Building the Perfect Crypto Ecosystem in 2024 | Keone & Smokeythebera

Transcript

there's a lot of people who like yell from rooftops and like look at my X or Y partnership but I I ultimately think that like the applications and and the numbers and the users tend to tell the real story have The Virtuous cycle going it won't necessarily always be going at the speed you know of at which like the monad community or the monads repute grew like right after a fund raise for example if you're doing the right things if you have the right principles then when you go through that boost you are really able to take advantage of it hey everyone we all know blockchain is changing the world but who who actually driving it I'm excited to invite you to the sixth edition of Meridian a web 3 conference hosted by the Stellar development foundation in London from October 15th through 17th get early bird

tickets at meridian. stellar.org with code block Works pod special thanks to Stellar for sponsoring us now let's get into today's episode everyone knows there's a massive shortage of top senior marketers in crypto and teams are constantly struggling to get their go to market done right that's why we're excited to have partnered up with Renault Partners the premier go to market advisory firm for early stage crypto teams get in touch with their team by heading on over to re nud partners.com or giving the co-founder Jeff of follow on X check out the links in the description below hey everyone Jason here have you ever wanted to play casino games with your friends right

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and Q4 which was an offchain signature attack to learn more about Harpy click the link in the show notes or visit Harpy doio Empire all right everyone welcome back to Empire we got a little Casual Friday morning Community Building chat with two of the goats Keon uh from manad Smokey from bear chain so ke Smokey welcome to Empire guys yeah thanks for having us cheers man that was good to be here yeah I guess I should say welcome back um okay so there's a I actually want to do this a little differently than most of the pods you guys have been on there are a lot of podcasts uh that you both been on talking about the technical aspects of why you know manad is better or bear chain is better and proof of liquidity

and paralyzation all that kind of good stuff and uh we can link those in the show notes I don't want to talk about any of that actually I would like to talk about Community Building um ecosystem BD uh just the general development of like the L1 L2 ecosystem um so I thought it'd be fun to start with a question about the other person actually so Smokey I think I'll pick on you for this for this first one how would you describe the monad community relative to Bear chain yeah for sure ma'am um I think generally they seem like a pretty uh inviting and and welcoming Bunch um I think that there's like a pretty interesting um focus or encouragement around like it seems like content creation and like sort of like funky art and visuals um they've got

like their own you know swath of of mascots of various animals and and uh like reptilian creatures among other things that would appear um so I think there's like there's a kind of fun vibe there um that that seems to been built it feels I think when I when I think about it like in perspective to the beain community a little bit more like um like what's the right word it feels a little bit like more friendly to to the point of like hey like this is like you know um welcoming in in a sense that can be seen as desirable by some and perhaps less by others if they're like more like crunchy jaded CT natives um I think that on the other hand like when I think about the bear chain Community um there's definitely some folks who are like pretty wagy and and a little bit

more like Mones in that manner and then I feel like there's a little bit heavier waiting to where it's like the edge Lords or like the guys who are just perhaps a little bit more mentally ill um that might be my my initial impression um and then I think that uh the other thing that I think about a bunch is like there seems to be a good lore being developed like you know good um like like good back stories existing within the various characters in those communities and I think that they do a lot in terms of like um I'm not sure whether it's like telegram oriented or Discord oriented like missions or quests to like you know sort of engage in certain things and like help produce X or Y forms of content um probably in in in combination with different strategic initiatives in the community so it feels

like a well-coordinated group K same question but inverse for you yeah I think that um the be chain Community uh also have a ton of respect for be chain community and what the team has done to help cultivate that and then the contributions that the different individuals within the be chain Community um for sure have have made to help um you know really really put the community on the map and really make the the community kind of famous um I agree with that characterization I think the The Branding of um bar chain seems to be

a little bit more um bear oriented that sounds really dumb to say but just like there's there's more of a a single coherent theme of like okay bears and then honey and then I don't know what other things related to that um so maybe it's like a little bit easier for people to riff off of like just other things that are related to bears um whereas I think for the monad community lore it's maybe initially started a little bit more randomly with um just a character that someone uploaded that then kind of like through Community curation like rose to the top and ended up taking up more and more mind share

and then so the the lore has developed a little bit randomly and organically but I don't it's probably true for for everything so I don't know yeah just there's there's more new characters being created within the monad um story verse let's say in my in my view you know a lot of what we talk about here is community and culture how would you define that that's a good question man um I think it comes from a number of different aspects um on one hand it is you know what is like the first thing that that people think about when they think about like you know your brand or or your chain if you will it's like what is that instinctual feeling um I do think a lot of it is is you know

that um oddly psychologically driven portion of it it's like oh how does this you know brand or Community or group make me feel um I think the culture is is also sort of endemic to that in terms of like okay how does this make me feel and what does this make me want to do right or what is broadly encouraged is it encouraged for people to you know hang out with each other to you know try to better each other is it encouraged for people to [ __ ] post and like copy past and like make memes and like [ __ ] around and find out um is it encouraged for people to you know like just be absolute you know violence on the internet like what is that that Baseline um and I guess that you know the way that we think about a lot is how do you

build a culture that that feels authentic and and real um and how do you build something where you know it can be approachable from a number of other audiences and but also like malleable over time right so I think that like in many cases we've tried to stay true to to our roots or our origins of like you know we we try to be fairly competent in the work that we do um but we also try not to be serious because I think that being over serious um is is one of the biggest turnoff and I think that when I approach and then see a lot of these um other L1 and L2 ecosystems of the past uh there's been many times where they actually um sort of like leave people with this feeling of like belittlement almost right or it's like you are not

good enough to understand X or Y you know this is not a space for you right um so I think that there's a a degree of authenticity that comes a lot with like building effective community and culture it's like hey we are not manipulating you guys to to perform X or Y actions we're not trying to farm you guys we are going to try to build X or Y things that seem interesting as a whole and we're going to try to build a culture of Excellence around building cool [ __ ] while having a good time right and I think that that um has probably been how we think about culture and Community the most um and then when it comes to community I feel that's a series of like you know little ripples um where you sort of like you know help plant seeds

for a little while um but you don't actually want to have a heavy hand in that you kind of just want to like give people ideas or you kind of just want to like talk about what an ideal end world might look like and if people resonate with those ideas and some of them might rise to the occasion and say hey we're going to go and run this right like for us I think a lot of the stuff that is actually thought of as being done by the foundation for Bear chain um is actually just product of a bunch of randoms in the community who've been around for a couple years and said hey I'm going to take matters into my own hands whether that is the app Builders whether that's stuff like the Honey Jar which is like a community initiative that's evolving into like a super teames structure

that's you know helping with a whole bunch of ecosystem work and grants and exposure for different projects and Community Resources or whether that's you know even more targeted initiatives like the bar Bates like I wish I could say that I played a role in in helping manufacture any of these things but in most cases I just you know bounced around ideas with folks and said hey this sounds kind of cool or this sounds pretty cursed maybe we don't do that and Tred to provide guard rails and then it just sort of turns into a set of organic interactions where people hopefully help each other and and have a good time while doing so the counter to maybe the openness Smokey is one of the best ways to build a brand is to say who you're not for I think and to like almost make it

exclusive at the beginning and it kind of compounds from there so if uh like I think anatol and Raj did a really good job of this at salana it was like chewing glass and it's and you know they would openly say look it's really freaking hard to build here we don't want everyone nine out of 10 people aren't cut out to build on salana now it's more open now that's not the message but in the early days that was the message um I'm curious how you guys think about like building for a really targeted set of of people and then eventually you have to open it up yeah I think that's that's a good point there is definitely uh um I mean there's a lot of ways to think about it you could think of it as like bulking and cutting Cycles um and so you

