Hivemind: What UniChain Means, Return of Memecoins, and Crypto’s AAA Gaming Moment

Transcript

for me this is just an inevitable thing that the biggest brand in crypto was going to make their own chain the industry doesn't make sense if you can't build an app and keep the value like yeah right I think they're going to try and position this as like the the salana on eth right where where most of the liquidity sits for for mem coins for assets like bunch of the probably OG uni LPS will move over it's definitely an app chain nothing set on the hive mind is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is strictly for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions not Financial [Music]

advice all right hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the hive mind podcast today with us we have the usual gang myself Jose Marie masedu uh Yan liberman Duncan AKA flood capital and cedus so news just dropped uni chain probably the hottest thing on the docket for us to talk about um so yeah the for a bit of background Unis swap just announced uni chain it was built in partnership with flash Bots and and the optimism team it features these flash blocks which are like 250 millisecond partial blocks um based on they've taken some stuff from from Salon AR

architecture um and it's also going to have like the ability for apps to to um have custom logic which allows them to internalize me um and a bunch of and a bunch of other stuff so pretty big news kind of goes into the thesis that that I've been harping on for a while that every single successful app will eventually have its own execution environment and I think it it's basically now all of them right like I mean compound never launched their chain but pretty much every successful app in crypto has has moved to this model um and you SWS just the just the latest one to do that curious yeah what are you guys' takes on this yeah so first of all I think there's a lot of nuance in this um

because uni chain is not making the Unis Swap amm and app chain right this is like Unis swap taking their brand and wanting to become and this is something that like I've contacted about for a while how like I think the end game of Unis swap is just to be this complete like Consumer Finance uh platform right and that's why like they've done the wallet and now they're doing this chain too and they can kind of just own um the entire part of the stack like it's not like uni chain is just going to be their amm right and that's it it's like they're using W it's like evm chain they're going to get a bunch of applications built on top of them

um this is just them I think like using their brand to kind of just own the entire stack right and I don't think every application can just do this you have to be extremely successful like Unis swap um and like I do think this chain will probably be pretty successful I think it's my first take is like it's bearish for a lot of the other l2s like Bas already took Bas already took like most of the activity on l2s um I feel like this one is going to do the same thing and just take more of that

especially because it's going to be way more performant than the other ones and that seems to be like what people kind of care about right um so yeah what what's interesting though is like obviously there's a lot of front writing in this um officient Market hypothesis Vindicated uh because like it's it didn't really move from the announcement but it was up like 10% or so over the last day but if this came out I feel like if this announcement came out in you know 2021 or something uh uni token would be flying right and so it seems like people don't I don't if they don't care like maybe

they got to like read through it more um but yeah it's it's they mentioned they're passing through sequencer Revenue to the uni token so I I don't know if amm fees will be passed on right so I don't think they're using this as a a kind of Trojan Horse to to turn on a fee switch but they're basically they're creating a new source of fees but they're passing those fees along to the uni token which is you know finally some form of value acru there yeah they're also they have this native interoperability solution right it's like leveraging the the super chain stack but you basically get sub um one block rc20 transfers and then they're

trying to push this initiative called RC 7683 which is is basically trying to extend that super chain interoperability to to all other chains um and I'm guessing they're going to try and funnel a lot of users to just to just keep their assets here and then do all their swaps through through un swap X right where they can just get you the best liquidity wherever it is and then and then like funn all the asset back here um pretty pretty interested to see how that how that plays out actually outside of of other l2s I joking around one of the other big losers is Jared what what share of his me comes from Unis swap it's got to be

yeah but do you think that people do you think this actually impacts Unis swap like trading activity on L1 I mean I guess how much liquidity you think moves over it seem seems like the applications will want to move over right because they have this ability to internalize some of the muv um and so there'll be it'll probably be the place that applications themselves want to encourage people to trade which intern will probably move a lot of a lot of the volume and liquidity over there or a lot of the liquidity volume over there applications launching on un chain have the ability to internalize their me that's what I understood obviously this just come out uh have like an hour ago so doesn't that go against paper doesn't

