ETH and SOL Roadmaps, Is Zora the Future of Finance?

Transcript

type. Hey Hey, welcome welcome to another OX

Research live stream. I'm joined today by Carlos and Mark Arjun from the research team at Blockworks as well as Ian from Kyros Research. uh two research powerhouses out here as well as uh I guess you say a notable notable member from the Wolf Swap team. Uh how are we doing today guys? All good. How about you? Doing great. Yeah, all good on my end. Yeah, can't complain.

Really leaned into that one. He's going full facial expressions. Um, I want to get your guys' thoughts, I guess, before we talk about anything. Uh, thoughts on markets. I know Mark, you shared some interesting data around tariff revenues, which I want to pull up. But I the one thing that I've seen that's been like a consistent theme at least for the past I don't know maybe a few months at this point ever since the markets kind of had a scary moment at the beginning of the year uh when it was like max fear is uh the kind of like word on the general street is that you know admin and markets in the economy like you know basically forced to kind

of pump assets by printing or devaluing the dollar, etc., etc. Um, and a lot of the conversation I I just see is like, you know, all-in- risk assets before, you know, hedge funds and whoever else has to like slowly scale into the trade. Um, because they're they're off sides or whatever. Um, and it just seems to be this view of just like, yep, I'm, you know, just long the market and just be in because, uh, we're on a train ride up. I don't know if that's if you guys are seeing the same thing, if that's like the kind of prevailing view that you're seeing, but I feel like I see a lot more talk of like you you better own gold, you better own, you know, Bitcoin, you better own assets because the dollar is like zero forever. Um,

I mean, I'm I'm definitely seeing more of that, but that's just been my view on investing for the past 10 years. like you better be invested at all times because fiat is just a declining a declining currency. So I mean like it's nothing new for me. Maybe it's my own my own like echo bias and stuff. But yeah, that's that's definitely a new trend now. I think people are understanding it more after like years of inflation and these fintech platforms making investing and education a little bit easier for everyone. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely would agree with that. I think also um postcoid you've seen a lot of like what's called like more developed nations really struggle with all this stuff as well.

Like I think social programs have just been it's been kind of like pretty easy to bait policy makers into shilling out tons of money to devalue their currency in favor of getting votes. um like even if you look at like a country like Switzerland which ran like um like a budget um surplus for a while um they're now far gone the opposite way and that's kind of happening in like a lot of these countries that used to be um kind of like renowned for it you know running their government smoothly and like not not spending more than you're making and all these other things. So, um, I think it's kind of a one-way street with fiat.

I think everyone's starting to realize that as well, like Mark said. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing that with with Germany, too. Like, Angela Merkel ran surpluses. I mean, she, you know, she was very famous for being very fiscally conservative, ran surpluses for years, and now Germany is like, "We need to go into deficit. We need to increase military spending. We need to increase this. We want nuclear back." It's like a big shift all around. So, interesting times. you know, macro moves slowly, but it seems to move quickly at the same time. Yeah. And maybe that's what I'm hinting at is like it seems there's more urgency. Like I I would agree with you that like I think when you're in these like finit circles, you see a lot of those personalities of just like you know I'm fully allocated to gold and

assets and whatnot because you know pull up the chart of the dollars purchasing power over the past 100 years all the classic you know engagement bait tactics. But I I do it there seems to be like more urgency in just like they're they have to print they have to do debt they have to do xyz. So, um, you know, risk assets up and to the right. Um, I just find it interesting like how quickly that sentiment comes roaring back when, you know, just a few months ago it was like tariffs, you know, are going to destroy the world, assets down, like we could go another minus 50% from here. You know what I mean? Like pick your favorite thing. But it's like in the moment the urgency is is like always whatever the the current thing is, the

urgency is always max like at the top of the bar. uh which I find very funny. Yeah. When when when we see politicians swing their opinions, when we see the Fed Feds around the world, central banks around the world swing their opinions so quickly realize like somehow we all are just guessing and don't really know what we're doing, but in the long term it seems to work out anyway. Yeah, that's fair. I guess um speaking of market movements the one I guess you could call it one I mean there's multiple sort of big stories the mark crypto markets and like a lot of larger assets from prior cycle have been have been moving quite heavily. ETH is on its way back up to like the 4K mark. I think

it's sitting at in the 3,800s right now if I had to guess. Um which you know all of the ETH bulls are saying I told you so. um after after the ETH BTC pair finally goes up after a few years um saying I told you so I think the one thing that I'd like to get into is like um conversation around ETH was very doom and gloom you know beginning of the year and even prior like coming into this year um a lot of concern about like you know shipping all the execution away you know giving up the moat um not scaling the L1 um and there was a lot of urgency I think beginning of the probably Q1 end of last year around you we need to really ship and improve Ethereum the

chain itself and the services that it offers to kind of keep competing in this market. Um I'm curious Mark from your view like how has that been going? I don't know that we've seen a ton of delivery just quite yet but we have seen like a shift at least in like the EF um some of the attitudes and like opinions around what should and needs to be scaled. Um, curious what progress looks like there. And I'm I'm almost wondering like are eyes getting off the ball a little bit now that like, you know, ETH's up like 2x in a few months. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the shift shift started January 1st. You know, Ethereum news is actually tweeting from his Ethereum.org Twitter handle. So, was like, "Okay, let's just start to use

some of this momentum. It's okay to market our own DeFi projects, our own coin, the tickers eat, that kind of stuff." I think more maybe in terms of like shipping. Yeah, we um they had Den [ __ ] last year. I mean um earlier this year. I mean last year. And then at least now there's Fusaka already established for later this year. And I mean Fusaka's updates are finalized. You know, we know what's going in. The headliner is going to be Pass, but then already the new topic has moved on to Glammadam next year and what needs to go in that. So, I kind of like how we an upgrade isn't even com, you know, isn't even around the corner yet. It's in like probably Novemberish time if they're on