know maybe there's some periods where um the the right thing to do is to to be more exclusive to be um I I see a lot of early communities now starting to trying to start off by creating this ER of exclusivity like oh we we just opened our Discord for 10 minutes and anyone who got in is in but now you can't get in um that that kind of thing I I think there is a potential issue where now that everyone's trying to do that it might not be nearly as effective um and then also the actual experience in the Discord or in whatever like um gated community like it actually

needs to be something that's valuable to people otherwise it just it will end up fizzling out so I I think that the idea of building Community ultimately has to be about um giving like trying to create an environment that the people enjoy being in and trying to offer value to the community members and you know sometimes the like one one requirement actually for the community being a pleasant place to be in is um is gating the entry in some way um mostly so that spammers don't get in and just send a bunch of GMS and ask a bunch of

repetitive questions just to try to like Farm engagement and so that's that's I think also increasingly becoming a problem um for new projects in the space is like sort of filtering out the the signal from the noise um it's almost like the um I forgot what it's called like the vanishing point or something um a while ago I was and this is a little bit of a tangent but you know like the the it's getting hard it gets harder and harder for um just a thought that I had for crypto startups to like hire Engineers over time because over time more and more of the job applicants will be North Koreans and so like to have to sort through that number of like uh potentially malicious

people it becomes a higher and higher burden over time and kind of in the same way like when you're building a community it gets actually harder and harder over time because there are more and more Bots that are going to kind of like swarm and overwhelm you and there's zero cost to the bot operators to run all these bots so they're going to definitely swarm more and more um and gating the community or having some level protection to make the community a pleasant environment plus actually being very thoughtful about like what it is that people actually you know what benefit people are getting from being in the community those two things together are really important for growing an early Community we're in that state of the market where like every cycle people come out and say we have too much infro

why do we need competing l1s why do we need other ecosystems why don't we just double down on what's existing and obviously you guys disagree with that I mean you go out you're building your own um how much of how much of the builders that you're attracting um are very mercenary is like very profit seeking and one do you care two what can you do about that and and like does it matter um for you guys right yeah good question man I think this actually ties in a little bit to what to what Yano asked earlier um in that like I think that in toi and Rod

saying hey you guys are going to have to eat glass you guys are going to have a horrible time here I think that actually creates like a like a high pass filter like a higher barrier for entry and the best goal there really is to se like self- select for the people who are going to be able to go the distance right um crypto is famously problematic in terms of incentives when it comes to long and and short termism if you will and probably weighs a lot heavier towards that short-termism at the moment um and I think that there's certain things that one can encourage within their messaging within um coms and within incentive programs that the the chain mechanism level or the foundation level um to do your best like avoid said mercenary counterparties right and there's a number of dead giveaways in many cases um because but what you're

really trying to create is on one hand um a degree of like loyalty and Allegiance I think and and um a willingness to take a concentrated bet uh and on the other hand I think a degree of vendor lockin as cursed as that might sound but I don't think it's actually entirely inaccurate right you think about the slot in web to is there a way that one can increase switching costs but is there a way that one can actually drive enough value so you know the protocol is building around you to actually make that increasing switching cost if you will worthwhile for that protocol such that it's not a you know antagonistic relationship um and for us I think that there's a couple things that we do to ensure that we you know avoid mercenary Builders um one is I think that we try to be very diligent in

our processes when it comes to you know understanding the backgrounds and uh the previous work of folks that we've that we're working with within the ecosystem um and I simply think that just doing a little bit of homework can reveal a lot of information on what people have or have not been involved in the past uh which can definitely pay some dividends and avoid some grenades um I think on the other hand we don't run any Grant programs and we think that the vast majority of Grant and incentive programs of that sort are quite toxic um and more than anything attract these mercenary farmers and Builders and in the same way as K was talking about Bots um there's a very similar sense of like you know bot Builders of sorts who are just like you know spitting up really shitty uni V2 and av3 forks at Max Speed to try to

farm grants across every ecosystem without a developed you know set of Primitives um so I think that you know one of the the easiest things that you can do is simply be very upfront into that messaging and then also to have like a very like um you know rationally skeptical view on a lot of Builders I think that what that leads to at the end of it all is actually just a focus on net new applications because I would say that the majority of mercenaries are not always building something that is net new um certainly some are like very competent and they're saying hey I'm building something that you've never seen before you know pay me to come here and build this and we'll go to whoever bids the most for us um but I do think that what actually happens at that point is that if you can you know help

convince that person that maybe as opposed to taking a short-term is more mercenary mindset on this that there's an opportunity to really make it something generational or something that is you know category defining and and to go along on it then I think it is possible to turn mercenaries into missionaries I think ideally you just find missionaries in the first place right but that's sort of been our internal thinking on this front ke would love to hear your thoughts on that also K I'd love to hear you passed over this comment about uh trying to avoid North Koreans so would love like one second of commentary on that but also would love your response to santi's question yeah sure thing um yeah maybe just to explain that a little a little bit further um I think there's yeah this

is a specific comment about you know when you're hiring solidity Engineers um you know they're definitely um there been a a a number of uh notable in idents in the in the space where a team hired someone who was either an on or maybe they they they weren't an on but like they portrayed themselves to be um like I don't know in in another country they couldn't like turn on their camera or they couldn't couldn't travel in to interview um and then there actually was like some sort of attack on the protocol months later after things launched I think munchables

was like a good examp of that um and when I say North Korean that's kind of like a that's a maybe lazy phrase but you know just in general like someone who is trying to infiltrate a company to like insert a back door in some way um and I just think over time there's there's sort of more and more of these resumés floating around or more and more automated submission of of these resumés to job postings um becomes harder and harder for um folks to sift through all of that there are definitely a lot of telltale signs um in the past I've written about this on Twitter um you know that how to spot a quote

unquote North Korean um software developer applicant um so I think there are ways to like train oneself to like just a have the right set of questions to ask um but it is definitely becoming a higher burden or like just more and more overhead for folks espe especially hiring certain roles especially solidity Engineers um to deal with yeah I guess back to santi's question like who do you think of when you think of the ideal person to come build in monad ke like do you ever meet someone you're like honestly you should go build in like salana or bar chain or movement or SE or Avalanche or something else or or are you like look we're come one come all come all yeah that's an interesting

question um it's it's very much come one come all I do think that I agree with Smokey's point about how um you know a lot of the the grant farming developers are sort of proposing to build something that's very similar to something that already exists um and I think anyone that's trying to build something that's very unique very differentiated um there's just no there's no problem with that at all it just like you know there's there's different spectrums of aggressiveness in terms of like how speculative of an application um a team is is willing to build like

some people are very focused on things where the the path to the story of like how this is going to be a very useful app is very easy to understand like a very straight path but it's also probably because it's more similar to like other things that have come before that have been successful and then there are other ideas that are just more much more inherently speculative in nature and yeah I think that I'm definitely excited about some of those more speculative ideas because I think that's what the space needs is just a much broader um you know diversity of of of efforts and that's how we ultimately get apps that can cross the chasm to mass

adoption before we go a little because I want to spend a whole section on like ecosystem and stuff like that there there's one thing I want to talk about before moving into that which is is founder brand building instead of just like the brand of manad and the brand of barain how do you guys think about just your personal brand um and like striking this balance between dgen and professional like K I feel like you you're brand like you come across very like levelheaded cool-headed balanced Savvy engineer like Smokey a little more like d gen like fun like memes things like that like how do you guys think about striking that balance yeah I guess I I think about it a lot in

