Is Euphoria Seeping Into the Market? | Analyst Round Table

Transcript

I think Ryan Watkins put out a tweet about how he thinks that bubble conditions are forming and I think I think he's right. I think the amount of um these you know single-purpose vehicles spinning up to simply acquire coins with leverage is a very bubbly thing. That doesn't mean I think it's going to end tomorrow or within 3 months or whatever, but there is some euphoria kind of seeping into the market. Quick shout out to today's sponsor, Algarand. We'll hear more about their Algo Kit 3.0 and how it's built to supercharge your app development on Algarand later on in the episode. What's up, guys? This is Bokio, the bad host, and the better host, Danny. Uh, today we

have a very, very important announcement for you. We are hosting Permissionless in Brooklyn. Um, what dates? It's going to be in June. June 24th through the 26th. Very good. Um, you can use code 0x10 to buy your tickets. Uh, we're going to do lots and lots of stuff. Um, dinners, games, you'll get to meet the whole crew, the OX research crew, hopefully a bunch of the Blockworks research and other Blockworks crew. And, uh, maybe a dunk tank. We're going to have fun. Uh, whatever we can smooch off of Yano and Meo, we're going to do it. So, if you are a Zerx Research listener, make sure to use code 0x10 to buy your tickets. Danny, any parting words and we'll see you there.

[Music] Nothing said on Xerox Research is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Pokio, Ryan, and our guests may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of ZeroX Research. Today I'm joined by Mark Arjun, Ryan Cash, Connor, and Carlos, a resident Salana expert. Um, Blacio could not make it today. He was not ready for the heat that we're about to drop on this pod. Just kidding. I think he's traveling or something. He he he just couldn't make the timelines work for him. Um, how we guys How are we doing

today, guys? the markets are a little bit different maybe than than the past few months. I think uh people have like super cycle is on people's tongues again. Like are we that excited again or how are we feeling? Yeah, I think um I think Ryan Watkins put out a tweet about how he thinks that bubble conditions are forming and I think I think he's right. I think the amount of um these you know single-purpose vehicles spinning up to simply acquire coins with leverage is a very bubbly thing. Um that doesn't mean I think it's going to end tomorrow or within three months or whatever but

there is some euphoria kind of seeping into the market and you have you know I think a few macro catalysts to kind of act as tailwinds there with um just one Trump backing off tariffs like slowly but surely and then two um you know I think from what I've seen liquidity has been quite good in tre markets that should give you you know good lead um on asset price appreciation. So yeah, I think things you know I think I think Ryan Watkins might be right. I mean similarly I mean la last peak was with the Trumpcoin me mania and then I saw this announcement talking about how Trump is spinning up his own company to

purchase Bitcoin as well to add to the list of others that are doing that. So I I don't know what a top signal is anymore. So maybe that's part of the super cycle. Um but on more fundamental things, I mean Bitcoin inflows, I mean like $5 billion of inflows over the past five weeks or probably more than that. I mean even ethereum has seen sorry even has seen a couple hundred million in the past two weeks as well. So um it's not just Twitter who's getting excited, I guess. Um so are the institutions a little bit maybe. Um, and it's always good to see Bitcoin above 100K. So, I'm happy. Yeah, I don't have much to add to that. I think I would

agree with both. I think Bitcoin is at alltime highs. I think everyone's happy. Sentiment's been great the past week. And yeah, everyone's building. I don't know. Uh, the ecosystems are maturing. I think we're seeing like increased like um the correlation between crypto assets where you see areas of outperformance. I mean, hype has been doing great for the past week. Um, so yeah, I think uh I think it's a good time to be alive. I love that. I I do I was going to say Ryan to to your point and Ryan Watkins point about bubble conditions like how does the potential Circle IPO play into

that as well? I feel like that's been a an an indicator in the past that people have looked to as well of oh, Circle's considering an IPO again and and then you find out a year later that that was the peak. I yeah I think I think it's yeah IPO activity is definitely um a good measure of um you know a business's ability to think that they can get a high valuation and um I think given the disappointment around Circle Financials and their S1 the fact that they think that they can do it now still is pretty good and you want you want to do it when Bitcoin like like you said Mark has a nice big round number that you can point to.

Um, yeah, but I don't know how that one's going to go to be honest. I think it's it's tough for Circle, right? With the, you know, 50% of, you know, reserve asset incomes going to Coinbase. Like, who wants to buy that? Not even Coinbase. Like, why would Coinbase buy 100% of something when they already get 50% of the of like the interest net interest income from it? Like, I hard to find a buyer here, I think. Even even if markets get frothy, you don't think Ripple will come through with the big check.

I hope not. They're going to run I mean they they could really run the fake it till you make it playbook. This is what people are saying. They've got a big war chest and they could spend it. Yeah, it would be great for their legitimacy and brand within crypto. Um but what does that do to the product? I don't know. It's still like you still have to make cryptonatives happy. And I don't know if Ripple buying USDC makes crypton natives happy. Um, it's hard to know. I think it might make crypto XRP buyers happy. I mean, it's still surprising to me how many people think XRP is digital payments. You know, when I when when I ask what do you think

digital payments are? the integration between TRDFI and you know crypto like stable coins and stuff. I get XRP as the answer and I don't see how they see this link. Um cuz maybe I'm not on TikTok enough, but this is this might just be another thing for influencers to shill. Um you know, they're they're the owner of the second largest stable coin issue in the world and maybe maybe that's all you need. I mean, sometimes I see Ripple plastered all along the subways, the metro stations here, and it doesn't say what they do. It just says nextgen finance. It just has these nice buzzy catchphrases. So, um, you know, I mean, kudos to their marketing team. I I'll give them that. But, I mean, I hope there's a more legitimate buyer out