that kind of go against the f chain thesis then if you're if the application on a chain can just internalize the me then you don't need to create your own chain well it's through this through this like stack they've created with the trusted execution environments and stuff where you can basically have applications put in logic that enforces certain ordering um that allows them to to capture some of the me I just read it on the blog post announcement I'm like 25% way of the way through the white paper so but I think that's the idea is that you can enforce any any kind of sequencing uh through the trusted execution environment yeah so that goes that that to me is like against the app chain hypothesis if

a lot of reason why people think you need app chains is because you can internalize all this and if you can just as like get like app specific sequencing as a contract then you don't need to to create an app chain right so for me this is just like for me this is just an inevitable thing that the biggest brand in crypto was going to make their own chain um right but obviously other applications are going to launch on this chain now and if they can internalize their own me then it's something like those applications will need to make their own chain right um and so I don't that's why I don't see this as an app chain because it's like it's just Unis swap brand

creating a new performant chain for people to use right it's just like another it's like competing with mega eth I'd probably say if I had to pick like the main L2 right s you got an interesting comment on one of your tweets I think this guy listens to our shows um pretty frequently from eight my bags cedus am I taking crazy pills or is eth becoming the cosmos Hub like with kind of like announcements like this you know do you feel like it's moving more towards I don't know because like no because Etha one still is like general purpose contracts right it still has like all the reaking stuff um I mean un

swap stakers are still going to be they're actually staking on L1 um I mean there's some of that though for sure but it's kind of just an inevitability I guess the cosmos subub literally does nothing so I don't think that the comparison is totally fair and E and eth actually like cemented itself as I mean it's got like 300 Bill market cap or something right and it's like know the role of settle to eth like that that doesn't happen Adam secures like two two chains right um as far as I get the analogy I get it like a little bit it's not completely accurate though I think this is just like neutral for eat though like

you know it's uh unless you think I mean you can say it's because I don't think I don't think Unis swab on L1 is really going to lose too much activity because it it kind of is just like base infrastructure on ethereum L1 right um it just facilitates like a spot amm has to be on a general purpose chain right that's why like I think calling this like an app chain is not really correct because it's not an app chain it's just Unis swap is creating this performing chain with their brand right that is an app chain though that's like and and like they couldn't they couldn't do this anywhere else right because this this module that they've that they've

written they'd have to get integrated by whatever chain they wanted to deploy on in addition to the other stuff that they've they've put into the chain that that we don't even know about like the the I mean one of the points of app chains is sovereignty right you can you can Implement whatever changes you want to the execution environment to the transaction ordering without having to go through an EIP or convince you know the optimism team or whatever to to implement it and I I assume I mean yeah I don't know where where this is going to go how they're going to like attract liquidity to to trade here instead but yeah I I agree Mega eth is the is like the biggest competitor although all other l2s are I think too Bas chain probably like Athena chain to to some

extent but uh I I think they're going to try and position this as like the the salana on eth right where where most of the liquidity sits for for meme coins for assets like bunch of the probably OG uni LPS will move over there's probably going to be some uh incentives to do so as well not sure if the M will be enough or if they'll use actual incentives but yeah yeah like I it's definitely an app chain like okay so so we can call we can okay we can call an app chain whatever what I think is really happening is is like a successful app gets to create their own kind of like customized specialized chain because they have this strong app that they can like integrate in but then like

the chain itself is not necessarily an app chain that's like what the Athena is doing too right it's like they've got this like stable that is everywhere and now they can use that product to just create their own chain and I think you'll see the successful ones are able to do that where they have a successful app but then when they move to their own chain it's not like the chain is just their own app it's using that as like the pillar but then you're bringing in all these other applications as well right um and I think yeah you could kind of see this being like maybe it shifts away from just having these purely general purpose l2s in it and it's like you create These Chains around you know custom whatever