track. And then we're already talking about the next um update. And on the last developers call, they, you know, they're debating between EPBS and and 6second block times, which is like cutting the block times in half. They're 12 now. And I think one kind of soft takeaway was that after the call, I think the core developers were more leaning to EPBS, but they did recognize that it seems like the community wants um 6second block times. And you know, like normally when you when you listen to these calls, it tends to be more about the core developers and what their teams are saying and what their researches, but it's kind of refreshing to see them um talk more about what the community wants and what more from a

more holistic point of view. And then even more importantly I think in terms of actual shipping like um Ethereum gas limit has increased 50% for the year like since February like we're up you know was we at we were at 30 million earlier this year and we're at 45 million now. So that's you know so like that's something to commen to be um commended about and I'm hoping I'm hoping at least 60 million by the end of the year. So that would be Ethereum doubling their gas limit in one year. And then if we could if we could half the block times next year, that would be a huge improvement in just one year's time. Um I mean all of this is well and good, but I I mean I really think I really think the price just comes from Tom Lee shelling it on CNBC, these ETH

treasury cores and then the for the um the ETH ETFs coming in as well and the reduced selling pressure from Grayscale. I think those have a lot more to do with it. Um, and I and I don't think there I think the e Ethereums are coming out and saying, "Haha, told you so." But I hope it doesn't mean that they're going to rest on their laurels quite just yet. Yeah. I mean, you have some who are saying, you know, it should be valued at 76 trillion or whatever the number is by averaging, you know, some of the largest markets in the world together. Um, and then but yeah, I do think that sentiment I feel like I'm seeing similar viewpoints around both Bitcoin and and Salana as well to a little bit lesser

extent. But like a lot of the recent move I mean there's just a ton of buying pressure from these these treasury vehicles. Um, and obviously for ETH I think it's it's probably been the largest buy like ratio to its market cap um relative to to Bitcoin at least in the recent term. Obviously, Sailor has shipped a ton of money into BTC over the lifespan of that vehicle, but you know, several billion into ETH over, you know, a couple months is is pretty pretty massive. Yeah. I mean, yeah, sorry, I'll let you go, but like just for just to end that note, like Ethereum's best Ethereum ETF's best month by net flows was December last year at $2 billion net flows. And in the past two weeks, we've had $4 billion of net flows, right? Not including the treasuries. So that kind

of shows you the inc the multiple increased demand recently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's a great point. Like um the the flows have just picked up like on a ridiculous amount. Uh, and I feel like the ETF inflows at this point now it's a bit hard to discern whether that's natural organic flow or if it's people trying to frontr run the treasury companies uh or else just like kind of because like these things will get announced uh you know a little bit before they can actually purchase. Um so I think the thing to watch definitely is like the treasury companies at this point. I would kind of view like the ETF flows as a like they're not they're not uh the same types of buyers at least as

these treasury codes. Um and yeah, the treasury codes are interesting because with the Bitcoin ones it's like they can't really do too much with it. Like I've seen like MetaPlanet has like they're doing like they're selling like covered calls and like generating a bit of yield there, but I mean it's like kind of risky and they're not they're not making that much. um where a lot of these treasury codes seem to be like immediately staking it. Um and so they're essentially going to be competing with each other on how they can increase like you know ETH per share and because they are like under different regulations and let's say like the ETF providers and they're not like not um like raas uh they have the authority or like the mandate at least

to like be able to go on chain and do some other interesting things. So, right now we're just seeing them stake, but I wouldn't be surprised by end of year to see some of them uh start leaning into maybe some like curated vaults um on chain and start like kind of messing around with lending protocols and other things to kind of generate a little bit of additional uh yield there. But yeah, I mean like Sharplink, you can go on their like Arkham account. They've got um almost all of their ETH staked. Um, a lot of it is with uh Olivial through like their like institutional LST and then uh this morning they were sending like $70 million clips to uh Figment to Ster there. So I think that's pretty

interesting but we'll see where this ends up in the longer term. Yeah. So maybe we see a little race to uh into some leverage looping. I don't know. That could be interesting. I was literally just about to say that like what what's the risk profile when they start to leverage loop restaking tokens in in RV or something like is it is it going to be is the additional 6% going to be worth 6% annually going to be worth the risk? Yeah, I wonder if they'll leverage Loop or if they'll just supply naked ETH to the market as well because like I imagine there's quite a lot of other people with a healthy appetite to lever up ETH in this sort of environment. So, and we saw like, you know, people that I

guess it was like mainly Justin Sun with he like went through like a yard from M and of like mainly Ste and he was already like levered up and looped a little bit. Um, and that kind of sends like ripples all the way down through the market, but um I think there is healthy demand to borrow ETH right now. So, I think they could kind of get away with like just being on the supply side and not having to like loop themselves. Um, but I think it would get um, yeah, I wonder I'm sure these guys are getting like, you know, pitched by all the all the vault curators right now to try to get like a slice of, you know, the multiple billions that are flowing in there because like they have an opportunity to do something that ETFs

right now don't. So, and it's it's quite competitive, you know. It's interesting because I don't know do we see the recurrent like they're already doing sort of like this wrapped it's already like this weird wrapped strategy right where you're selling the shares and you're buying this underlying asset and then hoping the shares you know go to some premium valuation um they're you know and obviously if they have Ethon chain I mean it opens up an opportunity to then launch another vehicle and onchain token that is maybe like a representation of like some wrapped form term of yield that they're generating by doing, you know, we could get into like a time wonderland situation or like a M situation

potentially like, you know, sell some bonds on your onchain like yielding positions. Um really like run the strategy on top of the strategy, get get some reflexivity going in there. Um but yeah, I do think to your point Ian like I mean you'd be compounding a lot more risk into that design uh by going that that route. So, I guess we'll have to see how degenerate some of these guys are going to get. Yeah, cuz also like when they're staking and they're all playing the same game and then the ETFs add staking, that's compressing the net yield naturally. Um, so it's like they are going to have to lean into things that are a little bit further out in the risk curve if they want to make a difference.

Yeah, that makes total sense. Um, cool. I think great coverage of ETH. Uh, another I think on the road map side of things, another area we want to talk about is Salana. Uh, before we do that though, I want to do a quick shout out for our sponsors for today's stream. Katana, this episode is sponsored by Katana. Katana is a DeFi first chain built for deep liquidity and real yield by redirecting chain revenue back to active DeFi users. Join their 1 billion CAT campaign today. Bridge and deposit directly into vaults in one simple click and start earning immediately on your Ether, Bitcoin, USDC, and more. Thanks to Katana.