there. I mean, I would even rather perhaps uh bank purchase them, you know, even though there's no need for them because I guess with, you know, Genius Act, they can issue their own stable coins now, which I've seen some, you know, I've seen talks about some of them looking to make a coalition together and mint one stable coin to kind of get this union of money and not, you know, kind of like combine forces. But yeah, I mean, that just adds to how difficult it is for Circle. You know, even though they've done well so far, relatively speaking, it's just a difficult position. It's interesting with the context of well as well with plasma and they just announced the XPL they're going to do a public sale for the XPL token for plasma. Um and obviously that relationship there to Tether. So it, you

know, it's just very interesting to see, you know, Tether be so successful, so profitable, spinning out a network with a token associated and people are looking at Circle like, man, dude, I don't know if I really want to touch this thing and they're and they're maybe trying or struggling to IPO here. We we'll see. I don't know if you all read the public sale for that is XPL token for Plasma, but I thought it was pretty interesting. I saw it's not just a you know it's by Sona by Echo but it's not just a let me buy tokens let me allocate this you have to deposit some stable coins they take USDT USDC die some others and the longer you deposit it for you get more units they're calling it

and then these units if you you know the more units you gather which depends on how long you've locked these your stable coins for and how much the more units you get then it gives to a greater allocation to purchase the XPL token at at you know like $500 million FDV and I think that's like a unique fundraising thing a fundraising mechanism specifically for a stable coin where the amount of stable coins you have does matter because it's a liquidity game and then at the end of it all of the stable coins that you've deposited will be converted into USDT and then put on the plasma chain. So, I thought it was a really interesting mechanism and I I do like the design.

Um interested to see how much TVL they get from this. I agree. That's really interesting. I I didn't know about that. It seems like the B33 mechanism where you have like the more you lock tokens, the more governance power you have, but translated into like a funding mechanism. seems really interesting like to get like actual allocators that are like long-term committed to the plasma token or whatever. And I think like over the past months we've been talking about how do we get like exposure to stable coins and there's like adjacent ways to do it like you you say like money markets you say like yield trading platforms I think plasma is one of the

more more like direct ways to do it. So, I think like it's going to be an overs subscribed like public sale to be honest. Can I put any chain? Can I put any token on plasma? Any stable coin on plasma or is it just like their token? I think they listed out like four or five of them. The major ones I think USDCs, D USDT, USDC that, you know, I I glimpsed it. I think it's just the major ones. Got it. And will they have like a could you swap them? Will they have stable swaps? So, this is just the um fund raising mechanism. So, this is not even like not even talking about like we're not even on the L1 chain yet. This

is just like pre pre- the launch of the actual L1 pre pre-chain. So, they don't even have guidance on to whether or not you'll be able to do stable coin swaps on there or not that I've read, but I mean anything that I I read that all of the stable coins that you put will be converted into USDT on and then bridge to the plasma chain. I I I don't know what the actual capabilities of the plasma chain are is going to be. So, I mean, I imagine it must have basic swap capabilities if it's going to be any kind of successful.

Yeah, they're going to have to offer some way to onboard other currencies, I'd imagine. Maybe that's enabled directly through a bridge or they would have, you know, markets made on chain as well. But I mean, if it's like any other chain we've ever seen, then I'm sure they'll have some liquidity to enable that. Um, I think the other interesting part there is they're doing this sale at a valuation reflecting the the prior raise that they did with Founders Fund. So, it's at 500 mil million dollar valuation or FTV. um to your I think was it Carlos who said that or Mark that uh it'll be overs subscribed. Yeah, I seem it I I would expect that that's probably what would happen here. But I do think I I like the point about this um mechanism. I think it's interesting that

they're like, you know, forcing you to account for the time value of money here because if you deposit and then you only get some pro rata share of the total amount that gets allocated to people to be purchased, you know, you could you could put up 1 million of capital and you only get to invest, you know, 10,000. Um, so you're really I guess what I would say is that it encourages people to like really consider like, you know, do do I how much of my money do I want to have locked up in this thing? because all the money that does not get allocated like that will have just been you know lost value of that lost opportunity cost there. Um which I think is interesting because I think most other sales like don't there's not usually a mechanism for that. It's like you're locking up

capital and you're expecting some yield or some direct airdrop in in proportion to that and this is a little bit different. Whether you're building D5 protocols, enterprise solutions, or nextG DAPs, Algoit has all the tools you'll need to build faster, safer, and smarter on Algorand. Algoit 3.0 now offers native TypeScript and Python support, visual debugging, and seamless testing. Build, test, and deploy with tools designed for speed and simplicity. Start building with Algo Kit today by following the link in today's show notes. This episode is 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. Follow the link in today's show notes to grab your Ledger now. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. We can jump on though. I think the other another big thing that happened uh last week was the Salon Accelerate conference. We had some folks there, both Ryan and Carlos were there. Um, I'm ass sure some other block block works folks were there, but wanted to have them both on and and give some big takeaways and talk about the conference, like what happened, the the big teams and big ideas that that popped up. So, I guess if either one of you want to kind of take it away and give like your feel, how was Accelerate and what were some of like the big things we're thinking about?