right yeah that's the that's always been my like our modular thesis I guess of why we think everything ends up as an app chain and why there will be thousands of them and I do think it also I mean this definitely doesn't validate there'll be thousands of them because as you said you have to be a successful application to to really pull this off but it does I feel like uh affect the L1 the the monolith thesis if you just end up being a test net for successful apps basically because as soon as you succeed you migrate off to your own chain to capture the the MV and and and whatever else you know users and stuff like this um yeah I don't know this this this is why I'm uh I mean salana has its own modular stack that's developing now and

stuff but yeah this this is kind of where I think most successful apps will end up honestly and why I'm so bullish on stuff like Anisha that's trying to build with this in mind from from the get-go and super Chan I mean I think Super Chan is doing a really good job too probably the the leaders seem to be yeah so so it's interesting like op versus ARB like arbitrum has way more activity than optimism right optimism is kind of like ghost town now but optimism seems to be getting all of these big wins on like the BD side right and it's like what is more I mean what token is more like the op token has nothing to do

with this uni chain right and the op token has really like nothing to do with base whereas so I don't know it's like an interesting to see how like the op and the ARB token will diverge over time if Arbitron you know they have these orbit chain sure orbit chains sure um but the most of the activity within arbitrum Eco is on arbitrum and then like I guess hyper liquid right um but for optimism it's like it's really these other chains now these other chains that are going to start like taking over all the activity and so what does OP like mean what is op what's the the point of that token right yeah the barcas is that it just becomes like you know the cosmos SDK has been

hugely successful but Adam hasn't really benefited from that I think the op stack could be somewhat similar where you have bass and and uni chain and a bunch of others that end up using your stack but how do you benefit from that I do think owning this interoperability standard you know basically having like an inbuilt bridge and then offering these like value ad services at the at the super chain level will end up being pretty valuable um because you you will that they're just best position to coordinate across all the projects using their stack but it's definitely like a lot of execution risk uh in in in doing that but I do think that will be like pretty valuable I don't agree though that with the thesis that

like applications will keep all the me in the long run CU there's a lot of benefits to launching on a shared layer and like again the uni chain is kind of goes in with that like applications launching on uni we'll take some of the meev uni chain will take some of it there's kind of like this bargaining like if you launch on a general purpose L1 it's kind of like this bargaining you do with the validators um because there's a lot of benefit to sharing state with other applications and so right now validators are taking like all the me and stuff what are the benefits because like when we did the analysis on we haven't done redone it but when we did it like two and a bit years ago there was very little of the state that actually

touched each other on both Solana and ethereum well it's the users and the liquidity basically yeah yeah but that's more ux right I like theoretically that would that could be solved with you with like chain abstraction or like ux abstraction sure like theoretically it's been theoretical for a few years I'm not I'm not like uh but but still that there's nothing fundamental about about that did you guys see uh snap here comes the show do you guys see synapse launching cortex seems like it's solving exactly what what you're referring to Jose it's been in the works for years we so we've heard chain abstractions one of these things where it's like sure yeah everybody knows we need it it's like a solution and everything uh but it's like

unclear how good you can actually make that and like how long that's going to take I just love how all these conversations come back and then the answer is is the synapse chain Now call cortex if it launches if if it can execute on the vision that's what I've been invested in for two years wasn't it going to yeah anyway let's I'm not going to give you more more rope on this show um so segue to this do we want to talk about like the applications versus infra Ryan Watkins had a had a great post just sort of pointing out how applications are now like pretty strongly flippening infra in terms of in terms of Revenue uh but not so for for

valuations um and yeah his his conclusion was that like infro would probably still command higher valuations but only a few only a few l1s will be able to do that because they're basically competing for money um yeah I'm curious what you guys thought of the post and and what your where you guys sit on this yeah I mean it's it's a sum of the parts thing right so um it's not I mean you have some that are outpacing uh like less used chains but but you know there's no one really competing directly with with Ethan soul but if you do some of the parts on on on all of them that Mak sense I guess like it it seems pretty inev itable that more