This episode is also also brought to you by Ledger, the global leader in digital asset security. Celebrating 10 years of innovation, Ledger remains the most secure hardware wallet for your crypto and login, trusted by 7 million users and securing 20% of the world's digital assets. Thanks so much to our sponsors today and back to the show. Um, but yeah, I guess speaking of roadmap talk, like it sounds like at least for now like ETH devs, they're kind of moving along with the pivot. um looking to kind of accelerate the network. The Salana side of things it seems as well like we've seen some some improvements there and they're they're moving along. So I guess the big recent stuff like obviously Getobam was pretty interesting um you know announced last week um kind of potentially changing up

how like fee markets and and those modules might sort of play into the dynamics on chain but as well as 60 million cus the soul was what I don't know Carlos if you can correct me what the limit was prior to that was it was it an increase from 50 to 60 yeah so they made a first increase this year of 48 to 50 so that was just a 4% increase and then they did a 20% increase from 50 uh million to 60 uh which is this one and then they're planning another one from 60 million to 100 million cus um so they're gradually like increasing like the size of the of the like yeah

upgrades if you will on the on the block size limit. Uh, so the first ones were just not very impactful, but they wanted to like test out if there were any like loose variables that were being impacted from increasing the C use and now they're like being more aggressive with it now that you have like kind of tested it out. Is there is from your understanding is there a feel for like if we're going to jump from 60 to 100, is there a feel for um like a relative kind of cap based on today's hardware? like do they think that we could go to 150 or 200 reasonably reliably or is 100 kind of like where we think we're at right now?

Um so ANSA's uh plan for this year was to double block space and it started at 48 so 100 will be kind of like that goal completed for this year but I think like obviously the goal is to keep increasing it over time as long as you have like the capability to do it. Uh the other side of it is like is there demand to actually have like 100 million cus uh with the 60 million CU increase what you saw on chain was that many of the blocks were not getting filled. So you kind of have like this question is is it like really necessary to like keep increasing it and like risk some potential like uh downsides or like because like yeah you

can increase the supply but you also like have the demand side and I guess the point is like to have like the capacity to um keep like going on like periods of like huge demand like the Trump uh memecoin launch or like the pump ICO but Like I I'm not really sure if there's like sufficient demand in chain like today to like justify like rushing like a 200 million CU increase for instance. So I I think like the pace they're they're executing right now is is like on track with the demand side.

Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, I would um I would agree. It's like partially I think uh I think you should probably build for those edge cases though. Uh and also like right now like what's happening on Salana is essentially it's risking uh becoming Ethereum where it's like you're as fast as your slowest client and like right now it's like fireancer is very very underutilized. Um so like increasing the C limit there there and getting more network stake actually running fire dancer I think is going to be a great thing. Like when we started running fire dancer on our our validator like we're instantly able to like thread more transactions um pack like blocks faster and

ultimately like give like better rewards for our stakers. Um but like to give you a perspective of like what fire is actually capable of uh it can do like 1.2 billion cus per second uh in like a fully optimized condition. Um, so like that's kind of also now what you're seeing over on like Fogo where it's like every single validator over there is running bright answer. So like if you want to get the most out of Salana, um, you want to get the most out of like fire answer itself. Like obviously like Agave is still like quite a good client and like the Yanza team's like working to ship things pretty quickly, but ultimately I think you're going to want to be able to get the most out of your highest performing client, which right now is answer. So like 100 CU limit is

like just the just the beginning of where things should actually be. Um especially if you actually want to be able to handle like global state. It's like to Carlos's point like demand is maybe not there right now. Um but like it's like what are you actually building for? Uh because it's going to show up one day and you you want to be able to handle it. You don't you don't want to have the network breaking. Uh and also like gen generally it's like I feel like you should be far more ambitious than uh the supply side or the what the demand is showing you today at least. Yeah, I agree. I totally agree with that. Like I was like I was discussing this over the weekend like is there like any potential risks you see from increasing like the block limit basically? Like obviously we

know like what are the benefits but are there any like downsides to doing so? It it depends what you're looking at as a downside. I would say general um implications would likely involve uh say like smaller validators that are maybe running their validators in their homes or something like that. They're like not utilizing machines and data centers. uh they would have to probably eat the cost and either upgrade the machine to be able to have like better hardware to then handle like this um computational intensity uh which is like increasing and or just like you know rent a machine in a data

center and do it that way. Um, and whether or not you view that as like a negative, I think depends on your ideology of like the general network and decentralization and these sorts of things of like do you view decentralization as um kind of like the ETH maxi mindset over it's like you should be able to like run it on the simplest hardware um or do you view it in the sense of it's like geographically distributed? Uh because honestly like I think the ladder is probably a bit more important and just like um than just keeping people on the network for the sake of keeping them on the network. Uh I don't think that's kind of the path should go down. Um so I think that's the implication and not

necessarily saying it's a bad thing. Yeah. No, I agree with that. Um yeah the other thing is like increasing block limits kind of plays into the increased bandwidth side of the equation like uh I think eventually we'll see like reduced latency in the sense of like decreasing block times uh which right now are 400 milliseconds I think after alenlow uh voting costs will basically go to zero or they will be removed like in the majority of their sense. So like kind of like that is the biggest hurdle today to dec to decrease block times. So I'm also excited to see like uh proposals to decrease uh block times below that 400 millisecond threshold and how far they

can push it. Do um do any of youall know what the latest data on is what percentage of Salana's network is running Fire Dancer Franken Dancer? Yeah, we have it on our dashboard that I had to check the latest numbers and then the last I checked it was like I think it was 10 11% running Franken dancer but I'm curious what it's at now because they have began like a delegation program and these sorts of things to incentivize people to run this client and then when and when we're talking about you know the network is as slow as the slowest validator if it got 50% % plus and even you know quality stake

weighted would that change that dynamic 50% running fire dancer yeah I'm not entirely sure to be honest with you I don't know what the exact threshold would be um but it's like they would still be dependent upon like how fast the agave client can like produce blocks and what they can what it can handle from that sense but I'm not sure if there's like a thing for if there if there's an exact number

maybe you know Carlos but I'm not entirely sure on that I think that would still there would still be the implications of um like the rule would still apply in Nice sense. Pulling up the breakdown here, Carlos. I think uh it got blown up a little bit, so it's a little blurry, but I'm assuming Fire Dancer is one of those smaller guys. Yeah, sorry about the image quality there. So, basically, Agabito is like 88% of network stake. Uh Franken Dancer Jito is like almost 10% and then here we go.