um in terms of like you know how does it resonate with a broader brand but also just how does it remain authentic like I don't want to ever um you know attempt to to morph myself or my Public Image into something that that is going to be misrepresentative of when people meet me IRL or when we end up chatting Etc um I think that it's been an interesting tool for us though because I think a lot of people um especially going into this next little while have very high expectations probably for for both teams here um and I think that on the other hand what's been kind of nice is that there's a lot of people that just sort of rode off bar chain from the start because they're just like okay there's a bunch of bears and like these guys are Anonymous and like what the [ __ ] is

going on like this looks really stupid and it has a name like bear chain which is meant to induce stupidity um so like I think that there's very much a a set of folks that um you know thinks like hey if I talk to these guys they're going to be clowns and and I I don't mind that actually because I think I'd much rather have that contrast or that cognitive dissonance and hopefully not come off as a clown when I chat with these folks um and it's been a an interesting recurring theme sometimes when we have a conversation with people that you know have only other ever seen Us online or perhaps who have like you know not just STG in too much um and on one hand that can backfire spectacularly if that becomes the dominant narrative on the other hand it's something where I

think that um if enough people sort of see these Network effects forming and keep on asking themselves hey like why are all my friends who I respect and who I think are competent you know excited about or backing or building on bechain um then I think it actually leads to a really interesting set of like um you know what the [ __ ] moments where people are like I I'm confused by this and I'm interested in this and therefore I wish to learn more so I guess when I think about like founder brand I I I try to keep it as real as possible um while also being responsible to where it's you know barain as a whole right I'm not going to go off on on unhinged tangents for no good reason but I'm also not going to try to um make myself seem like

a suit when I'm relatively far from the such I've definitely um had those interactions with people ask me they know I'm an investor in like fa chain and they're like there's there's very polarizing views not so much for monad I think uh but especially for bear bear chain people are like this is like the next Tera how you know how like why is it that you're pushing it like why do you like about it uh I think in part it people don't understand like proof of liquidity and you know they do you think that well I agree with with everything you guys are saying that sometimes you want to create like a high barrier to be self- selecting for people that are

serious people that are committed on on the other hand it um it may present like a a roadblock in attracting other investors or attracting where people might just rule you out and you know it is a very competitive landscape um I think both of you guys have a healthy vibrant kind of startup ecosystem of projects building I've met a few on monat I met and invested in a number in bar chain as I have in other ecosystems um I'm I'd like to like double click on this like is there a particular founder that you guys think that you're

not attracting that you would like to attract but it's just been difficult because of how you position the protocol of how you position like what you're looking for um and and and is there something that you guys think that has been very beneficial to the success that you've had so far in attracting Builders I mean I would just say that it's it's hard as a as a new founder to you know attract the resources that are needed to um you know grow the product further build the build the team further um it's hard because you're

also um competing for mind share but nobody really knows you they don't know what um yeah like for most people they they don't like start out with a a significant Twitter following or something and and then they're building a company from like building a team building a company from scratch and learning all of the lessons of um yeah of uh creating a startup from nothing creating culture like figuring out how to hire figuring out how to like what they can compromise on uh making the first hire is honestly like the hardest thing in my opinion because you're starting at a time when you have

no uh like credibility or or resources you don't really have a lot of money and then you're you're trying to get real the like absolute best person because that getting that first or second or third really good person on the team then help set a really high bar which then makes easier to recruit more good people so you're kind of you know like you have to figure out what you can compromise on um and find a diamond in the rough in some way um but then also you've never for most people like they've never done that before so they don't actually know like what to look for either um and I think in traditional Tech the startup Journey could last like several years um before like you know

starting to get bigger and raise more money and um and and the team sizes are quite small in the early days whereas I feel like in crypto everything is spedrun so you know people are expecting that you I I don't know it's just that everything is faster but you're but the learnings still have to be kind of the same so the learnings have to happen a lot faster when it comes to founder brand how much of it and I I mean this question of the most respected uh respectable way to you guys how much of it is because of you and like what you've done on Twitter and building the community verse like oh man manad just raised hundreds of millions of dollars

therefore keone is someone we have to follow therefore keone gets a lot of followers which then gets VC's more excited which that right there's this kind of virtuous flywheel that happens and I think Smokey the same could be said with bar chain because you guys are very hyped up people like you guys but like the the tier one VC is invested and it creates this kind of Big Brand building flywheel I guess like maybe with the audience in mind of like a founder of an L1 or an L2 or or an app that hasn't really taken off as much like what what would your advice be to them to do like both brand building and founder brand building yeah um I think a lot a lot of it like comes down to just having something to believe in um I know that

sounds kind of corny but I believe that there's like a non-trivial element of Truth there right um and going back to a little bit of like what was saying I think that there's very much something to be said about like like attracts like right it's one of the oldest laws in chemistry but it's also one of those things where you know good talent attracts good talent differentiated interesting creative Builders attract differentiated interesting creative Builders right um and I also do think that the space is so small at the moment in terms of like actual vetted leads or addressable market in terms of people who are actively using crypto knowledgeably on a day-to-day basis and people who are actively trying to build in crypto um that in many cases if you think of yourself or if your your brand your community your network as a set of

nodes um if you do have a few strong nodes right whether that's people like Sati advocating for us or you know other friends spring the good word it sort of ends up you know getting in a lot of the right places at the right times right I think of it as like you know those those branching Network effects um and a lot of it does come back to that brand like like you were saying y know um I think on on one hand like definitely like the hype cycle plays into it and people are like oh my God lots of VC money raised like something something air drop drop Yahoo like let's let's go farm the [ __ ] out of this and engage and and you know do our best to find free money um I also think that more recently it's definitely created an angrier faction if you will

of folks who are like ah scam VC chain like bad like you know money bad go away I hate you VCS are gonna dump on me and I I understand that that too right um I don't think it's like an irrational Viewpoint um I also do think that that comes from a history of like lots of l1s that have raised an Unholy amount of money um or l2's that matter and then ended up with like a ghost chain and and a pretty dead ecosystem with nothing for these users to actually engage in so I understand like the PTSD there so when I go back to your actual question there like you know founder brand building Community brand building I think it's it's giving people Something to Believe In that is real and and backing it up with evidence and empirical facts right it's not just hey look at this ecosystem

I promise there's so many sick Builders here I promise it's going to be great like you don't want to sound like a SoundCloud rapper you you want to be able to demonstrate like proof of shi done right um I think that's why for us we do our best to to really help support projects that are building stuff that we think have a chance at adoption and it's it's so like funny especially with this like consumer crypto wave that's happened recently it's like people suddenly woke up and realized that we need things that people want to use which you know maybe seems a little bit more logical on its face and like incredibly obvious that I'm just like you know it's it's almost insane to me that we're calling a consumer crypto when it's just like okay crypto that people want to use in some manner um and I think that being

able to help encourage more products that um ultimately solve a problem or like make people's lives better in some Manner and then showing how that translates back to your brand or your community that sort of helped enable that in the first place um is is kind of the way to go about it right it's like how do you become the Melting Pot or like that that launch pad that you know cool things come out of and I think that certain communities and certain ecosystems have like temporarily captured that lightning in the B in the past like I think there was one point to which you know you would see cool new stuff Liv living on arbitrum to start right and that was just like the playground that was a test ground that was where all the cool new like spicy ideas came out of um I think we're