of the dollar spend of users will shift towards apps because you know to some extent you you assume that they they would move to a cheaper chain right if if like every dollar of spend on an app uh was was sending more towards the L1 then then then there's an opportunity for for that activity to shift to a cheaper chain there's you know realistically it shouldn't be that prohibitively expensive um to to to transact on chain relative to what you're spending on the app um it I guess it really depends as well on on um if you're thinking about uh the type of app too right if it's an exchange the the fee is pretty

fixed in the form of gas but the the the amount you spend is is based on volume right so if it's a lot of small transactions you'll have that the makeup will shift more towards the L1 and if it's a lot of large transactions than the the the the fees shift will will go towards the app so I think you kind of Break It Out by app by app and and do do some of the parts but it seems inevitable that over time as as scaling improves um the amount that that that's spent on on the L1 or or or just the onchain fees should decline whereas the the app fees are pretty standard I think there's like there's two main so the easiest example I guess look at like a money market so money Market has like

its internal fees which is just like interest spread basically net interest margin that they make and that's like something application just acrs right but then there's like where the real value is and that's in the liquidations and those are like execution and sequencing fees right and those go to validators now um and so yeah this just goes back to my earlier Point like as as a money market you want to be on a chain with a lot of liquidity in it and so you benefit from being on a shared State layer with a bunch of activity and so right now yes validators of the L1 are taking all that me they'll probably need to give some back to the money market right like just competitively but again

I don't think like money markets a money market unlik a shared L1 will just take all that me because validators still need to get paid at the end of the day right so I don't think I think people like to take extreme views on like the two sides of this and I think that yes I think that both like apps will yes start to Cur a higher portion of like me and like execution fees in the long run but if you just think that like overall activity on these l1s just grows even more then right it kind of like balances out but his point is that there they're they're way overv valued if you're just looking at activity right like oh they probably always will be right like l1's well never Val his his comparison is like to uh which is one people have made

many times before just telecoms in the late 90s right there was like there was no model to to Value them people were were extrapolating out like absurd numbers and then like 20 years later they're like very uninteresting businesses that are that are valued on on a multiple and like l1's could be the same right this cycle where it's just like the only way to bet it's like the best proxy to bet on crypto and it's all like a relative value trade to bitcoin it's like oh these things might be money um that like I'm bullish on on on crypto I'm gonna ape like Ethan Soul or whatever but over time as you get applications that win and like generate more fees emerge as the clear winners like a lot of that Capital could shift

away and l1's could just become boring infra that's valued on on on a multiple I agree they have some pricing power based on like the value of the state on there that you want to access but I I just think that's way less than like money markets is pretty much the the the only example I can think of and even there is it's like the the stuff that like there's not that many people using LP shares as collateral and money markets or or anything like that anymore um it's just really like you just need it for for liquidations right to be able to liquidate the collateral quickly like within a block or whatever I don't know that there's that much yeah the composability thesis I feel like just hasn't I I I think if you if you if you

think about why people want to launch on a on a monolith on an L1 much more of it is the ux and user base versus benefits from from composability compared to what we initially posited in like 2020 2021 yeah yeah for sure everything you do is basically async like you know yeah exactly borrow something you then swap it for something you then deposit it into a pool like those are all async right um but like the ux and liquidity is a big is kind of like a big deal and I don't think it's as easy to solve as people will kind of pitch and make it out to be um and if you can just keep scaling the L1 more and more like how like salana and some of

these other high throughput chains are trying to do um I think these I think these chains will continue to see more like relative activity share go up over the next like couple years yeah I mean I think like the the the value path they're they're certainly ped to BTC as is everything in the space right so that that there's that element and then there's also Al kind of front running the their path to becoming eventual utilities right in a world where where um e is whatever steady state value let just you know call it 10K everything works out like you know assuming everything goes well I don't I think it basically front runs