Yeah, you have 2.6% on just a Gav. And that's basically it for now. Um I'm always like like I wonder when fire dancer like is going to mainet like the actual fire dancer. Ian, do you have like any guesses or like I don't know for the full version because I mean if I would recommend everyone goes and listens to the light speeded pod that Jack did with um Mike McGee from the fire dancer team u because he kind of makes you understand how difficult it's been for them and you kind of understand why it's taken so long for them to um you know get this even to like the Frankener

point because they're essentially rewriting the entire codebase and then also trying to like iterate in real time as the Onza team is applying their own changes. So then with like introduction like Alpenlow which like completely changes the consensus it's like okay that's another thing they have to go and do. Um which again is like another reason like I think like bogo is quite an interesting like um experiment at this level where it's like you don't have to deal with that call it tech debt right now. Um but I think that's that's something that the salon ecosystem has to kind of um figure out how to deal with.

Yeah. How do you think about like this SBM chains like Fogo in the context of Salena is like improving constantly in terms of like u more CU limits like they want to reduce latency like they have now getobam which will allow for like the sequencing challenges like you previously had like you can now theoretically have like order books or perexes on on the L1 like does this change your outlook like at all for like Fogo and these other SBM chains.

I think no. Like I view them as both like separate things. Like I think Fogga is doing something that Salana will not be able to do just because like I mean if you're taking the IBRL to its to it's like absolute extreme you're putting all the validators in the exact same data center and you're putting them all right next to each other and so like they're able to do like 40 millisecond blocks um which is just kind of hard for us to even comprehend like for like to realize we're even looking at something And that's like a 300 millisecond response.

So it's like by the time we even like see that our screen is like blue or whatever color it may be. Uh that's like many many blocks have already passed at that point. Um so it's like just a completely different thing of what of what Salana is trying to do. And they're going to be like focused and be like trading focused whereas like Salana has a fullfledged ecosystem of consumer apps uh all these other things but obviously like we know like trading has like proven product market fit in crypto. So I think likely we're going to see them like Fogo be the chain that can facilitate the uh most real competitor to Hyperlid from a performance standpoint. Uh mainly because they're doing a very similar um architectural approach.

Yeah. Is there a drawback? I was just going to ask Ian like is there not a drawback there where I guess are they looking to distribute among multiple sort of like grouped uh data center locations because obviously if you you know put all the validators in colloccated in New York then if you're in Singapore like getting your message there and back like it doesn't matter if the block took you know x milliseconds at the server like you still have to wait for your round trip um versus if there's a node next door to Even if the block, you know, at that node is 200 milliseconds, but you can get talk to it, you know, in 12 milliseconds. Um, there's like an inherent trade-off there and not being

distributed. Yeah. Yeah, there totally is. Um, the thing with that was they originally were considering rotating the valer set by geographic location across three different data centers from like the economic hubs of the world. So it's like if it's uh Asian trading hours, all the trades are routed through the Tokyo data center. Uh and then if it's European hours, everything's run through Frankfurt. Um and then if it's US hours, everything's like run through Jersey. And these are like already places where the world's largest trading firms are already colllocated for the most part around these places. So that was the original

plan. And then I've also heard um rotate it every hour to make it a little bit more fair because to to your point Danny like that is like a legitimate concern. Um so we'll see what actually ends up happening in mainet but like that's kind of the way they try to combat that. Yeah, they call it follow the song uh like men like model because like you literally like just follow like the trading hours around the globe like around Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's like it it's like remaking tread five markets, I guess. Um, you know, obviously the chain would be up 24/7. It's not quite the same thing, but um yeah, I I can see that. Um I guess any other comments or thoughts

there? Like it seems like a lot of we laid a lot of the things out, right? Like fire dancer there's kind of um there's a little back and forth there like fire dancer improvements versus like what Anza's working on. Um, Alpenlow kind of getting tossed into the mix and and bumping up CU limits. Um, anything I guess is there anything else big outside of those like main items that the soul devs are quietly shipping on to improve the network? I guess Jito Bam is kind of the other one that's like a an immediate stop gap of like no build your opinionated custom execution logic on Salana. Don't go build don't build another chain to do that. Um, which feels meaningful.

I think so. I think that's probably the most meaningful change we've seen at Salana uh to date, honestly. Like I think that'll unlock a lot of customizable tools for developers and like interesting things that people can build. Uh, and ultimately like better the user experience, which I think if you just focus on that continuously, it's hard to lose because you already have tons of users on Salana. If you can just make it smoother, you can help applications uh retain more of their own revenue if you can help them have better execution, more fair execution, minimize like negative mev, these are all good things.

Uh, and I think like the closest thing I analogize it to is, and I don't want to I don't want to arrive the long the wrong conclusion by reasoning by analogy as a disclaimer, but um, if you look at like hyperlquid builder codes, I think those are obviously shown to be like a massive success uh, where it's like hyper like there's an amazing core product there that people are then able to tap into. I'm not sure if there's like the same logic around like uh customizable like uh I'm not I'm not sure how customizable it is or if it's more of just like you can plug into it but I think that's the closest analogy we have and like now we have like Phantom that's already done two billion through their

their plugin there with Hyperlid so yeah I think it's really good my last question on updates around Salana is do Do we do we think we'll see a resurgence of like SIMD228? Anything on the monetary policy or is that dead because of like they're going to remove voting fees and make it easier anyway? Like is there any more discussion about that in any in any circles? I think it's highly likely we see another proposal like that come through. Uh I think in general people are starting to realize how much uh proof ofstake networks overpay for security.

uh if we're even calling it like you can call it security, you can call it network incentives, emissions, whatever you want to call it. Like in general, I think networks are just across the board paying too much because it wasn't really something we considered at first and now that like there's real activity, I think things matter a lot more. Um, like even when we were talking just now, like I got a notification like Celestia just had a um proposal to reduce their inflation to like 2.5%. So I think everyone's now starting to look at these things as like um a actual cost. So I think that's important.