seeing a whole bunch of it on base right now I think the bigger question is how do you keep momentum how do you maintain inertia and how do you keep that ball rolling such that it isn't like a six-month Flash in aan but rather um it's something that you know has a continuous stream of hits one after the other after the other and maintains attention ke effect we mentioned earlier right um so like I I think that it comes down to authenticity I think it comes down to clear messaging and I think it comes down to like you know evidence that the work is being done because I think that there's a lot of people who like yell from rooftops and like look at my X or Y partnership but I I ultimately think that like the applications and and the numbers and the users tend to tell

the real story yeah from my perspective like the three startups that I've invested in the Bara ecosystem I asked him like he like why why are you building on be chain and I think all of them seem to appreciate the novelty of proof of liquidity and how that can be pretty interesting from a you know yield standpoint and um just alignment standpoint um and similarly I think for monad when I you know I've met a few startups that are building there and um they seem to appreciate kind of the the benefits of but Mo even though like there are other perhaps competitors

around you was paralyzation kind of concept and the biggest question that I ask is like why not go and build on salana like you're taking for both of these chains you're taking timing risk right this might be a next cycle kind of thing you could be building in salana today um there's a particular startup that you introduced me to that like has was building on salon and decided to just you know take the risk and build on on monad so I I'm curious um you know for you guys like how much of the positioning is we're different from ethereum in this way and we're different than salana in this way um or how much of it is this is what

we stand for because a lot of times you can you can like attract people that have been perhaps frustrated in certain other environments and say we're different by being you know I guess like different differentiation by like um you know telling people what you don't stand for versus something that you're just truly kind of you know novel in some ways uh like contrarian for the sake of being contrarian versus like standing on something very unique um so going backward to something earlier that that you said um which I I think is like a question about um differentiation and brand and founder brand like there's a lot of

value in like getting people's attention maybe being a little bit more controversial um and that's never really been my Approach it's always just been trying to give like you know say what I think and and and just have be like sort of Common Sense driven and then also stay out of it like if I don't have a unique opinion so there is you know one thing that happens is like basically Al crypto Twitter is like um you know it it it is a little bit of you know to a certain extent it's for entertainment like it's it's how we all like keep up with what's going on but there's there's a competition for attention and something will happen and

then immediately there's like a whole bunch of posts or threads or whatever about in response to that and what there's sort of a strategy for like growing one's Twitter account which is to like immediately go respond to that with something um and I've just never person like wanted to do that because it just unless I had a really unique take or something that that actually like made me laugh and I'm not that funny so I can't can't really do that um so I think that at least for for me like it's just about like trying to share unique insights when I have them and as I've had gotten more and more experience like building a startup and so on then I do have like something that I can share

with with other people I think would be valuable and so I try to like tweet more about that share more about that um but no matter where you know one is in their startup journey and no matter like how well known one's project is like there's always still an opportunity to like grow the snowball a little bit and get the um you know have The Virtuous cycle going it won't necessarily always be going at the speed you know of at which like the monad community or the monads like uh repute grew like right after a fund raise for example but it's like if you're constantly making progress then every now and then like you get a boost

like it's like in Mario Kart where you go through the you know the little like booster um square and then you you get a boost and if you're doing the right things if you have the right principles um then when you go through that boost you are really able to take advantage of it um so so all of that is just to say like I'm not I think it's it's possible to overthink it also there's so many other things going on like there's you know we're posting on Twitter but we're also trying to grow our teams we're also like working on product we're also like strategizing around lot of other things that are going on so it's possible to over index on like the brand building and I think it's better to just sort of do something that's natural that is like consistent

with who we really are and then you know like people tend to respect authenticity and if anything like the the thing to tweak would just be like the frequency of tweeting because like if you're not sharing anything people can't really respond to that so that that's like the only thing that I would say is like an intentional like just try to like push the button a a little bit more maybe let's shift a little from Brand to BD for a second there's like I big BD week on Twitter this week um smokey I think I'll throw this first question to you like can you there's a highlevel kind of esoteric conversation you can have about what BD means but can

you actually go really micro and like as tactical as possible I'd love to hear just how be chain thinks about BD you guys hired um that guy Jack who's great obviously and like like like what is he doing on a daily basis what are you doing on a daily basis are you like cold dming people that you find on GitHub are you cold dming founders of projects and other ecosystems that might not being like be doing as well like like what do you actually what what is BD inside of one of these big l1s that's a that's a fun one man yeah it's been a big week for the BD guys on Twitter they're having a moment um and like just to preface this I think my my take and I you know yapped into the the void on Twitter about this yesterday

that it's like mostly all [ __ ] right now if you ask me um and I I just simply say that because I've seen a lot of cases in the past look at the blast ecosystem where like there are a whole bunch of people who are like yep can't wait to do this on blast can't wait to go live token price crater you know half the teams are dipping to other chains there's literally like the meme coin of the ecosystem going of salana like you know [ __ ] happens at launch right so I think that on one hand you can make the very best plans on on launch and on having a strong ecosystem um but there's also a world in which you get punched in the face despite best efforts if the market says like [ __ ] this now I think the the more productive Viewpoint there

is if you do a good enough job the market shouldn't punch you in the face but you know macro is macro so I try to be self on that front um in terms of the work that we do on the BD team I think that there's a few different angles um I think that the focus number one is always you know trying to identify projects that um have something you know incredible going for them something that really breaks the mold on one hand sometimes that is just a Founder that just absolutely has that dog in them and like you know that no matter what they do they'll you know run through walls like not to be corny but they'll just they'll just do what it takes to win and those are very few and far in between but I think when you find them you you

know you bet on them and you do everything you can to help them win and enable them right not in an unfair manner but just like if there's things you can teach them if there's knowledge you can impart if there's introductions you can make for them you you do what you can there right on the other hand sometimes there are just amazing ideas that require refinement and it's like okay you guys have a lot of the right pieces of the puzzle here and you have the right skeleton um but you just need to like rearrange a little bit to to make it actually able to walk uh and that's another thing that I think we spend a lot of time doing it's like hey this product actually has great legs but I don't think you're telling the story correctly here's some way that you know

it might be a little bit easier for people to grock it um so I wouldn't say that it's as much like cold calling and and dming I think at this point luckily the team is is pretty well networked and um you know has a way of of getting to a lot of different folks um it's on one hand talking to our different investors and our different friends and community members and saying hey what's cool stuff you're seeing what do we think would fit nicely in the ecosystem nowadays with like you know a couple hundred projects and change building in the be chain ecosystem there's a lot of like flywheels like form there by themselves and folks saying hey my friend heard that I was building here and I want to come build here as well we're live on testnet like you know can you guys help

us with this or that you know can you help us solve this problem with deployment so that's part of the equation as well um on the other hand it's us saying in a more opinionated manner like hey these are a few things that we think can be absolutely massive in the future how do we get ahead of that and how do we make sure that you know there's ideas that that represent this concept on be chain nice and early right how do we make sure that we are not uh you know simp simply chasing a narrative but rather helping to Define it ahead of time and and I do think that that you know even going back to some of your earlier questions man is is a thing that's super important right like if you're building a brand if you're a Founder if you're um some early stage

team um it's important to think about how does one not just subscribe to an existing narrative but how do you actually help you know craft or create a new narrative and help you know further the metag game um and I think that that becomes really cool and that's something that we try to like work with teams on so how do you tell your story in a manner that's both authentic um and and new but not new just for the sake of it but new because it truly is that right and I think that just means you have to have a very high filter um I think the other side that like this really comes down to is is thinking about the different uh aspects of an ecosystem that need to work together well right so you know bar chain has of course a large focus on on liquidity um

