketplace that you could go and sell your in-game items to right and it was kind of like that that Forefront if you will of the New Frontier kind of that we live now at this peer peer Network that you can you know talk on transact on whatever you may be but but really those online marketplaces if you will

um really blossomed if my uh a lot I think a lot of people's uh interest in in the types of these things because I can't tell you how many times or even co-workers that I have and they're like hey did you ever play RuneScape I'm like yeah of course I like did the Grand exchange just kind of what piqued my interest in this crypto stuff I'm like damn man that's like it's a recurring theme there almost no for sure I was just actually having a conversation last night with someone who's really deep in the web 3 gaming space and the you know like where we kind of settled is like okay yes there's things like Ronin and or sorry like a axi and which is essentially just like okay you have your inventory but we're gonna put it on chain and call it a crypto game and like

okay right and then there's like some people that are doing somewhat interesting stuff by like doing things with smart contracts where the smart contracts compete and like okay like whatever but I mean like for us people I'm not even gonna call myself a gamer but one who partakes in games it's like just so obvious that we have real economies in games right now like whether it's World of Warcraft or whether it's like Eve online or EverQuest or whatever people pay real money for for those things and like you you know my Giga brain thesis on where web game web3 gaming comes from is someone just builds the first Bridge from a centralized game to the blockchain that's a very interesting idea and just a small comment on that I'm not sure if you're privy but Eve

online just raised like four I think it was 40 million dollars I'm unsure who read the round who led the round but it was for their web 3 gaming uh initiative so yeah 40m's and they're the Evo mime is Gonna Come on chain hopefully you know sooner versus later but that's a huge step right that's a triple A you know game that's been around for what 15 plus years at this point um don't quote me on that might be less but I know it's been around for a while but that's like a first instance of you know a large AAA gaming studio or game coming kind of making that that First Leap so it's great to see yeah and we'll stop the gaming conversation here this is not I'm not even we're not gaming people it's not a gaming podcast but for anyone who that didn't follow and you

don't know what Eve online is like that is worth knowing your history and like that will show you what like internet economies can be and like if you understand what has happened in Eve online that ethereum is just like such a no-brainer it's almost like I can't even believe we're this far behind compared to where we've already been I wholeheartedly agree yeah definitely encourage uh doing more research on that but let's get back to Nick so where uh where I met you was actually a couple months ago this year or sorry a couple months ago last year um and it was in the Umami Discord and I think

um there's a lot a lot of things to say about Umami especially like over the year but um I want to start this part of the conversation is like can you talk to me a little bit about broad Strokes how you get from this Tron project to finding yourself like not only in like core ethereum but in the bleeding edge of like these scaling Solutions and you know at the time like Umami was just a treasury and like what what brought you here and I guess like the point of this question is to talk about like what is the journey from like participating in a project to like really becoming like a career crypto person that's contributing to crypto projects that's a great question and um

we're ready to start so um the Tron project was first right and that kind of gave me my foothold if you will on kind of the culture how um you know blockchain companies operate how they how they function things of that nature right and then once I got that like experience I worked there for about eight nine months uh but then I made a jump to a uh centralized exchange but it's it's geared towards more Enterprise uh institutional investors uh called Xbox and it's a shop out of San Francisco um and I actually worked there for the last two years before I made the jump here but while while I was doing so right like um you know you work at a centralized exchange you'll you know you get privy to the coins that are coming out the type of different networks

things of that nature right and um so I never really left the uh the ecosystem if you will from from Tron to to where I'm at today and um you know while I was working there you know I've always been um not a maxi per se but I I understand the ethereum and I know how the back end technology Works versus you know some some other evm compatible chains Etc right and um it kind of just resonated with me because it's a very the centralized Network in the sense that there's validators all over the world and there's not you know one single entity kind of you know operating the chain in in itself right and um you know just kind when that whole I guess uh you know rise in 2020 right right after the pandemic started

happening right we saw we started kind of seeing this really large influx of on-chain activity um I was just like oh okay well this is you know this is this is going to be something at that point right like it was just after defy summer um you know you had all these projects like yearn who who were just like literally just a couple of months old and but you know I saw the potential of that right and then you know operating on that chain you know eating [ __ ] coins if you will meme coins you know you had some nice blue chip coins as well in your portfolio but you know Along Came summer of 2021 and and well I guess let me preface like always the cool thing about crypto is that like you know if I want to go talk to the founders of