Um, I guess I can dive first into like the infrastructure side. Um, so I think like from a core dev perspective, the main focus today is just how do we prioritize cancels over takes like when it comes to specific like order sequencing. uh and I think the reason for that is if you look at the Sena landscape today like across the various DeFi sectors like dexes, money markets, tokenization, per whatever the sector where Sena has definitely not uh succeeded is onchain order books and you can kind of look at that like in the per uh landscape where

hyperlid is doing six times more volume than all of Selena Perbs dexes combined. And so I think like in order to fulfill that vision of like decentralized NASDAQ and having like all of the capital markets straight on chain Sena needs to figure out how do we get or books on chain and that's like a big focus from the major like from the Salana Foundation from Anza from the major teams is how do we achieve this and I think like the Alpenlo consensus mechanism um the new proposals that have been coming up like in terms of like there was a post by Max Restnik and totally uh describing like decentralized

NASDAQ and like implementing like multiple concurrent meters and like application specific sequencing. I think all of this is geared toward like how do we get or boosts on chain and that means how do we reduce like toxic orderflow and enable market makers to like um provide like tighter spreads and provide liquidity without them worrying about like having like uh losses because they they essentially have like a structural disadvantage against takers. So I think like that's the main takeaway from the infrastructure side. Happy to hear like from from Ryan what are the other takeaways like from the application side.

Yeah, I thought um just like at a higher level first I thought it was an awesome conference. Um I've I went to Breakpoint um last year and this is my second Salana conference and both were just outstanding in terms of organization and content and um especially in contrast to the other large crypto conferences um the ones that aren't protocol specific but just like general crypto conferences that tend to have like I don't know just like the wrong people tend to be there or like a lot of pe the people in the room are people that you perhaps can't trust or shouldn't trust. Um just like a lot of really kind people like just shaking

hands and meeting people like a lot of really good energy in the room. Um a lot of really kind people a lot of really smart people. Um my my big takeaway at the kind of app side is like just integrations and consumer bets on Salana are really accelerating. Um, you have XStocks from Kraken, which I think was a big deal, and I'll get kind of piggy. I'll get back into that a little later. Um, but you have the Kalashi uh integration or sorry, Kalshi in integration uh with Salana for USDC, Farcaster on Salana, Metamax on Salana, uh Doge integrating to Salana. Uh you

have the Ledger device doing a Salana only device. Um, yeah, it's like there's just like a lot of really good energy on there. Every I everyone's really that realizing that you want a piece. A lot of the teams that stayed away from the ecosystem for a long time and then doubted its rise are now, you know, for lack of a better term, capitulating and, you know, either, you know, building an app or integrating into the ecosystem um, in some way. I I think the I think the XStocks from Kraken thing is a big deal. You know, everyone was really excited about Bass and its, you know, distribution

advantage. Um, it's similar to Binance and its distribution or Binance smart chain and its distribution advantage. But like the the the first chain that I like really that really stood out to me that they were doing this and really executing on effectively was FTX and Salana. And then FTX went down and Salana then lost its distribution advantage. It you know FTX was by many measures the fastest growing and you know in some markets the number one centralized exchange and then they lost that relationship which obviously really hurt the network in many ways but the the big one was distribution. Now they don't really have that. they kind of have it with Phantom now that you can get on there with Apple Pay um and you know onboarding smoother but like you

don't really have it from like a fintech perspective and maybe like the reason why I'm excited about Xox is like maybe Kraken's that thing for Salana. I I think that you know there is some future state where Salana doesn't execute and then falls behind and is like no longer the dominant player in crypto. I I think that's a real possibility and to establish that centralized exchange relationship that can give your tokens listing preference that can add you as you know that can make you an an onboarding preference. that um it's really necessary for them to maintain their lead and it was good to see that that's happening and it's kind of interesting right because Kraken has its

own like L2 and they still like decided like to to go with Sena so that speaks volumes like everyone's trying to come into the network they think like if you need like if you're an application developer and you're thinking where do I launch my application today I think 80% of developers will just choose SA and that's because like nowhere like in history has have startups been able to like grow so so so fast like from a time tomarket perspective and you're seeing applications like for example Axiom like it launched a few months ago Danny highlighted in a report and it's doing

like a 100 million annualized revenue like that that's like really incredible and like it other teams see that and they say like Ryan says, I want a piece of that and they and you and you can kind of see that in the influence in the ecosystem. I like the point about Kraken as well, Ryan. Like we know that there are others exploring this idea. Robin Hood has stated explicitly that they want to do basically the exact same product um offer equities on chain for like UK residents, which is essentially the the Kraken one. Um, who knows if they're going to use the same partners or if they're going to build out themselves or use a different partner. But, um, it it points to that same question of like I think there's been rumors of like, you know, is Robin Hood going to use Arbitum

or is it going to make its own L2? Are they going to do Salana? With Kraken selecting Salana for this purpose, it has you wondering like, you know, is is Robin Hood are other exchanges going to fall in line and do the exact same thing? Um, launch similar products on Salana? Um and you could see some of that distribution value come come back to the chain that it lost from FTX going away. Yeah, it's answering the um yeah, like the a lot of people doubt um a chain's ability to sustain value, right? Like either apps will are going to get too big and they're going to leave. Um I I think that in in a in an indirect way this kind of addresses that where you're

you're starting to see that network effect, right? you're starting to see what Ethereum had like you had to go to Ethereum in, you know, early 2021 to build a business. Um, you're you're starting to see that on on Salana. If they can get the right partners in terms of asset issuance and and and execute on that distribution um strategy, like they I think that they can run away with it over the next 12 to 24 months. But, you know, we'll see. Obviously, like Kraken wants people to go to Inc., But is the Salana uh network effect um strong enough to overcome that you know that itch? I I think so. I I guess maybe steering away from Accelerate for a

moment as well, but another kind of like hot piece of news is around the CFTC and regulating US PERS. Um maybe making that uh you know fully regulated but like legal operation within the US at least where it traditionally has not been. Um I it feels like that plays in here as well. Like Coinbase, they've tried to get into the pers game. Um, I'm sure we would see Kraken, Robin Hood, you know, all of these other large exchanges in the US would probably love to have offerings um on on the per line of things. I mean, we've seen how massive and how successful Hyperlid has been um with their sort of I mean decentralized or like half decentral, I don't think