so of course thinking about different ways that there are applications that could bring lots of tvl into the ecosystem um even though I don't think tvl is as robust of a metric as it once was in the past it's a question of how do you make sure there's enough ambient Capital floating around to make sure that you know people are actually able to to transact as they they desire um and then I think increasingly increasingly important over the last few months it's been how do you actually think about distribution there are so many chains that have you know uh like you know dozens perhaps let's say of applications um and maybe hundreds of users or let's say thousands of users that that are there um and that ratio doesn't often end up working out really well like you need to find a way to get

your applications your content whatever it might be um in the hands of you know tens hundreds of thousands of people if there's a chance of stuff actually taking off so I think we also try to um you know figure out how we can help curate an application ecosystem that uh you know has a chance of actually attracting people whether that is you know again good ideas or you know more seamless user experiences the you can't abstraction type approaches is the telegram front ends how do you actually get something um to a point where people can use it easily and they want to use it um so you know on the on the micro scale what that really comes down to is having conversations with Founders and team members figuring out what their strategic initiatives are um figuring out what problems they need to solve

right is it hey I need a better you know way to bootstrap my own liquidity in my user base is it hey my project is you know running out of like steam just from a a narrative and thought process point of view is it hey I'm having trouble raising is it you know hey I don't know how to grow a community like what can I do here what are some things I can try I think a lot of it is just finding ways to be that that concierge or that um extension of a team in a manner that isn't short-termist again right it's not hey like let's just go throw money at you and let's just go like raise around for you I think it's a lot more hey how can we help teach you guys how to do this for yourselves um such that in the

future you're just a better team as a result of having worked with bear chain um and having you know just jumped into the ecosystem and I think you know when done correctly uh especially with the right sorts of concentrated bets that leads to a lot of like loyalty that leads to a lot of brand Affinity that leads to a lot of people who end up being you know pretty ride or die um because I think um it's it's really easy to just say you're going to do something or it's really easy to say hey we're going to throw some money at you I think it's a lot harder to say hey I'm going to make time and and effort to work with you guys on a weekly basis and to you know check in on this or that or to review different materials you're putting together and to really get your

hands dirty and have a vested interest in the success of these different protocols and I think it's also most authentically done when it's not a grift and when you're not like hey you should give me some advisor tokens from doing that like [ __ ] that um if you're helping teams in your ecosystem you should just be helping teams in your ecosystem you know like a CH I've said this quite a few times but I really do see a chain as a some of the apps that are built on top of it the chain should not be the main character you know maybe that attracts some of the hype in the first place but at the end of the day the apps are what matter um and it's our job to give them the best chance of success and actually like making it out the hood if you will

right and um I think a lot that just comes down to to putting in that time and effort and there's very few excuses or alternatives for doing so um both in the minds of myself and I think many project Founders that you know want someone who cares about what they're doing hey everyone Jason here just wanted to take a a quick break to talk about something exciting in the world of blockchain the Stellar development foundation is hosting their sixth annual Meridian conference this October 15th through 17th in London it's a 3-day event where the brightest Minds in web 3 come together to discuss everything from tokenization to defi if you're a developer Builder policy maker or

business leader looking to make an impact in transforming Global Systems through blockchain this is your chance to join the conversation you'll get to network with the forward thinkers who are defining the future of this space head over to meridian. stellar.org and use the code blockworks pod for ear bird pricing now let's get back to today's episode hey everyone we all know that there's a massive shortage of top senior marketers in crypto we've seen it over and over that teams are constantly struggling to get their go-to Market done right that's why we're excited to have partnered up with Rena Partners the premier go to market advisory firm for early stage crypto teams they help top Founders tell their stories better and

build great non-technical teams they advise Founders on all things marketing including tight brand positioning Community Building social media and building A+ internal teams don't just take it from us they work with some of the top projects across salana monad Bas and many more if you're a founder or a VC looking for support for your teams I highly recommend connecting with them get in touch with their team by heading on over to re nud partners.com or giving the co-founder Jeff of follow on X check out the links in the description below hey everyone wanted to take a second to talk about my prize the first multiplayer Casino where you can watch chat and play together with your friends

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about protecting your crypto Investments it's time to make the switch secure your wallet for free at Harpy doio Empire that's Harpy h r p ie. iempire you want it to be even easier just click the link in the show notes so a lot of this has been perhaps more philosophical discussion around culture and you know positioning and I want to I want I want you guys to take us into the future um and what is the what do the apps look like you know um what is it ecosystem look like um in a year from now um what are the breakout kind of

apps that people are using like um yeah I'm curious um from your Vantage Point like if there's anything right now that you're you're seeing that is being built that you're really excited about and you think is going to really you know if you were to surve 100 people that are using the chain they're like most of them are like using X or Y or a few apps and um yeah yeah I think maybe one um like Vision that that seems pretty clear in my head is um like WeChat like if you've ever used WeChat there's just

so many like sort of sub uh apps that are like almost embedded within the app um just to name the obvious ones like you can order food within WeChat or you can hire a handyman or you can um you can like I don't know get a courier service or you can you know just do online shopping or you can like see your friends social media like there's just so much that you can do all embedded within the super app um and I think that crypto has the potential to um basically be the backend for for this super app kind of environment because you have embedded payments like we have a

currency system already um we have an account system with that could store any kind of arbitrary data um there's like commitment schemes to um like the data could be potentially like compressed or encrypted stored off chain somewhere but then the commitment to it is stored on chain so that we have all the pieces um but it's really on us to put the pieces together and create this coherent user experience that is modular that allows new application developers to kind of plug into that um and give a really fast just like um you know very pleasing and fast user experience so I think that

when I think about that it comes down to like the user onboarding the user experience uh mobile is a huge part of it um which is why I actually feel like the the you know blasts pivot to focus on mobile does make sense to me in in in some way of course it's all about execution but I think that um yeah just like that would be that would be one very specific vision of the future that I feel has is like pretty reasonable to imagine the possibility Smokey what about you yeah um I think that I I imagine sort of a an infinite playground of sorts um and I think that

ideally that playground is as accessible as possible and has little satellite locations in every system or every city and uh you know a very smooth and and pleasing user experience for sure because I think that that's evolving over time and the bar is is going higher and higher in the space especially as like adoption of stuff like salana increases and people just get used to that nice like Snappy user experience which I think is very important um I think that for us like we've you know we've been excited to see a lot of teams just getting a little bit deeper and and growing and expanding on testnet and and getting to you know like try cool new things uh and I think that is what I what I hope for to to see continue um I think that I'd love to be able to see um

the beIN ecosystem as a place where people go to build something cool new and interesting and a very welcoming environment and where there's a lot of precedent and and Scar Tissue by like their their peers who built cool stuff in the past um you know on one hand I think the ecosystem is primarily known or was first known for like a pretty heavy D5 focus and I think there's a lot of really cool stuff in the mix over there right whether that is you know the gummy guys that allow you to you know basically borrow anything against anything else and have some very fun experiments with leverage um the conrete dudes who are building like credit default swaps on chain which can be incredibly interesting for a more sophisticated like uh you know more traditional Finance audience as well um or you know the guys like exponents who

are allowing you for the first time to effectively directionally incentivize um you know leverage trading with different tokens so you can actually use that to really like tap into some of the crypto culture and have someone saying hey like you know this is MOG versus Harry Potter Obama Sonic tanu uh pair you know I'm gonna you know bribe someone to go long on one token and go short on the other and actually like you know have those um mini social games with economic incentives playing out I think all that's super interesting um I think like I mentioned consumer has been a bit of a meme but I'm actually really excited to see some of the stuff that's like tapping into culture and feels um correct for Bear chain starting to see you know legs and I want to see more and more of those in the future so for