Coca-Cola like I can't or if they're dead but like I can't go do that right like I can't I can't hop in a Discord chat and at somebody that has founded you know a multi-million dollar or you know or mid nine figure protocol whatever you want to call it and that was another thing that kind of Drew Me In but always always you know throughout that whole year while I was you know operating on ethereum mainnet was just immersing myself in various different kinds of tokens various different types of of of communities things of that nature just getting like the overall Vibe if you will and things like that and then you know August of 2021 came along and um like the arbiting launched its mainnet and I was like okay well this is cool I wasn't very privy to what an L2 was at that point uh really right

like on a very a very high level I was but not immersed like like I am today but um so I did my first bridge over there right and uh sorry for those of us that weren't around during that time can you talk about like what was going on in the early days of arbitrary I'm like what why were you bridging your money over yeah that's a great question man and um so let me start so I was bridging my money over because I was curious quite frankly right number one I was very curious like what is this um they said it's a layer two scaling solution to ethereum right it rolls up to ethereum so it inherently has the the same type of security Etc so I was like okay well number one I kind of feel safe to bridge my cash over here

um and number two again I'm very curious right and in the early days of arbitrum it was the Wild West um people say you know permissionless networks are kind of the Wild West right because you don't need somebody's permission to go and launch something on there but it really was right like you had the Nyan Cat which was the first Farm there that rugged um I was I was a victim of that if you will but um and then just like these meme projects that kind of come when you know a new chain launches obviously you had scams grifters Etc um but what's really cool isn't a piece of that history that it was like only extremely recently that the like daily usage on arbitrum surpassed that like original like exuberance and like

Readiness of the universe the tvl correct right so the tvl skyrocketed it dipped a little bit right you had that grace period if you will and now we're back up to all-time Highs at this point right in terms of TBR but but really in the early days were just you know um I mean unlike on every chain you had you had you had the the grifters of course but then the the cool thing about arbitrim is that the Technologies sound um it is an optimistic roll-up with working fraud proofs right um and I think that attracted a lot of smart folks a lot of smart Engineers a lot of smart Builders right and then you had kind of the OG protocols if you will start kind of coming like like GMX like dopex like the Jones Dow right um like treasure Dow right the gaming studio

who's seen enormous success but at this point and I think that's a true Testament really on on the type of of roll-up that Arboretum is and um I mean from from from from that right it just has as really has just blossomed into this very vibrant ecosystem that has uh ver protocols in every vertical gaming nfts D5 social fight um you know you see some um uh you know everything in between nft five right like that didn't exist in in kind of in 2021 where I can go take a loan out against my nft if I wanted to right so and not to mention right it's a it's very cheap to transact on Armstrong It's it's very fast uh unlike you know ethereum mainnet Etc

um so I also think that the ux of it uh as a as a whole if you will is is much smoother than uh than operating or transacting on ethereum maintenance yeah I mean like objectively speaking right and whether that's on like on the timing or the cost and everything and um a quick plug for myself uh every morning uh myself in a couple of the like defy media crew do this uh daily um news show called Leviathan news check us out but um this morning we are actually having a discussion on you know it's just like really interesting when you compare arbitrum and optimism in terms of like just like I don't even want to say like tvl but like true activity and like the English

meaning of that word um like today like arbitrum is this like vibrant thing where to your point all of these like varied applications whether it's like literal DJ and gambling on uh GMX or like trying to push the boundaries of gamings with magic or you know like we just deployed a gnosis safe like I did it on arbitrum um and then you look at what's going on on optimism and it's like okay that is basically a chain that supports a uh single decks and so I you know I had some comments on why I think we got there but I guess to skip ahead to the part where we're talking about Arboretum do you have any thoughts on um how Arboretum has been so successful in building like a real ecosystem yeah I mean that's a really good

question too one that I am that that actually Founders ask me uh quite quite frequently to be honest and and the answer is really simple right um Arboretum launched uh August of 2021 well it wasn't there there was no token right so there was no monetary incentive if you will to come and and build here right so um number one the technology had to speak for itself right and then on the really unlike the back end if you will the way that um you know off-chain Labs uh has uh and not anymore right because now the the centralized down Foundation now uh operate arbitrary manova but you know in the past I've talked about that in a moment it was off it was octane Labs right and

um and the way we just treat and still do to this day treat our protocols with um you know obviously the almost respect and then also provide them with the necessary resources that they need not necessarily monetary resources but resources such as marketing Support Tech Support like technical support Business Development support service provider support things of that nature right and just being very Hands-On if you will uh with these with these protocols um number one just you know the the r report that you develop with these types of folks by doing you know stuff like that um really goes a long way and I and I think it shows right because um you know our term is the Talk of the Town if you will right now but again um

it really was just how you know the the pro we the the resources that you know we provided to the um to the protocols itself and um again that's a real Testament to uh to adinka a lot of our success here um you know specifically with GMX and and some of the the other larger particles as well yeah I mean from like the outsider's perspective it's just like okay well why would I bring why like why would I have my Capital on arbitrum versus optimism versus on Main net it's like okay well there's interesting stuff to do on Arbor drum it's like okay well why is there interesting stuff to do on arbitrum it's like well because devs chose to build there and like when when you just like look at this from the outside it it's just like very like I don't know it just like it is