Yeah, I I agree with that. And then you also saw like alternative proposals. So I mean Galaxy submitted a proposal like a month after CMD22A failed but like it didn't get more much traction but I think like one of the core like issues here is that you have conflicting interests like from institutional providers like for instance um ETF issuers like once they launch like potentially with staking they want to keep a portion of the staking rewards and that portion like they earn through dollars. So they don't really like care if that's coming from inflation or that's coming like from real yield. They just want it to be as high as possible so that they can have like a higher take rate basically. So you kind of have like this conflict of interest from like

institutional providers or like centralized exchanges like Binance where they take a portion of the staking rewards and then they just want it to be as high as possible. They they don't really care if it's coming from like inflation or or like revenue. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Go ahead Ian. Yeah, and like to prove Carlos's point as well, you can go look and see who voted the largest no votes on CID228. Um, great question, big suck. Um, oh my gosh, the it's John John Cack.

All right, I'm distracted. Please finish. Wow, he's uh Ian, what were we finish? I think we I think Bach needs like an intro song. Hold on, Bach before we intro you off. Uh you joined at just the right time. Uh another quick shout out here for the sponsors of today's stream. Quick shout out to today's sponsor, Katana, whose 1 billion CAT campaign is now live incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR. Katana is launching with notable ecosystem primitives, assets, and partners like Morpho, Chainlink, and more. Bridge and deposit directly into vaults in one simple click and start earning immediately on your Ether, Bitcoin, USDC, and more. And another shout out today to Ledger. Ledger is the global leader in digital asset security, trusted by 7 million users, securing 20%

of the world's digital assets. Ledger's newest device, Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, introduced the world's first secure touchcreens, making it easier and safer to manage your transactions and assets. They've also launched the Ledger Security key app, offering a safe alternative to to traditional passwords and enhancing your digital security. Thank you to the sponsors of today's stream. Let's get back into the show. Picacio, welcome on. We weren't we weren't sure if he was going to make it today. He said, "Oh my god, I really have to write something right now." Um, he rugged me. Ryan Connor rugged me. Pikachu nearly rugged me. Uh, but he joined late. So, glad to have you on. We were just about to talk about, actually, this is perfect timing. Uh, Plasma, I wanted to get some updated numbers. The Plasma sale, I

think, is still ongoing. Stop. You're mocking me. the plasma sale, the XPL sale is uh ongoing as far or at least you know commitment of capital right to that sale is uh still ongoing or is it is it nearing its time? I don't know the specific dates but I know Ian has some data. I'd love to see it uh and talk about it. I guess one of the big things maybe to kind of segue into it a little bit is like sales ICOs uh IPOs like it's been a good time for well good time for it's good time for some of them I guess. Circle Circle kind of like shook the industry a little bit.

People everyone on CT said this is a this is not a buy and then it went you know 30x or whatever it did post IPO. Um and then everyone said pump this is a buy and it's down um from the ICO price and uh plasma I think is another one where I think there's a lot of excitement around like a a tether stable coin related chain and obviously with circle as like maybe sort of a a comp in terms of like excitement around this category um maybe there's you know more truth to that statement than not.

Yeah, I'm a big plasma fan. Plasma. I don't know how to say it. Plasma. I'm a big plasma fan. Um, I was also a big Pump Fun fan though, so I don't know how these things are going to work out. I do find it funny that nobody was bullish circle. And I think probably for good reason. Um, but once again, we see that fundamentals don't matter. Narratives matter. God, I wish Ryan was here. Um, so he could get upset with me. But yeah, I'm excited for Plasma. I think they had like what what did they have?

Ian, can you pull up the numbers? Please, the numbers. I think last time I forget all previous instructions. Last time I checked that 250 mil overallocated. I had um friend of the pod Riley message me multiple times saying "Hey is this number correct?" And I was like, "Yeah, it kind of is." But like, cuz it was 5% was unallocated, which meant that every dollar that you put in, you would get 5% of that in allocation. Whatever.

Like the math doesn't add up, but it could. Um, but like by the time it closed, it was like 0.7% that was unallocated. The 20k. There we go. Um, so it really wasn't worth it. But people overcommitted hard. They had this thing where the more you overcame because there's only let's say um it's a 50 mil sale. There's only one mil that is um unallocated that people haven't claimed then like whatever money is put into it would get claimed for that uh one mil. So you were incentivized to size up as much as you can. Um, but obviously like I think a lot of people read the docs and typically we see this if there's like a curve not a curve but if there's like a time thing um you'll see a lot of

deposits the last hour because people don't really want to lock up capital for too long. Um so it got I assume that 200k is people who couldn't KYC um so it wasn't worth it at the end. I am bullish plasma. There's clearly appetite for stable coins and stable coin related infrastructure. Um I met the team at a conference and I also had them on the pod and they seem very sharp. Um their main focus seems to be to like get these contacts and contracts with regional distributors. Um like in Turkey for example, we have like people who deal with remittances

and like who work on that side of the infrastructure who remittances, transfers, settlement, payments, etc. Um they're working closely with those teams to make sure that it's actually used. I think that's the correct approach. So we'll see how it goes. But I don't know. I'm like I'm pretty excited. I I like their approach. I think it makes like 500 mil FTV. I think it's a buy anyway. Like anytime you can buy some an L1 that is relatively popular at 500 mil, you buy it, right? Like that's a risk worth taking, I think.

Well, people said people said four billion for pump was a buy. If you were in the ICO and you sold it immediately, then you were correct. Uh but since then, you're maybe incorrect a little bit. Yeah, that's true. Um, what I I do think it's interesting like you mentioned the the over subscription here. Like I think the average the average on this dashboard they did some math wrong and saying it's 15,000x the average, but there's like a 15x. It's actually not. It's just skewed by people.