example there's the guys at puffa who Santi knows um and say I've invested in three startups you have mentioned a don't worry no but like they're they're amazing right these guys are are building something that uh you know is actually it's it's very um you know colloquially seen as Vape turn but it's actually a pretty interesting incentivization mechanism for people to quit smoking over time um and I actually think that is like a a superpower of crypto like Beyond even instant settlement and you know efficiency which which Taps into some other apps in the ecosystem um you know it basically means that one can use these token incentives to help enforce certain behaviors and I think the core of that is having a product that's good enough for people to use without that incentive and using that incentive to really turbo it but in

the case of puffball for example they actually incentivize people to decrease the amount of nicotine they're consuming over time with increasing token rewards and have a pretty elegant system there they're guys like over under which I know Santi loves and and I'm a big fan of as well just a Founder who very much has that dog in him um and is building the kind of you know abstracted experience that allow people to use you know computer vision approaches to actually speculate on Twitch streams um and basically automatically predict odds of various events happening in game from previous trading data I think stuff like that's super cool because you can basically go and like you know partner with the streamer and start reaching tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and hopefully even millions of people in a simple way just with like a Chrome extension right and I think that

stuff like that gets really cool because it sets a precedent for for more stuff that could actually like you know utilize crypto in a manner that isn't annoying to people um and actually you know have some advantages when it comes to instant settlement yield earning potentials Etc on chain so I I guess you know without just doing a massive bar Eco sh Fest what I what I really want to get at is like I think that we want to see cool new things continue to develop I think we want to see experiences that truly get to users um and I I would similarly agree I think there's exciting stuff happening in Mobile um and one of the areas that I haven't seen talked about as much but actually saw Peter from 1kx talking about this on Twitter recently that I think is so untapped but

is really cool is like building products for women right like this is maybe like a taboo Topic in some cases but and or just not discuss that much because I don't think crypto is always the most welcoming space for girls um I think it's been actually really enlightening to like meet more folks like the bare baddies because they're actually they're pretty cool they're they're like sharp they like what they're doing they're like you know learning more about crypto and having a good time while doing it um and when you think about it just from like a spending power point of view from like a purchasing habits point of view women really do you know drive that in the United States and in many other geographies they're the largest content producers in many cases there are guys that follow them into different habits for various motivations right like I

think the building apps that that the girlies want to use is actually like a massively untapped field um and we've got a couple of those starting to cook in the earlier stages so I actually think that like Building Products and and and sort of airing towards applications that help tap into the increasingly prevalent culture of the internet if you will while keeping like a nod towards you know crypto more like Cipher Punk Origins is really important here um and I think that's what I hope us to see hope to see the ecosyst continue doing while just like you know taking advantage of the capital efficiency the liquidity unlocks the customer acquisition cost advantages appr proof liquidity uh and staying fun right I think that if we stop being fun then we've lost it all um and I think that that's what I want to really make

sure we maintain going forward yeah we have both of you guys here you clearly these two ecosystems along others are great like beach heads to attract not just existing Builders but like the other builders that haven't bothered to think about crypto and now they will or they I mean at least that's the bet how do you think about interoperability you know maybe you know a Founder comes in starts building on monad um But ultimately like are you guys actively encouraging or facilitating interoperability to the point where I mean at the end of the day you want the app to be extremely successful espec you know and that may entail building

connectivity between other ecosystems yeah I think I care the most about just seeing the growth of the space of decentralized apps so for for me that's that is the single biggest thing um the technology that we've built at monad um basically like building a a much bigger pipeline that can support a lot more users support a lot more transactions we think that that's an unlock for a lot of users or for a lot of developers that are aspiring to mass user adoption um and if you run the numbers it doesn't take too many um daus

from like a traditional Tech perspective over that many transactions per user per day from a traditional Tech perspective to end up with a pretty high number of transactions that are needed per day relative to what you know ethereum offers right now which is like a million transactions per day um crazy low so I think that there's um there's good Synergy between like certain kinds of applications and the technology that um that we're working on that we've built but I actually am most focused on just seeing like high quality applications within the space in general and then in terms of like where people choose to build what they choose as the best back end that's almost like a secondary

consideration to me personally um and so I will do what I can as an individual to like just share learnings and try to do things that like share information share learnings that help accelerate um the space for all Builders without worrying as much about the exact where so from an interoperability perspective I think it's great that we have um you know great different bridging solutions that are helping to connect all these different environments and monad is an evm compatible layer one um it's actually really easy for um developers who built for the evm to deploy on monad or to to deploy in other environments there's not a vendor lockin um aspect

that like what Smokey was mentioning earlier yeah for sure um and I guess like to quickly add on to that from our side um I think it's imp incredibly important to have like effective inroads and out roads to an ecosystem I don't think that one should ever attempt to to constrain users I do think it's important to be able to find a way to like you know keep applications sticky because I do think that that's a meaningful portion of the problems that have played a number of other ecosystems and I guess the way that we think about that is in the the course of value alignment right tapping into proof of liquidity is you know not just necessarily a one-click process but it's hopefully one that can you know make lives better for a lot of applications and we've definitely found

it to be one of those tools that sort of answering your original questions Santi has allowed us to you know get more Builders excited because they're like oh cool like for the first time the chain can actually help power my application like it's not me you know you know just having a parasitic relationship in some manner it's this chain actually helping me succeed so I think that's been really helpful um and I think it also does help um you know Model A little bit more clearly for folks even coming from more Trad development audience and that they're like okay the infrastructure of the base plate that I'm using is improving my experience as a builder right um so I think that's been been quite good to us uh and I think for the long run like it's incredibly important to actually build a a welcoming place

but also one that ultimately recognizes some of the power laws that will exist right I do think that in in almost all ecosystems and in almost all cases to date there do tend to be these break break out applications I think that we should do everything we can to support a wide range as possible but ultimately you know I think that the striations form within those ecosystems and you want to be able to make sure that you're supporting every team but you're not neglecting those that are actually helping to drive a ton of value into the Eco as well as a followup to this point um a lot of there's there's some confusion around what success for an application looks like um you know we talked about mainstream adoption but K you said

something around it doesn't take much maybe the user current user base of crypto is one that's skes high purchasing power so you don't need a million people on chain you don't need a billion users you need maybe thousands but you know are more engaged or are because there are stakeholders in the system and or because their purchasing power is higher what I guess depends on the application but the question is like what what is that kpi when when when you think about breakout success and how do you define that for the applications being built on the ecosystem I would say it's two things number one is like you have to sort of

evaluate the application as a business as well so like how like to what extent or sorry when you're evaluating businesses there sort of two things to look for one is like the revenue or more specifically the profit profit of the business and then the other thing is the rate of growth of the business and um you know that's how companies are are valued in in the traditional space um and while not everything is the same in the crypto space like I think it's a it's a useful um framework for for reference so I think that the good news is that because um you know the amount of onchain usage is still very very limited like there are a lot of people

that are excited that love crypto that think about crypto a lot but they're the only they've never actually like set up a wallet like they only just trade crypto on centralized exchanges there's actually this huge amount of potential energy potential users um that already have like some amount of maybe alignment with the values or awareness of the memes or awareness of like what's going on that just need to be tapped into and encouraged to come on chain and um or just waiting for like the right application to um to really get them going I think that you know from looking back in the past um you know there were certain applications that absolutely