what it is and it's organic and like we go where the things are but um I think like what you're saying is absolutely right like that is not an accident that is like a result of like like real ground game being run and like what ground game means in this context is like being able to like facilitate developers and make them want to work with you exactly that's exactly right man and um that's the sentiment that we you know we kind of get throughout the you know throughout the ecosystem when and when new folks approach us that's the sentiment that you know they've heard and that's what kind of attracts them and again um no no plan on stopping any of that that's what made us you know made us successful in the first place so that's what's gonna you know put us in a

terminal velocity as I like to call it moving moving forward for sure and like there's nothing about like arbitrary like like there's nothing about arbitrary let alone all of crypto that's done yet so no of course not right and again this isn't a it's not a zero-sum game this is a it's a multi-chain world there's going to be use cases for for everybody involved and things like that and so there's no I'm not a maxi in that case right like I never have been I likely never will be um and again this isn't a zero-sum game yeah well okay so let's uh let's put this on pause come back to like what Arboretum is in a moment because I want to continue with your journey so you are working at sfox you're realizing that there's all these tokens then you see this like new frontier of both like

technology and maybe Financial opportunity open up in front of you you get in there you lose a bunch of money to cryptokitties or whatever the the night whatever they call them yeah and so then what yeah um again uh you know uh so working out at Xbox for for several years there but I've always been like an on-chain type of type of guy I've literally never traded cryptocurrency on a centralized exchange I've only ever used them as as on and off ramps to get on chain so it was basically just like kind of a natural progression for me in that sense right I um I I got out and chained specifically we're talking post 2021 August onto arbitrim right and then um that was kind of during uh right after they launched probably two three

months that's when the froth was really really going on um like Olympus of course you have the everybody else having multi-billion dollar valuations basically there's all Vapor if you will but um but in that sense right like there was I'll really play on the Olympus Forks right they were they were everywhere they were on every single chain right and and the first one on arbitrim was called zero two ohm and which eventually turned into you know Umami finance and um I took a real liking to the community there uh in that certain Discord and um it was just because of the folks that were that I guess that were there that were you know talking with Etc et cetera that kind of shared the same ethos and values that you know I kind of have myself and so I just kind

of gravitated toward that toward that Discord right and um in that community and that coin uh back held it down about 90 so that was fun but the community was cool so I you know I I I kept going I mean and then eventually right I mean to your point before Rex like uh got myself involved started speaking out some of my ideas and things of that nature right and then like I guess the the founder at the time took a you know took notice to that and um kind of just invited me to say like hey man do you want to you know run some of our business development initiatives right um and I could have been more stoked to do so right it was a on a chain that I I thoroughly enjoyed transacting on with a project that I thoroughly enjoyed working with and so it was pretty much

like a match made in heaven at that point in or in that sense right and then uh would that what that gave me was uh uh basically like in uh not an in but a purview if you will into uh the broader arbitrum ecosystem and had me talking to various different protocols on the network and you know seeing the inner workings of them and their mechanics and how their Pro you know how the project Works Etc um and and from there it's been just it just kind of blossomed into this whole into this whole thing right so I think there is like endless things we can say about Umami I think um for me the biggest takeaway of umami and it is like Umami is a uh it's like kind of a microcosm of like the Arboretum story

which is kind of a microcosm of like the crypto story which is um and and you kind of alighted over it so like just to be clear for the audience like during these the zero two ohm days like it was a straight up own fork and there was like probably no purpose for it like I wasn't around at the time I don't know like I've heard a lot of people say that like some maybe Shady stuff was happening on or maybe like the like I don't even know like a lot of the people don't even know who the original core devs are like it was Madness right and then um as most Olympus Forks were so no yeah yeah again not trying to throw a specific shade but like I showed up in like March of uh of last year or was

that last year I'm losing sense of time but anyway I showed up like right after the transition to Umami Finance uh it was more like yeah and like during that time it was like I didn't even know about this honest to God I didn't even know it was a home Fork when I first started I didn't know about any of the drama like what I saw was this like group of like obviously kids obviously like not super professional people but people trying to come together and like build something that like they at least intended to be real and um you know the the Umami story specifically is like pretty tragic and like fun fact for the listeners um I was Nick's replacement after he moved on to off chain same job so uh like I don't know small world but um the

the so Umami like itself has like some um some sad stuff and like not even worth talking about on this podcast if anybody's ever interested like flywheel did the perfect article the day it was going down got quotes from everyone like I refer you to that to talk about Umami drama but the reason I bring this up is like to participate in this space is to watch like technology mature from you know like tools to take advantage of each other to like hopefully like legitimate businesses and institutions and so um one I just like if you have any words or anything you want to say about like kind of that process and like how you