that really matters. But regardless, you know, they've they've been able to grow a massive community around that product. Um, and seen incredible success in seemingly taking like some market share away from centralized exchange per volume. Um, uh, you know, I guess I'm curious, do we have thoughts here like what the implications of like fully regulated US per offerings might do to kind of the landscape today? I I I think it's obviously bullish US-based crypto things and things with the existing distribution. Uh I think it's pretty bullish Coinbase. I think it's bearish um hyperlid and the these aren't absolute statements, right? It's

like incrementally bullish, incrementally bearish. I don't think Hyperliquid's a zero because of this. Like it's still one of our of the the Blackwork research team's favorite uh picks, obviously spearheaded by by Bach. Um, but the more you allow traditional financial institutions to participate in this market, the harder it's going to be for these decentralized alternatives because they're more clicks away and they're not going to win the institutional dollar or it's going to be much harder to win the institutional dollar, right? People they they like frankly they want someone that they can sue if something goes wrong and like I don't think that Hyperlid can be sued or or it's going to be really hard, right?

Um, so yeah, I think it's pretty bullish for the incumbents for sure, but I don't think, you know, I I think that the the per thing it's it's only in like comments right now, right? So like there's some indication, but I don't know. It could be slow, you know. I I think they're just accept they're just accepting comments right now from from, you know, from Trafy institutions. So we'll see how that goes. There's going to be people that don't want it to happen, right? because they see themselves as losers and they'll try to block it. I will say just from um historical recent historical examples like we saw Robin Hood go from no prediction markets product to fully live and operating prediction markets

product after some push back from the CFTC initially on their Super Bowl roll out. Um and that happened over the span of like six months I want to say. So, I mean, they did the Trump they did the election. Sorry, not the Trump. They did the the election uh in 2024 and then they tried to do Super Bowl um Super Bowl outcomes and that there was some push back there maybe related to sports gambling versus being a prediction market. I'm not sure, but I guess they squared some of that away and it and you know rolling out the full prediction market platform uh a couple months ago now. So, that happened pretty quickly.

Not to say that, you know, we're going to see regulated per exchanges pop up in the next six months, but um you never know. This new administration, it's been very different, right? There you're I these companies are not as held up in the past where, you know, you got a letter from Gary Gendler and it was like, okay, we're done for the next, you know, we can't do anything for two years. Um so, we'll see. I I guess I would say I'm I would more optimistic. How many markets does Poly Market have or sorry uh does Robin Hood have for prediction markets? There's a good chunk. The last time I checked, they had a lot of the typical things you might see like expectations around um the like rate cuts or you know rate hikes cuts

um different political markets, different I think some like larger sports markets. They obviously did March Madness um the entire bracket. So, they've got a few. I don't I would guess it's not going to be anywhere near as many as Poly Market offers, but I don't think that's their goal, right? They're probably looking to offer the highest impact like individual prediction markets for their customers, which, you know, since they started with the election and then the Super Bowl, like it it seems like they've had a pretty strategic kind of roll out of that. Um, but I I would expect it's probably going to expand. I'm sure it will. they've they've seen the they've seen the the the revenue generation from I think some of those big markets and

realized the opportunity. Yeah, I like prediction markets more and more. Um Mike Epalito, co-founder of Black Works, he's a big prediction market bull and with you know with our our bullishness on me our meme coins, it's like they reduce the friction to gambling and they increase having fun. So that's why retail likes them. And prediction markets seem a little almost easier than meme coins, right? It's like there's a lot of actually confusion that comes with memecoins.

Which one is the right one? Um you know, why is um I don't know. Why is one dog coin ripping and the other one's not? Like is this one actually cuter than the other one? The the Keynesian beauty beauty contest is hard. Um and and that's kind of like part of the that's one of the reason boys one of the reasons why the stock market is annoying. It's it's it's often a Keynesian beauty contest. Um but however like I'm just looking at KI right now. It's like will will Starship launch on um will SpaceX Starship launch um before May 28th or after May 28th?

It's like okay I can get behind that one. I can look at historically you know how the launches have been and then I can like it's a very like I I know when I win, right? It's like it's very clear-cut and there's so many different things you can do a prediction market on like there there's infinite possibilities and you get hit kind of you know you you can test any of these kind of sub subcultures and see what's see what sticks or not and I don't know Colry in their in their talk at breakpoint said that they're one of the fastest growing companies in the US that's that's incredible given I would have assumed that it was open AI or something um maybe you know I I don't have the facts on that But, uh, they alluded to that, which I thought was pretty cool. The one thing I'm waiting

for and that I would just expect to roll out of one of these is to wrap one of these up in like a, you know, more gamblified consumer app and put parlays on there and get your average like sports gambler guy who does fiveway, five leg parlays on, you know, sports teams and like individual players and start doing that with these markets. Um, you know, I I don't know if as part of this like there's clearly I think some gray area difference legally around these prediction markets versus how they're how um CFTC is regulating uh sports gambling platforms, but um you know, I don't know if parlays or like

leverage or other things are part of that distinction and maybe they need to license or work out some some thought there, but that just feels like a very obvious product unlock to me. Yep. Yeah. I I I think I see once a week on Twitter someone complaining about how there's no parlays on on Poly Market. Algoit 3.0 includes all the tools and open source resources you need to unleash the power and performance of the Algrand blockchain. Access a resilient network with instant finality, consistently high throughput and low fees, and layer 1 features like atomic swaps and native assets. No smart contracts required. Whether you're building D5 protocols, enterprise solutions, or nextG dabs, Algo Kit has

all the tools you'll need to build faster, safer, and smarter. Start building with Algoit today by following the link in today's show notes. Ledger is the global leader in digital asset security, trusted by 7 million users, and securing 20% of the world's digital assets. In recent years, Ledger has built a comprehensive ecosystem of products and services, making digital ownership more secure and accessible for everyone. Ledger's newest devices, Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, introduced the world's first secure touchcreens, making it easier and safer to manage your transactions and assets. Alongside Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, they have also launched the Ledger Security Key app, offering a safer alternative to traditional passwords in enhancing your digital security. Follow the link into today's show notes to get started with Ledger today. As always,

investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. Cool. And then um maybe this is a weird shift, but did you Ryan did you since we're kind of got we got onto the consumer train a little bit. Were there any like big consumer takeaways going back to the Salana Accelerate stuff? Um because I think we kind of jumped into per and got off track there, but big consumer takeaways. I think the call sheet integration and and Xtocks were kind of the biggest ones from like a headline perspective. Would you consider wallets consumer?