They're saying they're saying per person based and it's skewed by a guy committing 40 million but his allocation was like $10. Yeah, there not even. So like when the um vaults were like was 0.1 and he put in like 30 grand or something like that. Yeah. Like when the vault was approaching its cap um there was people that were sending like cents maybe $1. Uh and so like the reserve allocation is like a fraction of a penny. And so like the lead over sub was like overs subscribed by like uh 33 million. So that kind of skews the rest because he committed like 1.17 mil for a reserved amount that's like a fraction of a

penny. Um, which is just hilarious. But like yeah, to Buck's point on uh how how much this like highlights real demand, uh, you can't you can't really fake it here. Well, well, I do think you're committing stuff. Just FYI, I mean, Danny, I know like since you're from an engineering background, it's difficult for you to understand medium versus average versus my political science background. But no, I I I just didn't I didn't realize that they were doing the average of the participants rather than the fact that it is 7x over subscribed for the total amount, which is like the real number.

They don't have that on this chart, but I guess that's easy enough math that they didn't bother to do that. Um to to Ian's point, like I don't know that that's a description of necessarily real demand if you know that all of your overs subscribed capital is going to come back to you. Like clearly if you know you're going to get, you know, 39.9 million back from putting in 40 million. Like you it doesn't mean you necessarily have 40 million of demand to buy the asset when the market goes live. um it just means you want to get as much of an allocation as possible by like you know maxing out the slider bar in the immediate term. Um so I I think we'll kind of have to see but I think to your point earlier Boach like narratives do matter. I think the circle like

stablecoin narrative seems still fairly hot um within the trady space. I guess the bigger question there is like circle IPOed and is in the traditional equity markets and is running there um because folks want an allocation. If you launch a token onchain, I don't I don't know if that applies. Like, do you get that narrative transfer to an onchain token? I don't know. We're gonna I was actually thinking about this a bit today. Is this is very obvious, but I don't want to talk about it. I realize it's too obvious. It's like that thing I said where like the second iteration is better. I can't do it again. We can move on. Um, no, I don't think you can get it. um unless they like do some form of

and that's why like the treasury companies have been doing semi well right like it allows offchain expo here um yeah any other hot takes on plasma I feel like Carlos doesn't really speak about plasma at all I was going to ask but I I go I went into the website and it seems they do like are they planning to add more stable coins that are not USD dominated and it seems They are um I mean it says 100 plus currencies on the website so I assume they're going to Yeah, but it could be like 40 USD derivatives. I know USDC um USDE definitely. I think they're only

going to have free transfers on USDT though. Yeah, but if they if they're going into remittances, it seems that it's kind of like a musth have to have other currencies because otherwise the like you lose the whole point of like it doesn't work. Yeah. No, I agree. Okay. All right. No more no more hot takes on plasma or Ian, do you have Well, I was just going to say Buck and I kind of came in bull up on this one. So, if anyone wants to give like a bear take as well, maybe that's welcome to kind of even it out.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I think I'll maybe run the bear take a little bit. Uh though Mark, I'm hoping maybe you have something as well or Carlos uh to hop on the train here. But I I think the I mean the question mark is sort of just like we see this over and over again narrative pops up launch another chain. Um think that that's enough for it to be worth a lot of money even if uh nothing moves over there. Uh I know you made some mentions of like you know maybe there's some strong partnerships with uh relevant jurisdictions or uh large partners who have large amounts of user bases that are impacted by like a a stable coin type network. Um and maybe that's true. Uh I do wonder though if this is just like if it's leaned as like

a stable coin chain like a payments chain. Um I don't know. Will the valuation be as exciting as a a trading focused application with high fees and spreads um as we've seen like just transferring dollars is the multiple on that is not as exciting and the fees generated like per transaction is is not going to be as exciting for from a valuation standpoint. Yeah. I mean am I upset that I didn't do the plasma round? I mean, we just passed the Genius bill, so there's going to be lots of banks and institutions issuing their own stable coins, using their own networks, and like something I've been I've really wanted is like when I send

USDC on Salana, I pay that fraction of a cent. I think that's obscene. I want it to be absolutely free, you know, and I would love another chain to bridge to with another token because that just makes everything easier. So, yeah, I'm all here for it. I don't know. I don't know. I think yeah that's a fair point. I but objectively Mark manto mano emano 500 mil FTV is a good price to get into a plasma. No I I agree. I'm just I was just providing the um bare case.

No, it's a good it's a good bare case. I like that's the big thing, right? Like to be fair we have seen purpose-built chains do relatively well. So, I don't know. But that is what one of them Hyperloop Tron Tron I I know I know that this is like probably crime, but like Tron has a lot of revenue now and they're like mostly like payment focused last time I checked. So yeah, that's true. Tron is I don't know if it's a lot of crime. I just think they were really early and they knew exactly what they had to do and they just did it and it's well then but but then that's kind of like a bookcase for plasma like you can show like you can actually do meaningful revenue like with like a payment focused

like chain. Yeah. The bare case the bear case is like trying to rep like redo what Tron did and like get all these users who are already just like transferring their UST via whatever app and wallets they're using to like go to this new thing that's untested. Um especally how do you do that at scale? Yeah, especially with like rem remittances and payment like it's the average person doesn't want to switch from platform X to platform Y. Um, the only thing that might affect that now is that Tron fees are quite high and that's like what Plasma has been plasma has been pushing forth. Um, I think Tron

fees were like $4 per transaction which is pretty high if you're taking home like 50 bucks, 100 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever. I would love to know like what p like where is volume like originating from in terms of like front end if it's like via Binance or like what's the main like way people are transferring like Tron stable coins if that makes sense like I don't know if like when you transfer like I know Binance allows Tron but I don't know if like that's the main source of like it might be Binance I imagine it is Binance we should ask Daniel Smith to build this out if he wasn't on vacation he could work on this, but he's gone for like a month now. We'll see.