experienced it but two um yeah I mean what yeah I guess do you have any thoughts or you want to share about um just like the transformation you've seen in Umami in an arbitrum over the last like year that you've been involved yeah no it's a really good question as well um I guess I can start with um many projects in the past and we've we've seen this shift probably over the last say eight to 12 months maybe even six to eight months um the shift in in the type of how Protocols are run in that sense right like um they in the past they have tended to give large amount of their native token emissions out as quote unquote yield right uh making what we like to call Ponzi nomics in that sense right so the

in the so your yield could be like you know oh my God I'm getting 500 APR but yeah you're getting it in this in this Ponzi token quite frankly right that if everybody else is getting 500 APR right that means it's the token's likely going to be download um unless we're talking about signs of froth right but typically it will be doubt only right and one thing cool thing about Umami and specifically actually I'll give myself a little pat on the back some nice something I said back in February of [ __ ] it might have been 20. 2021 or 2022 I don't even remember yeah at this point but like I'm pretty sure next month is going to be May 2020 right but um

but uh but I we kind of coined this um and you know others were likely doing it at the same time right but like because it's a like cavemen right like no single person found the fire there was likely people around the world having fire at the same time but this this this this term like real yield like what is that what does that mean that means you're giving out or not giving out but providing if you will um quote unquote real yield in the form of stable coins um Blue Chip uh coins such as ethereum or Bitcoin whatever it may be um in the form of yield instead of your native token right um and in the past you never really saw that right any any money that the protocol made they just kept um they put it into their treasury they used it for

you know various different purposes etc etc and people were getting wildly rich off of this and that's not you know that's not a that's not a secret um and then there were some you know again just some shift that happened maybe a psychological shift whatever it may be and uh in in that that that uh that time I guess you could say where I'm not sure if it was like communities that said this or like you know retail whatever it may be but a lot of protocols started shifting to this real yield movement where they they capped the the I guess percent of native protocol missions that you had and then started redirecting some of the protocol Revenue if you will to back to the Token holders right and um and Umami was one of the the first to type to do this with their marinade product right they they

were fortunate enough to have a you know five million dollar treasury from the from the from the Olympus bonds at one point um right so they they were they deployed that in different you know various different uh protocols to collect you know some sort of yield if you will and then they redirected that yield back to their you know their coin stickers in the form of ethereum and they still do that to this day um and uh I think that catalyzed if you will um and you know alongside a lot of other folks that were doing at the same time but I think that catalyzed um you know the the type of protocols and type of tokenomics and designs that you see coming out today and that is treating the token holders the right the right way redistributing the the revenues to them in the form of against

Stables Blue Chip coins so that you have a sustainable uh token you have a sustainable business model right a la GMX right they have their GOP token where you know X percent and it's very high percent I think it's like 70 or something like that don't quote me uh but you know percent of the trading fees get get routed to the GMX and glp stakers right and that's a that's a viable business model it runs the exchange um it it feels like the users of the exchange also feel like they're getting treated well while using the platform because they're like okay I'm paying these trading fees but I'm also getting a cut of that on the back end by you know using and you know using the protocol maybe providing liquidity in the form of glp and and really I think

that it's birthed to like a lot of of new movements like protocols that are you know up and coming are all very focused on on revenue and and distributing some sort of a value if you could say to its token holders and not just you know pump and dump and and give out a you know five thousand million percent APR native tokens Etc right um so yeah I think that's uh that's really what that that's that's what's the the really cool shift I guess you could say over the last couple of years and and how the D5 Market in itself has uh has really has matured and it's matured quite fast right because if you think about D5 you know D5 summer of 2020 was probably the Kickstart of a lot

of this kind of of this stuff and I mean look at D5 is like in the whole crypto space it's a very very small subset um and I think it has a lot of potential and and then and the the movement that's happened in the last couple of years is moving towards that maturity and that potential um you know I do believe that D5 is could be a thousand X from here um you know in the next 10 years um and uh you know these distributed systems if you will decentralized uh marketplaces peer-to-peer networks Etc um you know I do you think that it resonates with a lot of um the younger folks um and maybe even you know folks outrage as well um if you kind of see the potential of it um but uh but yeah man I do I'll leave that that

no yeah I mean I think I it's just like so funny when I hear you explaining this stuff I'm a little bit like you're explaining like like super basic business personables right exactly literally exactly and it is like kind of funny just like to kind of take a step back um and like really think about like how profound it is that we needed to go through the experience of like scamming each other like in a good intention way before we went back to like oh no this is just like how business Works no no I agree with you wholeheartedly yeah and then my my other um kind of reaction to that is it's really cool I totally agree to hear just

to watch the industry evolve and mature into I just said it in a condescending way but into just like being real businesses but also what's happening is like we're watching the technology evolve to like be like you know Umami was doing this thing where it's like essentially just like yield farming with its Treasury and paying it out and like that's one Innovation into maturity right but the other one is like this whole like ve system uh what the curve is implemented that contracts built on top of that I don't know um there's a whole bunch of them how I was building yeah you know right and like then that really opens up like entirely new possibilities that is like the point of this technology so