Sure. Yeah. I think it's interesting that Metamax capitulated. You know, they've been putting that off for a long time. So, to have them on board is cool. Um, I spoke with some founders that just, you know, there's a lot of talent building over there. Um, there's good consumer energy there. And like Nikita has like a cult following of you know viral indie dev tech enthusiasts who want to go where the next big platform is and you know next viral loop is and you know that group of indie devs have not had financial incentives right so like a a great viral loop for something like timef fun is

just like totally token going up because then someone can say look the token went and it can be sharable and you can try to make money on it. So, I think that there's going to be a large cohort of web 2 devs um and you saw them at at Accelerate um that are going to follow him to this ecosystem and try interesting little things uh that could end up really big. On the consumer front, were there any was any enthusiasm around the Salana mobile the seeker phone coming out?

Yeah. No, no, totally. It was buzzing. The um Seeker had a um a section uh they had a large um booth, right, for uh for like Seeker activation. Um I think you could sign up there and they also had models. I was surprised at how smooth it was. I It was pretty limited. I you couldn't click around too much, but where where you could click around the apps that they did have, they're they're much smoother. And you know, from the V1 Solana phone, it obviously, you know, the build is fantastic. Most durable phone I've ever had. Um, the app experience, the UX is, you know, left a lot to be desired. So, I think they really focused on that this time around.

And it's a good-look device, too. Um, I'm an iPhone guy. Um, but, you know, that that phone looks good and it felt good and yeah, I'm excited for excited for it to come out. I think it's coming out August 8th. Um, so that should be that should be exciting. Yeah, I think they start shipping early August. I've ordered mine pre-ordered mine since last year, so I've been waiting quite some time for it. But I'm I'm excited. Yeah. And they they revamped the app store, too. Like they're taking it seriously. They added like new branding and everything. Like I I think it's I think it's interesting, right? Like we're actually approaching this time in the in the device market where people think it's up for grabs. like there's

there's not a platform shift, but there's definitely a feature uh set shift where you need to integrate AI and now perhaps it'll be less in demand than AI, but you might want some cryptonnative features. Um, I think Apple's the weakest that it's been in my life or since I started paying attention to technology markets or 20 years ago or something. It's definitely the weakest it's been. It has disappointed investors. It's been late on product announcements. It's promised features that has never shipped like for the first time. It's leaving a lot of people disappointed. So like there's a gap in the market. You see chat GBT or sorry OAI purchasing Johnny Ives company IO and going to market with some mystery

device. Uh that's TBD. Um you're seeing the contrast in AI features between Android and um iPhone today. You see Apple failing on Siri. Like I'm not saying that I think that Salana Seeker will be the next big platform, but you could see since it's since it's an open- source thing, you could see some Android OEM grabbing some cryptonative features and putting them in the phone if you know cryptonative payments in some EM country are are taking off and they want to ship to that region. Like that that doesn't seem um it seems plausible that there's an opening here.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. The the other interesting part with the secret, right, is that they've teased a token, an SKR token for this thing, which is interesting. The prior the initial model one of the phone, you know, there were airdrops, right? You got some bonk, some other things um for having been like a Genesis NFT holder for buying the phone. Um, in this case it sounds like maybe there'll be some token allocation directly from a seeker token for having purchased the phone there. You know, Luke's Luke Leisure's done uh reports on Slan Mobile and has talked about how, you know, the device has technically already paid itself off with like peak airdrop valuations from

being a a seeker purchaser in the past. So, um, it's technically already a free device, but it is interesting to see that like they've chosen to launch a token alongside this thing. Um, I don't know if you guys have thoughts there. I I've seen some commentary here that like people are maybe a little upset like this is kind of almost dilutive to the Salana ecosystem in a way. That that was my first initial thought. I thought, you know, it's Solana Mobile, which is a subsidiary of Solana Labs. And I'm like, is this a conflict of interest? Is is attention getting diverted from the soul token? Like, and then I also maybe this is on me for not digging deep into it.

But I also don't know what the what the point of the SKR token actually is. Like even if they want to say governance or payments, all of that is such a stretch um for the other coins that do that a lot better. So for me it was kind of like it seemed kind of if more like a land grab kind of play but you know my my mind is here to be changed. I see it kind of like a distribution uh strategy where if you know there's going to be a token and you know that the B1 version like paid off like for itself with airdrops like I I think people kind of expect the new phone to pay for itself with the SKR token and I think like I kind of look at it like as

a Dpin network where you pay contributors like in the native token and in this case like you're paying like holders basically for for just buying the the phone. And it's kind of like you you kind of have to do it in a way like if you look at the market today, I don't think like anyone's going to switch like their iPhone for a seeker unless like you offer some kind of like incentive on top of it and I think like this is the way to do it. The reason like it's an SKR token and not a soul token like I imagine it would be like quite hard to give like a sole allocation to to to like SAG holders right you can't really do that but like with SKR you can just

like do it very easily so I think like that's kind of one of the reasons they went like with a new token like you you can't really like have a way to like give a sole allocation in a way and and again you need these incentives so it makes sense in my opinion. Yeah, it's only uh it's only dilutive to soul if it has a take on rev. So unless they're giving it a 10% rev allocation, I'm not worried. My thought was okay, but people who bought the phone, I mean, first of all, I assume everybody who's buying this phone isn't using isn't planning to use it as their number one.