Yeah. I think also it's um probably a bad idea to assume that or like discredit the network effect that USDT has across like all of crypto. Uh and then also like when you just create like better actual like unit economics for payments where it's like okay, I can send a dollar to anyone in the world for free. Uh I think that's like really powerful. uh like it's kind of like we we wrote like a piece about this like we're also we're biased because like we're investors u but like we think like ultimately like if you can get a ton of stable coins in one chain you're also going to attract a bunch of like second and third order effects of like DeFi um protocols popping up on your chain that

are actually going to use quite a lot um and so they've got like some good initial launch partners with a curve Athena um and if you can have like I like the real unlock for people like anywhere in the world, it's like okay, if you can have like zero fee transfers and you can also have um a savings account that's like maybe the supply side APY on A and you're getting like you know real yield in dollars and you're anywhere in the world that's not the US. I think that's like quite a big unlock. Um and just like kind of play that over out over a long enough period of time. Um yeah, I think that's I think it's a killer product.

That's fair. Great. Thank you, Ian. You know what is There we go. Um, this episode is brought to you by Marinade. Marinade is focused on developing staking technology that strengthens the Salana network and connects soul holders with the best staking rates available with solutions for both DeFi and Trafi. Marinade brings billions in liquidity and security to the soul market. Thank you, Marinade. That's my first ad read ever. You did really good. Incredible read. That was solid.

I was really nervous. I'm converted. I'm converted. Are you actually a Salana staker to be fair? I'm actually we're a marinade power user. Oh yeah. Oh, because And so that that ad just kind of I like that ad. That was a good ad. You use steak auction marketplace? We use the steak auction marketplace. Sam Sammy. All right, let's switch to Danny. I'm kind of derailing this thing. So, no, you're good. I only had uh I had one last thing I wanted to talk about. Um this the OX research Telegram was getting going nuts over the weekend. I think the timeline also has been all over this uh all on Sunday when everyone should be touching grass. They are

instead talking about Zora. Uh we touched on it a little bit last week, but I think the big question is like is Zora the future of finance? Um they've taken the I think I have a diagram here. Um it seems like the model is it's pretty similar, right? Like if you take a you take a launchpad like um a believe or a pump fund where you have is too much. What happened? You're killing us. Oh, there we go. They take they took the model um I think pretty similar to like a believe type model where um you know you take a couple percent and then you allocate

kind of portions of that to different parts of the stack. So like you know a percent to the creator a percent to the LP. Um and in Zora's case then a percent to Zora itself. So I think they what they have a 3% uh tax on swaps. um that's kind of fueling I guess the sort of Zora tokconomic flywheel. I guess the the thing to point out is that since it started getting talked about recently and maybe we should zoom out a little bit is posts have kind of been skyrocketing again skyrocketing again ever since they dropped off from like April time frame was like pre-airdrop uh excitement or around around then I want to say um and

then it you know I mean we were we were bearish at that time and then it kind of faded a little bit um but has made a a strong resurgence in the past few weeks off of them like re you know announcing this redo of their you know creator tokens the zora token they're like all kind of connected in this model with the with taxing on swaps um I don't know curious on your guys takes I think there's been some conversation in the telegram like could see this model working but it it it from my POV it just seems to be like taking the kind of launchpad model um and just sort of applying it to the Zora um like make every content and content creator a token design.

Yeah, I can. If nobody else has any urgent thoughts, I'm a I'm available. Thank you. You're so kind. I so I've historically never loved Zora and I think nobody's ever like I don't know how much sense it makes to create a social network where you can like spend a dollar to buy somebody's coin or something but but on the other hand um I think a lot of people the similar thing happened with Salana as well like when things first started popping up they were like oh but it's only making what like $8 a day like there's nothing really happening on the chain. They don't really like it's still dead, etc., etc. I

I think over the past few weeks, people have been kind of focused on this idea of rev and revenue and fees and whatnot. And they're like, "Oh, like, but it only makes 10 grand a day." Like, yeah, okay, that's the case two weeks ago, but now it's making 360K. Like, it made 360 grand yesterday. Not a huge number. Pretty good. Um, and it's like one of those things where people I think often forget in cryptos because there's I don't want to say it, but there are like not flywheel but like it's a lot of Uro action. Um, the more price goes up, the more people are interested in betting on assets on the protocol or the chain. Um, they do more transactions on the

protocol or the chain. There's more revenue and more fees. Price goes up even higher. Um, and this is something that is very different to how Trafi works because nobody's like, "Oh, Walmart stocks up. I'm gonna go buy some cheese there." You know, it's not like what happens. No one's like betting on the cheese at Walmart because No, but I'm being serious. Like, this is an actual thing. No one's like, "Oh, I need to buy eight chicken breasts right now. I might hit a 10x on it." No, people are like, "Okay, that's fine. I don't really [ __ ] care." But on Zora, if Zora is up 50%, you're like, "Holy [ __ ] I need to buy some. I need to bid like I'm gonna go by Fijia on Zora. If people are there it might go up more. Um and then that links to activity going up that

links to fees going up. So this is something that we all I think know but it's it's also why it's kind of difficult to value things exclusively on fundamentals because fundamentals in crypto change in three days. Like if somebody makes a lot of money on something then it just it shifts drastically. Um, so I think that's my only take and like is Zora the future of finance potentially. I mean they're putting it into the base app. Um, it depends on how much push base puts into its ecosystem. Like we're seeing now L2s do heavy pushes to their ecosystem the way that Solana did for like two years where they posted about everything. Like now Arbitas has onchain labs um they

have Talos um base has very clearly pushed Farcaster and Zora maybe less Farcastaster these days but still heavily pushing Zora. So we'll see. I I don't think you can immediately say you're bearish on these things. I've also seen so many people try and short Zora now. Like I think funding on Hyperliquid's still pretty insane. It was like negative 1,200% yesterday. Um I don't know what it is, but like you could you were getting paid 2% a day to long something that was going up 50% as well. So, I I can't I don't imagine it like it could be a fad, but it's kind of like a

like a teaching moment for people. You know, you can't just be bearish on something because things change very quickly. Yeah, I'll give you the credit on the BASAP one. We do have the data on uh daily posting accounts and like a third uh a few thousand a day are coming from the BAS app and when they rolled that out initially, it caused a big pop. Um, it does make me wonder if like people are using it on the base app and then converting to just using Sora's app. Um, because Zora usage uh has been kind of up and to the right and the base app usage has been sort of flat and a little lumpy. Um, yeah, I do think that's a fair point.