um all to say is like that whole uh set of innovation probably needs to go through the same maturity as the first one where like we need to actually provide real value and not be scamming each other but um it's just like really cool to watch and like it's so cool how fast it happens and we can just sit here and watch the world change in front of our eyes exactly well I mean iterations right after iterations is what drives innovation in that sense but the cool thing about crypto is we tend to speed run things versus like the broader markets which tend to play out over longer periods of time so I guess in that sense it's a bit better that you do speed running you kind of get it over with it's out of the system now you're moving on to that next iteration it's

not only that we speed run it it's that it's spit sped run out in the open and maybe those are consequences of each other but um you know it's just like I just read a really cool book called uh world for sale and it's about how the Commodities industry like happened um in like basically from like post World War II on and it's just like all these crazy stories and it's it's like really cool to read as a history but literally the entire point of the book is that until like the 2000s even governments didn't realize that like they were being controlled by like eight different Commodities Brokers like jump that were like controlling like who got what at what price you know yeah no I it's it's um no it's a very fair point

right it's a it's almost like I'm trying to say it without being crude um whatever yeah okay all right yeah so okay cool your audio Mommy and um I can I can even speak to some some of that too right like we were developing these vaults right these delta neutral bolts if you will right and and you're around for both of them right of course yeah of course I I drove I drove I drove like eight figure tvl into the or had commitments at a figure TV on in the first one before it like it just didn't work right and and I do give kudos to the team where they shut it down very quickly and that was the right thing to do um but you know in turn in saying that

there was some actual serious interest in those votes um in that and from both right from a whale perspective of course right Andre I was like oh if I can get some nice yields on chain but also from off chain funds and not just crypto funds either some some some Prop Shops that had some interest in it because obviously they don't have to play by regulatory rules or anything like that they can just it's private money they can do whatever they want but there was there was some serious interest in these types of things and to say that you know I think it regressed a little bit after the tumultuous times you could say we've had in the last uh the last several months right but you know just just to to point out like there was interest and you know that type of Interest I don't

think goes away right maybe just subsides a little bit and then when things come back you know froth comes back whatever it may be those interests become interest again and even more so they'll be more instances of it I guess you could say so okay in that like so let me explain to you what the the vaults are right you as they actually are as a D5 person and like because because my point is like I explaining that to a person who's not already drinking the Kool-Aid on all of this it's like cuckoo Town yeah so like why don't I try to like just tell you what it is um for the audience's sake and then like can you help translate

that and like help me understand like how you would talk to someone who like doesn't already own a ledger about like why this is a compelling investment for them sure yeah absolutely cool all right so Umami vaults right they you deposit um well we start with glp which for the purposes of this is simply like a trading venue that pays out a very large amount of fees and um basically you can deposit five assets into glp stable coins eth Bitcoin um link and the uni token you as well correct yeah and um like that goes in basically um you deposit one asset you get

exposure to all the assets and go in in gmx's predefined um percentages and then like you farm fees based on that the problem with that is like while the fee farming is very good maybe you're not like interested in holding exposure to like any of the volatile assets you just want the um yeah and so what Umami did um in two different iterations because the technology needed fixing but uh at a high level what they did is create a vault that says okay we will give you uh you deposit your single asset and we will go out and deposit that into glp and then hedge out any of your other exposure so the net benefit is you get all of the fees from GMX but without

taking any price volatility correct price volatility if you were to do Staples but obviously you could yeah yeah sure sure okay like that was not English yeah I guess for the most part right it's um well you I mean as straightforward as it comes is that the any sort of Vault product four six uh I guess layman's terms right any sort of every sort of Vault product you can think of as a structured product and in like in a traditional traditional Finance type term right where it's um it's a very intricate uh type of investment vehicle whereas you know you yourself cannot craft out the the back

end strategy if you will however you can give it to somebody else that can you know extrapolate that back-end strategy and do it for you uh for a small fee okay and then so you're like okay fine fair enough I understand how like structured product works I even understand how like administrative like administrated investing works but like where like what risks am I taking and what great great question why and and where is this money even coming from so number one address the risk question so defy in itself is very inherently risky right you're you're operating um on chain there's no regulations for the most part there's no I can call my bank up and say hey I made a wrong

deposit can you please revert that transaction right once the transaction is complete it's complete there's no uh quote unquote reverted I mean unless you hard Fork the chain but that's out of the question okay um so the risk really comes in the um in in two ways right uh one would be on a on a uh I'm trying to figure out on a human level I guess you could say where the uh the creators of whatever Vault or contract they're using could put malicious code within that um you know within that uh contract or vault so they could just pull your funds right and that's like smart contract risk um so that's that's definitely number one and in terms of Vault contracts right that smart contract risk or involved products I should say the