went viral that absolutely had incredible rates of growth of their user base um axi Infinity comes to mind step end comes to mind those were like I think it's fair to say like driven by Financial incentives and the speed on the way up was really aggressive and the speed on the way down was also really aggressive because there was a bit of element of like you know new users come in and buying the nfts then push the price up which then propels the economy which then causes more people to want to go jump in there but it's not like fundamentally sustainable so I'm not advocating for that rate of uh that specific mechanic but I think that you can see that when when there is

opportunity when there is something that like really goes viral you can an incredibly fast growth um and there's just so much potential it's it's really just about um having that that application that had that has inherent value that offers inherent value to the end user um so that they keep coming back rather than being purely motivated by some sort of like temporary um temporary incentive or temporary condition that maybe logic would dictate is not really going to last I'm curious I'm curious if your guys's answers overlap here um Smokey and ke who do who are the three chains that you guys end up competing with the most what but you got to let Smokey answer my

question go off Smokey go off Smokey you know what this is you'd think that Yano and I would get better over time Santi Santi we got this is who I have to deal with on a daily basis check the YouTube comments we gotta check the YouTube comments here everyone's got to go on YouTube and say who who's a better Host this episode Santi or me that's the that's question we know the answer that the patient of a saint over here I think that I I would agree with a lot of what Kon said I'd also add a couple more things in there so on one hand you know yeah like can it stand on its own feet or the does the application get inflated SL emitted to death you know without uh without weird additional incentives right that's one thing for sure you know can it be cash flow

positive very few apps in crypto are um I think part of the reason that everyone's like hyped over pump fun is because they're like oh this makes money right part of the reason people were hyped over open SE in the past like oh this makes money right um now notably no token for either of those so it becomes but different when that Dynamic is added but that's that's 100% part of it um on the other hand I also think about you know like you know total number of users because Santi you're quite right in that there's right now a very heavy skew towards uh you know more uh more enriched users but I also do think that if like crypto is ever to not be like a weird thing and if it's not to be like a thing where it's just like ah here's a

bunch of grifts and here's a meme coin the mem coins are bad like I think you do need Stu that like you know lay people can use and people actually care about if they have a couple hundred dollars or thousand dollars in their bank account or whatever it might be um I do think that becomes you know especially interesting for emerging markets and I was actually recently talking to a builder from Nigeria who is like literally if you go to the gas stations if you go to like you know train stations if you go to like anywhere in public malls people are just clicking with playing these tapto earn telegram games Non-Stop and you wanted to find a way to get those to to trigger like backend actions on different like smart contract or on different apps and I was like that's pretty funny um anyway

I think that we do need to be able to like skew towards things that actually have a chance of getting more than a small subset of users and that aren't just whale games I think two more things I add in there are are one like the user experience like you know just the feel of that application is it something that's really easy for people to onboard and get to use um you know like I think the moonshot app on salana recently is an interesting thing there right like a Robin Hood for meme coins kind of thing um and then I think another thing is like how much of a fundamental base plate is it within an ecosystem right I think like GMX is a pretty good example of this with in the ARB ecosystem you had a ton of people building Pro uh products around that right whether that

was like Delta neutr vaults or leverage products or means of like borrowing against different Primitives Etc I think all that becomes becomes quite important at scale um so really like how embedded or how much of like a foundational piece of an ecosystem is this actually um and then Yano for your question man which uh which which change do I think we compete against the most um I guess like I'm sure there'll be competition between us and monad obviously um I think we we address different user groups but like you know evm identical evm compatible chains I think people will look to that and like lots of recent activity um I think that base is very much in the mix more recently um I think that there's a pretty thriving consumer user fake facing ecosystem there um there's

interesting defi project SL like experiments being there it very much feels to me like where arbitrum was a couple years ago um but with a better shot of distribution and like better brand value in that sense um not to look down on ARB to be clear just saying like where I think a lot of the attentions at and I think hyper liquid is also interesting um I think that they have like a very strong like you know community- based uh group who's like hey this has no VC funding this is like a good product like you know there's there's a lot of um excitement around what they're building and I believe they're extending that into an you know evm environment as well um I'm not sure exactly what like the interplay between like the core hyper liquid infrastructure and that evm will look like but I expect that there'll be cool

stuff being built there and that there'll be like you know some cool competition to see yeah and I would um Echo what Smokey said I think for from my perspective it would be base salana and um perhaps blast um although it depends a little bit on on the timing there H that's interesting like I think in the past it was it was a little bit more of a yeah we were there was a little bit more overlap mhm I recently saw this this great tweet by one of the like pretty involved salana investors out there and says like most of the first batch of

apps in that ecosystem like are no longer around and are not the breakout apps that you're seeing today like the pre FX apps were like you know very few of them still have any decent traction today most of the best apps came after this kind of traumatic hardening defining moment for the chain uh that's true for salana for ethereum like like it's different right you had like the a lot of Ico projects went through this boom bust and then reemergence in some ways um changed a lot like you know a of the world for instance um anything that you guys are paying attention to Prior kind of kind of observing the evolution of an

ecosystem like ethereum or salana and and like I guess like what are the if any Lessons Learned From perhaps those projects or others that you're taking a heart and then you're kind of making sure you avoid certain mistakes I necess call mistakes but just like Lessons Learned I guess yeah I think one thing that that comes to mind really quickly um and this is something that I discussed I can't remember if it was on a pod or where um but I think that almost every major ecosystem has had like a that that stood the test of time has had some massive trauma bonding experience like some point where [ __ ]

hits the fan and everything goes wrong and everyone's like holy [ __ ] is it all over like you know Bitcoin had Mount gaau etherium had like the Dow hack like salana had FTX like I think you know those all were were craters in their own respects right um but I think that that actually serves as a very interesting culling moment um where you know the people that survive and the apps that continue doubling down you know are that much more locked in right and they're they're that much more like hellbent and then fully um I'd say aligned with whatever is being built and also you know tends to be a good like just learning experience in point you know for change going forward uh I think that you know for us i' I've been thinking a lot about that on one hand it's simply

perhaps been like how long people have been waiting for Bear chain in some cases um on the other hand you know like I think we've certainly seen [ __ ] in the market over the last little while that isn't necessarily be chain specific but had has had Ripple effects but I think that like whether we've had that trauma bonding moment or not I actually think that that's an event I'll will look forward to in the future um if you know if it hasn't already happened because think that that means that whoever like the crowd that remains after you know getting gut punched uh is an exceptionally you know uh strong crowd right um I like to make fun of Cosmos adomat ton because I just think it's like a very problematic ecosystem but I can't deny the fact that there's a number of die hards that no matter how

many times Cosmos gets punched in the face they don't care they're like they're there to ride right and I have I have begrudging respect for that um I think that one the other thing is to think about from like the soul versus uh eth and and just sort of these ecosystems over time is the importance of like strong hands up on product leadership and focus on building something that is pleas like Pleasant for people to use and I think that this has happened in a couple different ways on eth I think we think about the scaling road map I think about zks over time I think a lot of things that um have excited people technically but may not have always borne fruit in the manner in which they they thought uh even right now there's lots of conversations about okay L2 scale eat but are they actually parasitic to the

chain itself Etc like what does that look like and we think about this as well as like a number of groups look to build um you know rollups reles to Bea um because with the fully evm identical environment that has like an unmodified you know execution client you can deploy op stack rollups ARB orbit roll orbit rollups whatever it is uh to Bear chain without having to you know do anything different right um and we think about how you actually uh you know secure effective relationships between an L1 and an L2 and we've got some some kind of cool ideas Brewing over there that might allow for um some stuff that Taps very uniquely into proof liquidity and how an L2 can actually play a role or its token can play a role in like blocker Wars and the block building process on bear chain that we think