Like I I h I already have a phone. I'm using it as a second phone that I have. And after the first one dropped, everybody made back their money from, you know, meme air drops and whatnot. I just assumed everybody's thought going into this second one was the same idea like, "Oh, I'm going to get airdrop stuff. It's a kind of a better phone. It'll pay itself off like Danny was saying." Um then and then when they announced the SKR, I get it for bootstrapping, but then then I have to think where does the value come from um from, you know, where does the SKR token derive its value from? And and I get it.

I mean, like this is a question for for this the whole industry, not just Salana Mobile, for many projects. Um, and and I understand it as a bootstrapping mechanism. Um, but may maybe I'm just somebody and I think you all know this from our internal chats. I'm I lean to the side of less tokens, not more, which is not a very popular stance in this space. But, um, I hope I'm proven wrong. I hope the SKR token actually has some kind of proper value acral mechanisms that doesn't qualify it as a security while also bootstrapping the network. Yeah, maybe in this case like the token is a product like I I saw some people like say this is the first like mobile device with a token and then Austin Federa have like an interesting like switchet which

saying like this is the first token like with a mobile device. So maybe it's like the the way like to distribute like like like your network, you know. Yeah, Carlos, I liked your point about distribution but as like um as like an onboarding incentive essentially and comparing it to deep pin networks. I think that makes a lot of sense. I guess in this case like you know Mark, I agree with everything you said. I bought the phone because I thought I thought it would be free from you know paid back via airdrops. Um the fact that they're going to go ahead and launch their own token as well. Um, you know, it could be that that's part of this plan as well.

Like, you know, they had however many sales that they had, 180,000 devices, I want to say, like prior to this announcement. Maybe the goal is to sell another 200,000. And maybe announcing that you are for a fact going to have a token convinces that many more people to like buy a phone or buy an additional one. um with the you know maybe the the idea being that okay I'm going to receive tokens in exchange for having bought the device. I do think that there are interesting crypto native features on the original Salana mo mobile phone um just to like I use it for my crypto stuff like if I'm going to do crypto things I go on my Salana mobile phone and like there's like there is a UX issue. It's not as

smooth as the iPhone, but I can imagine it taking a lot more like I don't know of my time share if they can really smooth that out. Um, but yeah, like obviously the airdrop helps. Uh, that's that's going to be the bulk of your volume on like cryptoreated hardware things for the foreseeable future. The the re the the thing that the market I think needs to keep in mind is that the Salana mobile thing is not to sell phones. It's to get an OAM to to adopt this open source software that allows you to store your keys in a certain way and interact with a decentralized app store in a in a secure way, which is which is often lost in the in in the in

the media's framing. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. They're they're really just proving out the model and and hoping it gets picked up and spread around, which makes a ton of sense. Um, and it's not surprising, I think, to see other teams doing taking a similar approach like SUI and their gaming device. And, um, I mean, there's there's plenty of like there's an Ethereum phone, there's there's a bunch of these like smaller crypto device, um, devices going after like this type of thing. So, um, you know, multiple teams, I think, kind of see that that opportunity there, which makes a ton of sense. Um, go ahead Mark. Oh, never mind. And one last point on that for the features of the phone to be fair like the enclave device. I saw that you know maybe a few weeks ago Google started

integrating zero knowledge proofs into its wallet platform you know to like prove that somebody's over the age of 18 without you know actually you know revealing information. And I mean we all here know how it works but you know if if these kind of features become more popular than having the these n these cryptonative phones where the actual information is stored on the device versus Google's cloud. You know like I can see that picking up um in popularity as well. This episode is brought to you by Marinade. Marinade is focused on developing staking technology that strengthens the Salana network and connects soulholders with the best staking rates available with solutions for both DeFi and Tradfi, including liquid and native staking, as well as

direct enterprise integrations. Marinade's high performance staking delegation platform brings billions in liquidity and security to the sole market. To learn more, follow the link in today's show notes. And thanks again to Marinade for sponsoring today's episode. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. I like it. Let's uh I think we're getting close on time here, but I I want to do one more topic and Mark, I want to I want to tee you up for it. Um you wr written a bit about the Mega ETH ecosystem. I think this is a pretty hot one like at least within the community for a couple of reasons. One, I think Mega ETH, they've been very like open and upfront about their design and like the practical choices that they're making to have like a very high

performant network. and you know the fact that it's an L2 and that they're going to have like a big like really big fat beefy sequencer to to do pump out a ton of throughput. Um they're not afraid to like have a very direct approach there. And then two they did uh an echo raise and I or they and then they also have the the NFT as well that I think a lot of you know people are assuming they'll get some token allocation for. So they've given like the community some uh you know participation in the potential upside there which I think they're happy about. And then, you know, Bred is a very vocal, loud proponent on the timeline and I think people like his takes. He's he's upfront and he brings a lot of data. Um, but you covered the ecosystem. I'd love to hear like what

are you looking at there? What are the big apps? Like what are we looking forward to from Mega Eth? How do we feel about it? Yeah, I mean I think you you nailed it there with with the points why Mega ETH is kind getting so popular. I love, you know, these outs get criticized for having centralized sequencer and I love that Mega Eat is just leaning into it and like trying to take that to extreme while improving the EVM and like making it parallel parallelizable and whatnot. um in the ecosystem. I think I mean the apps that I I I looked at in the teams that I talked to obviously the common trend was oh mega eat is fast incredibly fast and we're going to have these applications that are going to lean on this speed and low latency and you know