smart contract risk is is heightened if you will because not only do you have The Vault products itself their smart contracts like those may be at risk but would also would ever um venue that they're either they're depositing your money in to use the the to collect the yield from you have that smart contract risk as well right um so so I really think like you know in terms of like security risk it's really inherently on the smart contract risk also you know if there's a some sort of multi-sig That Could That Could rug you very maliciously Etc right um and then also on on your own level right if you or if you drop your Ledger in a bottle of water and you then you just never wrote down your sheet phrase then you can never recover your funds right it's

uh banking yourself is is is not it's not only terrifying to in a sense but it's also a little bit hard um especially you know you know setting up a ledger and things are treasure whatever you want to use in that sense but to answer your second question uh Rex where does the yield come from I think that uh as far as on to what we were talking about before in this really yield movement right like you're gonna go park your your users funds in a protocol that provides quote-unquote real yields such as GMX who provides you know kicks backs with the trading fees right they don't collect that all themselves they redistribute that out to the Token holders the glp token dollars and GMX openers now there's a there's um a lot of uh protocols uh especially on

Arbitron but also on various different chains have really adopted this um gmx-esque tokenomics if you will with this dual token model whereas the liquidity token and the uh just a regular native token to the protocol itself right and um it is a very novel way of doing tokenomics and um there's iterations on it from from you know various different types of folks but in saying that right in the past there wasn't many venues where you can go quote unquote collect real yield but now as as new protocols come in this new iterations start happening there there is you know a plethora if you will of venues that you can go to to collect quote unquote real yield and you know one of those could be not even a professional exchange but like

um I'm not gonna there's a couple on on our Channel there's again on other Chains It's like gambling sites where you can go gamble on Sports you could play a flip game which is literally just press one or two and then you flip a coin and right but they still you know they still adopted this like real yield movement where you kick back the you know the protocol fees to the users right so there's um there's definitely a different ways where you can uh you know or I guess collect that sort of that sort of yield and just one thing on that as well uh you know Native Native uh Native emissions they're not they're not bad in a sense right they're they're not right you can you could pair native emissions with with quote unquote real yield admissions right to give you that boosted APR but where it gets bad is

what we talked about before where you have like a million percent APR Outlaw Olympus Fork uh you know Force giving out just major amounts of tokens with no utility or nothing to to really do besides sell them right it's um or if you wanted to hold them you know your hardcore uh Community member whatever it may be but but um but yeah but just just to say that first of all good job you should get a job in business development um but um I guess like it's it's so hard for me to like stand on the uneducated side of this you know and just like Wonder at like what level like at what point do you stop asking questions you know like no no no no not not you but like as a fund right like if

if like if you nick say okay uh then we hedge out the uh price of this using um perps and if you're not familiar with perps they're just Futures contracts with like no settlement date like I wonder if like oh yeah you had like hedge no big deal or is it okay well who's doing the hedging how are they implementing their smart contract as like are they is it a pool based model or you know and like you know so my brain's broken no I know that no it's a really fair point right because uh when when I was talking to uh a lot of these folks about these vaults right you had people that really dug into the nitty-gritty like what you just said like who's who's doing the hedging where where are these venues at right and then you had folks that would be like oh 15

apy okay where are you gonna do it oh that's it okay perfect I can't take my money oh yeah only one place great cool yeah yeah so it really varies right in the type of I guess it varies on the type of investor the type of risk tolerance that they may have the type of due diligence that they just do right it's a it's a wide spectrum if you will right I like the bell curve yeah yeah yeah for sure okay so like very cool like awesome thank you for like spending so much time on Umami but let's like transition you to uh off chain and so like my question as someone who's like still on um like on the side of the line that's about like uh building individual projects projects and products as

opposed to where you are which is like more in the infrastructure side um and like enabling people to build projects and products like what about uh your position and off chain like made you uh jump that Gap and like it she's just excited about like what you're doing now great question man so um my job here were an alternator so I work on the Partnerships team right um so it's that client facing if you will uh position no back office that I do a little bit back all this stuff as everybody does but um where I got specifically hired for this this role called uh success management now um you can think of a lot of the other PMS if you will are out there head hunting in a like a traditional like maybe account executive role if your

audience would be familiar with that you know courting different types of Builders Founders Etc to come and Deploy on the network right so I do a little bit of that right everybody's a Salesman and they're in their company right if they're good Etc but really I spend most of my time um with right on that cusp of deployment or post deployment and I do I work with them on a number of different things so I'm on the line with Pro you know five six seven protocols a day really um providing them with the resources that they need to succeed on my on on the arbiting blockchain and I do that with a number of different ways right like um any sort of of marketing help that that may need right I have setting up amas amplification of Socials things of that nature I act as a liaison between