the activity that's supposed to get there then the activity gets there then it operates more like a utility where it's it's slightly more volatile but it's it's less of a front running the beginning of the internet type of type of play um so like you that's why I think all these valuations are are Mega stretched on these l1s uh because you know the Tam that you're hoping to PR you're pricing in this optimistic large Tam in the future um and and so yeah that gets front run and then eventually they kind of hit steady state and then ideally it's the apps that start to do well and yeah I think that the proxy of utilities from back then is apt here but it's tough to draw like EX parallels yeah it's just with with

telecoms they didn't hit well they front R activity that didn't end up happening right and there was like a big crash like I think most of them haven't even hit their their 20 their 2,000 Peaks I'd have to go look at a chart but I think Cisco and stuff like only recently or or maybe hasn't even hit their their 200000 Peaks like 20 years later like networking though telecoms is is like your Verizon AT&T's and and they basically because they they they sold off the tower businesses and those became utilities as more Capital efficient basically for the towers to be Standalone and and and for multiple telecoms to use the same Tower versus each Telecom owning their own Tower and

yeah yeah I mean AT&T and Verizon are both below their 2000 price yeah I mean I used obvious doesn't take okay it's a very boring business it's just crazy you hit pretty much like there there's a decent amount of saturation and growth is from you know children aging into adults being able to use phones and immigration right like that's your otherwise you're it's saturated and and you're just trying to steal market share from each other through promotions and all of that and so they they become just yield-based products you know you've saturated your Revenue when you're waiting for children to age yeah I I feel like on on the application side

it's just I think the easiest point in the stock to extract value seems to be um just like distribution to users which probably comes as like a form of you know some sort of regulatory remote or just like having that distribution so it's like like is this a setup for no I'm not I'm just saying like that just like the wallets any anything right like even Bas and coinbase and like you know funneling their users there extracting fees there um like what Unis swap is doing they have a brand they can bring their users to their chain um any anyone with users that just seems like the maximum point of of value to be extracted is you own the users and then you can take fees

from them like a lot of the infra pieces will just kind of compete each other uh on fees and that'll get grounded in over time and yeah I think you have to hope the like the l1s do capture some sort of monetary premium because it's really going like I think just the easiest point to extract fees is going to be at the user level did you read uh Robbie's fat wall thesis yeah I think that that's that that's probably where where we're going for a while though and like it hasn't really played like we started investing against this thesis in like 2020 also thinking that not just wets but like the zappers of this world would you know whoever owns whoever's closest to the user whoever the user like because our theory is just people aren't

going to be interacting directly with these protocols there's going to be abstraction layer which might be a wallet it might be a portfolio dashboard it might be a trading terminal um and and like they would own the user and be able to capture value but it hasn't really played out like metamask is the only one that's really like managed to do that I think yeah but I think that the idea that front ends are capturing value is true at least if you just look at valuations and we saw this with like Jupiter and Unis swap who were both like the ends of they're both like 710 billion valuations or something like Unis swap market share barely dropped after they

took the front end fee from zero to 25 basis points because they have just such like brand recognition and the users um I can pull up the data quickly but it dropped like maybe from like 40% to like 30% or something and a lot of those users are sticky just how many people are using metamask and paying those fees a testate that people aren't super fee sensitive I mean even people that are smart enough to to fish Ian into giving them $6 million of tokens or using metam Mas to swap like that's how many that's just how many people just like value that convenience right especially when this stuff is so volatile and it's like okay like this stuff swings 10% a day five 10% a day to

make sure that you're getting like trustworthy reliable execution for 25 bips uh is really like such a relatively low price to pay versus you know your transaction failing and or you know using a website where it's hacked or compromised or something and potentially losing your funds I think that crypto is so trust oriented and uh execution is so important because these assets are so volatile that you know whoever is going to be the biggest trusted brand offering the best execution and like safety and like cultivates that uh among their their customers is going to be like very sticky in the marketplace there are some counter points right like tether uh is is I guess a Counterpoint like in terms