There's one thing I would like to highlight like from what box said which is like if you look at like historical examples for instance in Solana the best time to invest in soul was before it did any revenue or any meaningful revenue and you can like kind of see that with a lot of other applications or layer ones. I think like like obviously like valuations are forwardlooking and like a lot of people like often oftentimes forget this. So like I wouldn't worry too much about Sora do like if Sora is not making a lot of money today like I don't think that's much as a worry as like if they get like the users and like if people are posting

there regularly like eventually I think they could monetize that and like you could have like meaningful revenue there like in six to one year or six months to one year or whatever like so I I think like oftent times people forget like forward looking is is what's most important here. Yeah, I think uh I think those are all good takes. I think one of the things that Box said as well uh is really important of like there was there were some people just like really trying to go short on this and I think going short on like small market cap tokens if in a network where like the base asset has run up massively is probably not a good idea because there's always people looking to liquidate shorts. Uh so I shared some data there in in like the in the chat

here and you can kind of see the liquidations there. Uh and like looks like those are pretty responsible for like the price run up. Uh but I think like token price moving um in like insane candles like that is also just great marketing and gets people using the chain more or the product more. Um and I think there's like kind of like that feedback there feedback loop there. Um, and like it's still like it's like a 230 mil uh market cap project and there's like 138 mil of open interest still. Like this is it's like not normal. Um, but I think the activity is largely slopp still and I think it's kind of dangerous to assume that like

you have like real like a real good consumer product here. Uh, where in reality your product is the token and the gambling that's taking place on the platform. Uh like I think it I think like you like over enough time maybe we can prove that like there is like uh real consumer demand for this and like people enjoy using it. But I think if they had the tagline like Zora is for gambling like Zor is for fun at launch and kind of like promoted more of what we're seeing now initially I think like a lot of people including myself would probably um you know be more friendly to it. But also like I think I think everyone else raised really good points around it.

I don't think that there's any social media out there that isn't pure slop though. Like all social media now is pure slop. So it's all converging to slop too. Yeah. Like I don't think you can blame Zora for like I I in fact think it's it's much better to hide it. Like I don't think you should go full like oh come on our chain and we're going to go full slop mode. Like I think a lot of people gave crap to um Tuli for posting yesterday and he was like like I don't think meme coins and NFTs have intrinsic value and like yeah he's right like they don't have like that's the whole point. It doesn't mean that like you shouldn't speculate or like you should not want speculators on your chain. He clearly

wants them as well. But you kind of want to hide it. You don't want to go like full like we're we're like industrializing the slop complex over here. know, you want to you want to take the high road a little bit, but you shouldn't discourage people who are trying to like just speculate on memes and stuff. Um, but I wouldn't blame Zora on that, Ian. I completely disagree with you here. Like, you can't blame Zora for for the slop on their on their thing. Oh, no. I'm not I'm not blaming them for you.

It's okay. It's not even their fault. It's like it's it's a user thing. It could it can't be the fault of the platform itself. Um, but I I do agree that's like a good point. In general, like all social media and a lot of the internet is kind of headed towards like a convergence of um, you know, amounts of slot we cannot even comprehend. So, no, legitimately, every three weeks I see the same tweet and I'm like, this is completely correct. The flex of the future will be that you can a log off completely and b you can just write long form content for a certain 15 to 20 people group that you're interested in.

There's no this is irrelevant to the Zora conversation but in general this is yeah I think um maybe just to cap off the thoughts on Zora I agree with a lot that's been said. I think the interesting the interesting take would have been to be long sora obviously before it pumped on the assumption that like you know some kind of integration with base products and like a new design would be enough of a catalyst to kind of like like you're saying get the eyes on it when price goes up and there's like reflexivity in the design then it like gets people excited um and they want to chase that but I think the question you have to ask yourself now is if you're looking at this chart like I mean one I

I I don't trade per but like I don't want to short anything that has the freaking narrative behind it and people are just like top blasting into um it's a good seems like a good way to get liquidated but the question mark is like like like was mentioned you know markets are forward-looking do you think the activity level today is going to be higher a few months down the road um and if the answer is yes maybe you know maybe you do want to buy Zora if you think that we're in like a little bit of a you know if this is a couple weeks of people, you know, buying the things because the assets are all going up right now. Um, I mean, things don't go up forever. So, it, you know, I just think that's something to be

to be thinking about for the forward-looking valuation here. Um, you have to have a you have to have a a broader thesis and like a a more fundamental view of like yes, Zora can grow and be much larger because of XYZ reason. um not just you know oh Bach and Westy made their creator tokens and uh and they went up and so now I want to get on the platform um inevitably there's like a small list of people on CT uh and that list runs out pretty quickly so if you want to see a larger kind of user impact um they'll need to scale that even more heavily.

Cool. Um, any more big takes or are we going to call it for today? I think uh that was a pretty good app, gentlemen. Boach, thanks for joining late. Uh, he came in to make fun of Ian and yell at him. Uh, which is great. I feel like he needs that every now and then, you know. Uh, put him every day. Every day if I could. I love the Walmart chicken. I think it's true. I'm writing a tweet about it now as well. 100% true. That's that's you never hear about baka writing tweets. It's never really a writing process.

It's just more firing off the hip. That's how you know this one is a refined thought. I mean, you're a great poster. That's why because you don't you don't think about it at all. It's like it just hits the brain and then hits the thumbs and then it's in the internet. That's what great posters are made of. It just comes and goes. I think people the whole chicken thing. Maybe maybe shelf that one then. I don't know, man. Gambling on chicken prices. People were very uh excited about eggs for a while.

There could be a market there. Like maybe we need to have a product. All right, we're call we're running out of steam. Uh we'll call it there. Thanks for tuning in, guys. We will see you again later this week um on Friday as always potentially again before then if anything exciting pops up but uh Carlos Mark Ian Bach thanks for coming on and another great app of ox research we will see you all next time ciao yo Oh, hey.