our engineering team in case a protocol has a technical question right um and they needed to answer that they're deploying some sort of blockchain some error you know is getting thrown right um always always help on that front any sort of BD help that they want right instead of going in there and you know creating a Discord ticket or a cold DM on Twitter right they can you know always utilize um my team and I on on getting themselves like more intros to the to the equal ecosystem and then also vice versa too right so I'm so immersed and and into this ecosystem that when I'm talking to various protocols right I could say like hey I think you actually you can partner with you know XYZ protocol right so that business development uh relationship kind of goes both ways right and then something

really cool that I like to harp on to as well is that uh something I like to call infrastructure relations it's a stupid term that I literally made up myself uh and when I say the word when I say the word infrastructure I mean it very generally you could be apis rpcs or oracles right in all companies um centralized exchanges market makers basically it's voting is not within the smart contract anybody that services like an on-chain daf protocol right is uh when I fall under that infrastructure umbrella so and I I know I develop relationships with these folks because when a protocol I'll give a very crude example when a protocol comes to me and they say like hey Nick I'm looking for a security audit I go okay let's jump on the line like I'll never ask look at

code like that's very proprietary to everybody right of course but I'll say like you know how many lines of code do you have uh what's your budget look like on this what's the time Horizon look like on this right sit down with them to really go over like the scope of what they're looking for and on that way since I you know very familiar with a lot of these security firms I can make an educated decision if you will that you know x or y security firm would really be the best uh you know the best of service this project here right and that goes from across the line like anybody you know again centralized exchanges because they all offer various different things oracles you know maybe you want to decentralize Oracle maybe you want a chain link whatever it may be right just so we could again service or

I guess provide our protocols with the resources that they really need to succeed and um that's basically what what I do around here right it's um and I'll say it's the best uh I wake up every day with a smile on my face so I thoroughly enjoy the work that I do which I think is a is is something very important if you will um you know I've been in positions where I've just you know there to collect the paycheck and you know go by the time I guess you could say until you know you find something that you really like and you know to my point before like I went into college not know what I was what I want to do came out of college not knowing what I was wanting to do like I sold Windows Telecom the whole nine yards like just being just

the typical you know shitty salesman if you will but um but no I feel like you know I found that the the industry that I want to work in and definitely I don't see myself moving out of this this whole crypto space uh you know defy whatever you want to call it like anytime soon I want to help the industry grow as a whole um and I want to be you know an influential part of that and um you know I'm very excited to do it I think that all of us um who have like really dedicated our careers and like really like realistically the ones that stick around for at least one uh bear cycle but like probably a lot of people get shaken out of their second bear cycle as well I mean this is my first one just to be clear but

um anyway I just like you have to I do think it's a very common experience that um like I never was excited about work before ever same likewise I was literally excited about the future you know it just kind of felt like the world like was falling apart around me and like we're managing a decline and like it you know like the existential dread if you will right yeah and it's just like best case scenario where like I guess like managing climate change in a world that is like just getting more and more like crowded and polluted and unequal you know and I don't really think that um crypto addresses any of the things I

just pointed out necessarily actually at all but um I do think that like what crypto provides is this like vibrant space where you're like seeing the future change in front of you and like walk and seeing the world as it could be and then like just feeling like so driven to contribute to that that's a that's a very fair point and just to build on that too right we live in the United States of America and a lot of our uh leaders if you will um legislative leaders only think about cryptocurrency from the lens of the United States of America it's like only in America it's nowhere else but again that can be you know further from the truth it is a worldwide industry and many many people benefit from uh from it right like um you know you can get an

airdrop that you know if you're living in a third world country it'll change your life right it's um that's the type of of of cool [ __ ] if you will that I I that kind of keeps me driving right it is this worldwide cohort that everybody's kind of working towards the same right I hop on a call with somebody from France I have a call with somebody from Hong Kong everybody's very happy to you know be there to chat kind of all you know talk the same have the same type of you know I ideas things of that nature so it's it's you know they call ethereum the world's computer right and it's it's like it really is to be honest yeah no I I mean well I think I think that um you in order to dedicate your life to this space you need to have been

betrayed by like the traditional system in some way and like in some way that was pretty violent and like showed you that like what you were told is not how it works um that was the 2008 financial crisis for me yeah yeah and you know we I I was I graduated in high school in 2009 so like honest to me like that for me it might as well not have happened like fortunately like I come from a family that like was able to weather it without like making it known to me you know and then like I just went to college for the hard years you know like um but you know I like I have a like a few things that did but like the one

that's just like so clear to me is um so my fiance is Russian like born in Russia moved here when she was 15 not speaking English um and like her whole family still lives in Moscow like and I've been experiencing like Financial sanctions for the first time you know but you know I just I think to be in this space is to be um like betrayed and like definitely International pilled in a way that's like not typical in this country and it's just so funny to hear you because I totally agree with you um I was talking to someone on this podcast um a few episodes ago and I made a comment they got interested in crypto because they their brother went and

studied abroad and he found Nano to make crypto transfers to him and my comment was that's so cool that you figure like you actually got into crypto for a real use and not just rampant speculation and his comment was like yeah but like I think that's like a pretty American perspective because like it's only in America that this doesn't have real use where everywhere else it's like kind of muted and so like also on this podcast the episode that came out today which will be last week for um when this comes out but was with Reserve protocol which were like doing stuff on chain which is cool but like what's way cooler is they have like I think hundreds of thousands of people in Latin America like using their app to store their wealth in like