going to have products that you know we haven't seen thus far in in the space and it just kind of makes me feel like you know crypto's finally maturing to the stage where like okay we've we seem to have solved scalability right now and it's less time time to get users Um but something else that also surprised me well kind of surprised me was that in talking to these teams some of these teams uh a lot of these teams actually are going with a blend like doing things onchain but still doing some of their execution and logic offchain too because I guess there's privacy reasons and there's also just you know speed reasons as well. Not everything can be done on a blockchain, nor does it need to be, especially if

it's more in the gaming. And some of these teams chose Mega ETH, not just because of the speed. The speed is there, nice to have, and it was definitely a requirement, but more so for the social community aspect of it, which they i.e. the distribution, which I do think Mega E can help them with. And then we saw stuff like with Mega Mafia, how much the team actually helped some a select group of apps who who they thought were special and helped them get, you know, attention and marketing and whatnot. But um I digress. I think one of the ones I like the most on it is an app called Euphoria. Um so they're not they're not public. They're not they don't have a main yet, but I was

privileged enough to get a demo of it. And I can only describe it to you because they kind of want to get it. They're kind of keeping it under the wraps for now because of how, you know, how optimistic they are about this release. But the Foria is basically an app and think of it like a trading grid where you can select where you think the line is going to go, right? So you're literally watching a chart in real time. Or you could, you know, be a little bit more conservative and set it to like minutes or weeks. But, you know, let's just imagine you're looking at it at the second chart and you can click where on the screen you think that the line is going to go to next. And you know, it it seems so fun.

The UX looks so smooth. And I think what a lot of people won't realize that they're doing is that they're actually trading options like a very complex derivative that uh that hasn't taken off in crypto at all. Um, and now it'll just be there at your fingertips fingertips in a very gamified way. you know, they're going to have like a leaderboard, social stuff, show your own P&L, you know, they're they're really leaning into the social and gamified aspects of it. But when I was reading about it, I was like, "Okay, this is neat." It's only when I saw the actual demo that I really got hyped. It's very hard for me to relay this just through voice. But that's one I was looking forward to. And especially because I've haven't seen anything like it before, not just in crypto, but just even in

TRFI because I mean even the most popular, you know, financial apps that we have in crypto are just maybe copy and past apart from per which have done well in of themselves. The others tend to be like, you know, some version of already existing apps. So, it's nice to see something that doesn't even exist in TRFI. Um, apart from Euphoria, we talked about prediction markets and how, you know, Ryan talked about how nice those are over meme coins for the various reasons. There was one called guess best. Um, and it was basically you're trying to guess what is the current trend right now and it's basically like hot or not or like

Tinder for current trends. And you know, I think they had or I they have like thousands, tens of thousands of markets already live right now. And you just have to be with you have sometimes you have to be in the zeitgeist of what's going on with whatever the topic is to kind of play it. When I was playing this game um in the demo, I kind of I kind of just started to play it a little bit too much. I'm like, "Oh yeah, this is just research. I have work to do." Um which is kind of how addictive it can be. even though it's it's still in the early stages, still maybe a little bit, you know, slow. And when I say slow, I mean it takes 1 second or 1.2 seconds, which for me is, you know, I'm maybe not the most patient person when it comes to

tech. So, um, it's really nice to see that and something that I I imagine they will have like an offchain element of this too and leaderboards and whatnot. And then it's it's what I liked about it is that it's a game that you can play for free for fun like I did or you can actually put some money on the table where you can either just guess what the current trends are or you can go one v one 3v3 against people 1 v3 to see who's better at guessing what the what's in right now. And you know the good thing about it these these trends are always changing. And I also think that you know this might not be you know we didn't no no token talk here very speculative but this that kind of data for this app the

kind of if they can get what everybody's thinking in real time and as trends evolve I think that kind of data for themselves is monetizable however they want to use it you know you know making ads or selling it to third parties I think that data in itself is is very valuable so that's another one that I really liked um and then more on the defy high end of things. Um, you know, Carlos asks about this one. Avon Avon, it's basically an uh lending order book. You know, we haven't, just like we haven't really seen order books take off on Solana or really many chains. Um, we have for for trading, we haven't seen it really take off for lending either. And you know with you know you're going to get the same kind of you know perto

efficient jumps that you would get for lending that you would get for trading over AMM um you know like tighter spreads lower lower rates for the borrowers higher rates for the lenders in terms of what the protocol keeps and how efficient it is and you know like liquidations at a quicker level or even like micro liquidations where your entire position isn't going to get liquidated because of how efficient how quick it can be and how quickly the prices move. You know, on the trading side, there was a couple like Valhalla, GT, um, GTE. These ones are also, you know, combining like their risk engines offchain with their order books onchain, which, you know, I'm really interested

interested to see cuz I really do think if any chain can do it, one with a very beefy centralized sequencer can do these kind of things. Um, and you I get this feeling that, you know, mega they think like the general consensus sees Mega E as more as a gaming social um L2 um you know cuz there are some others like TCG Showdown which is like poker but kind of like with gambling with more elements of of gambling added into it. And if you know how to play poker I I you know I played the demo. I was lucky enough to get access to that.