would be quite cool um on the other hand I think that like there's been complaints or concerns in many cases over you know a lack of direct leadership or product focused Vision on the E side despite having a massive and very difficult road map um whereas I think the one thing I've always seen with ins salana has been like a a relative Relentless like engineering Focus like you know not and and I think that there's a balance that needs to be struck between you know effective ethos of decentralization and building something that is actually you know correctly distributed and and is effectively decentralized versus decentralizing to the point at which you know it's it's easier to lose path and to not have a you know a force that is clearly pushing things forward and then

there's always vocal members within those groups um and and sorry that'd be the last thing is I think that like another example of this is chain link back in the day um and I make reference to these guys relatively often you find this set of folks in your community who just become you know the loudspeakers for for their voices if you will right like they become their Advocates and some manner I think Mt is a very famous example and and a classic guy who does that for salana he you know obviously is friends with the foundation but he speaks his mind and says what he thinks about the path of the product going forward um and I think that having that network of a few folks in the community who are really not afraid to say what needs to be said um is also really

important to curate and to create a safe space for them to like say things because you don't want it to fall on deaf ears but you also don't want like a you know a full community takeover of a project if you will ke anything to add yeah I think regarding the the trauma bonding I mean crypto definitely um seems to go in cycles and I think for any startup founder that's really ambitious that has a really big Vision um it's going to be a multi-year build that almost certainly will um you know go through a period where where crypto is almost universally questioned and um you know where it's tough to like tell

your uh yeah your your partner's parents what you work on or like you know there's just inevitably there's going to be tough times um for the industry um or maybe like where the reputation isn't isn't as great and where it's harder to hire from outside of crypto and so on um so I think that to the point about like salana and like the Builder trauma bonding during the like post FTX really tough period I can definitely see that I can also see that it was just like that bare Market period was a time when the builders that were building really ambitious things were mostly like just

building because it does take time to build things um it's it's almost like not the you know it obviously makes it difficult much harder to you know attract resources but like you also just need that period of time to like go and and uh realize the vision and so one thing that I I think is would be good to be better understood in the space is just like the amount of time it takes to build something that is um that is really trying to push the push the limits of what's possible um from an application perspective like we should reset our expectations a little bit and instead of being like okay well uh you know like project started like they're going to have you

know be launched in six months and like fully deployed in a year like it might take longer in the traditional Tech bace it just takes you know the expectation is much longer for how long it takes to build things um and I think if we want really great apps then we should set our expectations longer and we should almost like you know know during that time that there are going to be periods that are really tough MH my last question I know Yano has another one is uh around this idea of price and tokens right I mean tokens while they are ex phenomenal coordination mechanisms they're also the way that you map contributions in this open source world and they're great they can be great mechanisms to layer incentives and acquire

customers on the other hand they can be very distracting they can really um you know when it's down only because the markets you know we're in a bare Market um you know it can lead to this huge disillusionment to the point where people leave and don't want to come back um how do you think about that I mean is that I mean something that you can control or you can at least guide teams to say hey to your point Smokey I mean you guys have been around for a while you don't have a token um um in many ways perhaps other chains are a bit more you know eager to launch a token um I don't know if there's a good answer or perfect answer to this I guess it depends on Market environment some

people say you're launching the bottom of the bear but you don't maybe have that luxury right um but I am curious specifically for the apps that are building on the ecosystem like how do you think about tokens and price being in that relationship and um is are we perhaps uh are projects launching tokens too early and because in traditional startup land you know you have many years of you know traction and building and you know um and then you IPO and so um I'm curious uh what your thoughts are are there because once you have a token

you know it's it's a whole new game and dimension that you have to think about as a builder and that could be both really good but also really bad I think the but you can't control price like price does its own thing the token does its own thing it is in many cases almost you know famously separate from the product which is like kind of cursed in its own way I really do think that the best thing that one can do for you know the health of your token price Etc is build a good project I don't think that's rocket science um and there's many different interpretations of what a bu of what a good project is but I think something that's easy for people to use something that's accessible and something that has good people building on it that can ultimately you know help

um you know bring value back home if you will um I think the the other thing when it comes to you know actually projects launching uh tokens I tend to agree with you there Santi in that like I don't know I come from a Trad Tech like a Trad startup world and it's incredibly odd to have this like set of incentives where it's like yes you IPO as you start building the company or you know a couple months or a few months or maybe a year into building the company and then the open market is is really what decides your fate in many ways after that um I think a lot of it also does come down to vesting structures which I do imagine at some point are due for some sort of a spicy overhaul um I was I was talking to someone recently about

how I actually think that like right now um like certain mcoin projects probably have the best vesting structures that I've seen as as cursed as that is to say and that they're actually more tied to certain kpis whether that is the amount of fees generated by X or Y LP whether that is the amount of Market the market cap or the FTV of a given token um and they'll basically have it set up such that you know people who have invested that are they they get out over time versus based on the Project's success and I'm defining success broadly here but I'm correlating it to price action this case um and on one hand I can see that being more problematic for different funds that are thinking about return time frames and the predictability for their LPS and what they can take management fees on etc etc

on the other hand I can see it as something that might actually be more healthy for you know the the world in in a long-term scenario where it's like hey in order for one to hit this unlock this product has to actually has to have continued growing in some manner right um do I think that's the perfect solution no far from it I just think of it as a p a potential alternative in this kind of weird world of vesting I think ideally a token is is an accelerant or something that allows something that has already hit a degree of product Market fit to continue driving set product Market fit um of course for us as as l1s it's a little bit different and you kind of need those for gas and and you know the utility of that if you will um but I think in the

case of many applications um they end up being to some extent a user acquisition tool on the other extent a sentiment acquisition Tool uh and I think that the former narrative has been played out more than the latter I think the latter is ultimately almost more important as in like I think that the acquisition cost for projects with tokens is actually famously quite high right like you're paying like you know hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars in tokens for a single user which is like kind of insane when you consider that from like a cact TV ratio in in Trad businesses right um but what I do think is valuable and what I think can be uh you know thoughtfully engineered is how you can actually you know design a token release schedule or an airdrop or

distribution event that uh you know rewards the right people is targeted around that you know effectively has well vetted leads as opposed to just you know spraying a whole bunch of tokens into the abyss and hoping that a few people you know want to start playing with it after um I think that you know prev vetting that audience and then finding a way to actually ensure that rewarding the people who have contributed the most is is super important and can maybe turn those sorts of like you know token distribution events and the existence of a token into a more useful thing for a product than just like oh man charts up charts big down right and and and riding that wave Smokey how's your how's your lifting game these days you know what man travel's been uh been less than ideal but it's it's it's good I'm in I'm in

decent shape set setting the bar low ver all right I see I think Smokey is I saw a tweet of your like you really like you really like these oversized shirts I've started yeah Jana say that I can't lift I mean but fine like so I wear these oversized uh shirts to hide the lack of muscle that's what I'm going for these days they're they're just very cozy and that way like you know I never like being that you never want to be that dude in the gym or I don't like being that dude in the gym and like the tank top I would rather be the dude like the oversized hoodie who like you know hopefully pushes some good weight and then people like whoa what's going on over there you know that you can't even wear a tank top in in out here they're

like really can't no you're you gota wear a polo shirt that's how I'm blaming it yeah great discussion yeah yeah Smokey thanks ke thank you appreciate it thanks for having us man hey everyone big thanks for watching today's episode wanted to just quickly remind you about the Stellar development foundation's sixth annual Meridian conference this October 15th through 17th in London this is an incredible opportunity to network with the forward thinkers who are defining the future of this space head over to meridian. stellar.org and use the code block Works pod for early bird

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