Argentina and Colombia in reserve RSV it's like a stable coin that is farming curve dollars like that is crazy that's cool man that's cool I know and so I just think it's so American to just just feel like um we have we have any say in this I know right and to my point before like it's not it's not an American industry and there's like actual people use it for actual [ __ ] like and like I had mentioned Tron before I was one of my first um you know first uh at my first uh job in the crypto industry but you know there's there's try the Tron network is cheap to transact on and I know a lot of a lot of folks in other countries use it to send to just send

money to Across the you know whether to be or even to just like do regular Commerce in their in their town uh versus like a very extremely inflated um you know I guess a native currency if you will and um so yeah I guess you're in in that sense you're right like we're a little pampered here in the in the case of uh actual like real use case because you know we have built down infrastructure and the dollar and things of that nature but there are you know there are people around the world that are actually using this stuff for for like real serious things yeah yeah and I just um I think like I really believe that we have passed the Rubicon and I don't know if it was when at the merge or even before that but like ethereum is now inevitable and like the decision

that the United States makes is like to our like benefit or our detriment but like the reality is is like ethereum is inevitable and like look man like I hold it for utility reasons like I um and two uh the during the January 6 when I was I was on the phone with Wells Fargo uh Wealth Advisors happened to be on the phone with them to talk to about moving my wealth of like money over and the capital's under attack and so what the thought that goes in my head is like I need to know that if I move over to you that within four years I can have at least 10 of my net worth in another country I don't know if I need to find an apartment in France I don't know like

whatever but like I like I need to know that if I need to leave here it's gonna be okay you know someone of Jewish Heritage like it's scary here you know no no it's a weird time here man it really is and so like crypto is a real answer for like I don't worry about that anymore like if I need to go to Mexico tomorrow like I I don't need anything you know and I say I say that too right like um uh I don't have a fiance or white but I'm a very long time girlfriend who eventually that's my plan yeah but yeah we've been going on for like 10 years now so it's quite a while uh but um but um but no I have the same thought like if I if like if what if they make it

like you know if it's illegal to work in crypto in the states like I'm not I've got no choice but to them Dubai or Singapore that's my question that's my only question Singapore yeah both honestly Alex not a bad one either uh there's a couple different places that you can get like permanent residency but you always got to pay the tax man man no matter what the only country that does it's the most ridiculous ludicrous thing of all time yeah well you know I don't know pick one and then buy a Riyadh anyway I was gonna say really all right man um before we wrap up um you know as we discussed like I really didn't want this to be a like podcast about like the projects I wanted this to be about like you and your story and um and you know just about like the

people that are here but um with the last couple of minutes I definitely want to just like give you a platform to like show whatever you want to show about arbitrum and like to like anyone that wants to build on it and just like say anything that you want to say because man I know that you're passionate about it and I know that it's like um or Genuine for you so I appreciate that I'm not gonna show anything what I'm gonna say is that if you want it and if you want to work in the crypto industry man there's plenty of different avenues that you can go do so in uh whether it's like you were actually starting uh you know a podcast or you know being a BD at a at a small protocol and working your way up um this is an industry with very low

barrier to entry if you will versus you know being a financial advisor at Wells Fargo right um and oh that's really though and um it's it's I'm not going to say it's easy because it's not you're gonna have to work hard for sure however if you want it um that the taking is there for for or I guess that whatever that term is I forgot but it's uh it's there for the taking if you will and um so please uh you know if it is your passion do pursue it uh you know I've never regretted it once in my life I don't think I will um you know I've been rugged a million times and I you know I still don't regret it I I you know I take it as it is but uh again you know it's um the barrier to entry is low and uh you know

if you want it there's various different ways that you can go get it and I'll leave that then awesome man no um great message and yeah I mean I think and I think like it's about wanting it and it's about like believing in what we're doing and like the people that like get rugged and like hate it and walk away or the ones that are here for the wrong reasons so exactly exactly so yeah cool man thank you so much so uh where can we find you socials uh socials at Island underscore uh Westlake and that's literally a island Westlake all right man thank you so much have a great uh rest of your day and yeah just man thanks for joining the Pod cheers Rex I appreciate it man thank you