If you know how to play poker, you can pick up this game in like 10 seconds and you just have to really like learn the cards and it just adds another element to it. But then, you know, as I as I mentioned, there's there's there are these order books for the lending and for the DeFi that, you know, like that really do put some I don't know, put some oomph behind the financial aspects of Megath as well. So, um I you know, those I'm looking forward to as on top of it all on top of all of it. And maybe one last one that I will mention is um is HopVPN. Um I think that you know as the name implies they're VPN but you know we we've seen VPNs be tried in this decentralized manner before in this

space and they don't really work well. They're not great products but I think what I liked about Hop was that they they're abstracting all of that crypto complexity away from it. you can go on, you know, you can, you know, potentially when it's mainet, um, go sign up like you sign up to any VPN. You know, Stripe embeds crypto payments into its back end now. So, you know, you could potentially use Stripe to just pay for this VPN. and they're they're leaning into this not as a privacy network as a lot of maybe a lot of the other um crypton native VPNs try to that narrative they try to push but Hop is kind of more doing it as a geographic blocker you know like how all of us probably use our VPNs um and we kind of want them to be quick with speed as well

so I think Hop is leaning into that plus I'm sure as we all know sometimes I try to access a website a crypto website um and I'm geob blocked and I put on my VPN and they know that that server is linked to this whether it be Nord or Surf Shark or whoever it is and then you have to try a VPN in another region and you're kind of like you have to use multiple locations in this. I think the advantage with a decentralized one is that they can't it's not so easy to pinpoint who the actual servers are. So it kind of makes geob blocking a lot harder and I think that's what most people use these VPNs for. So I think that's the last one I'm going to shout out. think there's some there's some really interesting projects coming out on on mega eth and

I'm I'm I'm really looking forward to it. It's on public test right now. So I encourage any listeners to go and try it out because you can you can actually get a taste of the speed of the chain even though it's in test net. So yeah. What do you think of the quality of the consumer teams? So it seems like it's interesting a lot of these people are coming from web two. It's not like they la I'm like, "Oh, is mega is this project your you know which chain did you try on before?" They were like, "No, this is this is their first blockchain um app that they're building and they just know that they think they really believe and I guess on the test

net they're seeing that Mega ETH can handle this level of of speed. A lot of them are doing it hybrid, offchain, onchain as well. Um and like you know with like TCG um it it you know the people who are building the app X former champions in Magic the Gathering and former champions in poker. So like they have that experience you know they're making a new game. Um the same thing with like Valhalla they built you know a TRFI risk engine like a centralized exchange and now they're just doing this um onchain. So like a lot of them have this web two app background and now coming to web three for the first time. And I really like to see that. I know there there's going to

be some kind of a you know a difference between those two. But I I kind of like to see like they not not in a bad way. This you know you know no entrepreneurship is about failing but you know it's not like they're this is their third iteration of a project and they're just trying to do it on a different train because hopefully this one gives them distribution. and like they're coming with novel ideas because they think that, you know, like as I mentioned, I actually think crypto probably has some scale now and now it's just to get the apps to, you know, fill that demand and that latency. So, I think I I I'm I've been impressed and I've been like, you know, I'm optimistic about these web two teams building on them. I mean, I should say web three teams now. Web three teams. Yeah.

Do you think that um I think that Mega E has claimed 200,000 TPS or that's possible in test environment. I'm not sure the the conditions of the claim, but do you think that we'll see that on mainnet? No. No. I I mean every time an L1 or L2 comes out and says I'm going to have this DPS, it never happens. And I and I never believe it. So no offense mega, but no. Yeah. Like I I was historically I've I've just discounted every claim or performance claim that a blockchain makes by 75%. So does do you think that 50kts is possible if that if we were to

do that to me that's what that's what we get to and that would be pretty impressive. I mean a lot of these teams still claim that they can handle these level of transactions and I don't want to call any blockchains out but but the but the fact of the matter is you may be able to do this but you don't have the users to prove it and then the only time we actually see oh wow this chain can actually handle it is when some spam app launches on the chain and everybody clicks one thing over and over and we say okay fine they could have handled it but then that usage also dies out. So then who who really cares? So like I said, okay, I know some ch I know we can handle the scale, right? Like you know,

but it's really just about getting the users and the apps. I think that's the more important part than like what your theoretical or actual practical TPS is because in reality, you probably aren't going to hit that level, sustained level for some time. Yeah, I I think that's a fair take and and I think what we've seen like with Salana's development probably informs a lot of that view where it's like you know maybe theoretically the pieces of the stack could do certain things in terms of throughput in a idealized environment of all transactions look exactly the same. um you know XYZ conditions and then you find out that like oh this one piece of the stack like is a bottleneck to everything else and it take your whole assumption like collapses to from 200k TPS to 500 TPS

because that thing uh is a bottleneck. So yeah, I mean I I would imagine similar to what Mark just said, it's like who knows what the real number is. You know, you need a lot of demand to even stimulate up to like Salana levels of of activity. There's not many chains doing that. um you know maybe hyperlquid as well um on the you know on the on the purpose exchange but yeah the demand has it seems like recently at least the demand has been a bigger problem than the supply of the block space at least. Awesome. Well I think before we close it out there thank you Mark that was a great coverage of me. I'm sure the mega eat the rabbits and Brad will be incredibly happy about that one showing

up on the pod. Um, I gota I got to give a shout out to and for Permissionless 0x10 is the code. Get 10% off tickets. It's coming in less than a month now. The 24th of June to the 26th. Um, this whole crew I think we'll all be there. Mark, Carlos, you guys will be there. Ryan and I will definitely be there. Um, so get your tickets, come out, see us. The the premiere Block Works podcast. I'm saying that now. The dunk tank will be there. Ryan is getting in the dunk tank. I'll get in the dunk tank. We're going to get Bach in the dunk tank.

Yano, Meipo, start making a list, guys. Come out. Scream at people to get in the dunk tank. We'll we'll make it happen. Um, any last any last thoughts, guys, before we close things out today? Come to Permissionless to dunk on people in real life instead of just on Twitter. Love it. We'll call it there. We'll call it there. Come dunk on Ryan Cash Connor at Permissionless Live June 24th through the 26th. We'll see you guys there. Thanks for watching today and thanks for coming on guys. [Music]