of someone that doesn't have I mean I guess they started by having one like they kind of grew it through bitfinex initially when bitfinex was dominant exchange but nowadays they they really are like a headless you know they there there is no tether front end or anything that's attracted through and they just print money off being used by others I think stable coins are an example where like you can actually pull that off although to grow you do kind of need to like try and own the user as you know fra and maker and everyone found out and and having to build out their own D5 Primitives but there are like a few examples I'd say they built the mo that's liquidity yeah liquidity is the moat every like the most L liquid trading pair on every major exchange is is tether yeah it's like if you don't

have a network effect you have to own the user right if you don't have like some kind of economy of scale you you sort of have to own the user there's also the comfort of of not using usdc and and the stigma that being associated with you know the thought that they can freeze your asset so if you're in National you're just not going to you're going to opt for tether over usdc yeah I think like just front end and capturing the users is one Moe like there's definitely other modes in the business but as Yan said like usdt has just grown to such an enormous size that they do own a lot of users in terms of like you know the trend like the currency of um these exchange Pairs and then also just like people hold tether and use te in like Commerce in a lot of

places across the world they've kind of built that up through um just like being the only real competition you're just having so much distribution but it does kind of come back down to owning the user there just not really like an exchange front on business they're more focused on that stable coin yeah so tldr we're bullish applications well I do think I do think like just on a final point it's like the industry doesn't make sense if you can't build an app and keep the value like yeah right like what's the point um you know people AR going to build apps just so that they can like push the L1 token because they own big bags of it like

that's not how you get new developers and stuff yeah and this kind of leads us nicely to the to the next point on on memes so like memes have seen a Resurgence we saw SPX 6900 which Mirage showed me at token 2049 and I didn't buy enough of have like an absurd sort of whiff like run um and in general like uh they they've sort of been another meme meme season last week uh and there's been a lot of takes on Twitter about this um about how people saying memes are good because there you know all the all the reasons like yeah equalizing the playing field and all this I think the interesting one and the one that like

Yan disagrees with too but I kind of agree with and this was done by the guy at I forget what it's like Thea research yeah Mont his point his also a bananagun bow all right so his point was that Meme coins are good because they divert Capital away from like pure narrative trades right um and so you have these kind of Trades a lot throughout crypto where it's like oh the L2 trade is on and people are just going to bid L2 tokens indiscriminately and then oh there's like reaking trade or something so maybe you'll get a bunch of like those tokens or like a DA trade right you get a bunch

of Da tokens going and these kind of have no semblance for I guess valuation or fundamentals it's just kind of like Chas saying narratives and so his point is that with people bidding meme coins that Capital that would Chase narratives now is not there and so real projects need to actually create um like a useful product with like real fundamentals and order to get like liquid funds to buy them because you don't have that indiscriminate Capital just chasing these narratives anymore but like no yes I was going say even in the crazy scenario where 1% of narrative one like 99% of narratives are vaporware and 1% are there's some you something useful to the space that's

still more productive than chasing memes because you're at least getting 1% something shabum L2 have you heard that like you know typically with the narrative chases it you'll have like it's it's as you see with most stuff right it's something quality that'll kick things off and then you'll have a lot of these parallel evm and like all these other narratives that that really have no teeth that are are following which I agree are vaporware but they're usually catalyzed by something that's productive infra and so people just need to create narratives around catchup trades and so if the byproduct of of this is like you know Annoying kind of vaporware ketchup trades but you're still having some productivity that that catalyzes it initially I think that's

more productive than the you know the meme side I strongly agree I just think like that the narrative the idea and it also depends how you define these narrative trades because like the internet was a narrative trade for like a decade right like the the valuations didn't make sense for the for like the multiples the revenue multiples and any new technology is going to be a narrative trade where like the the price is going to get ahead of the fundamentals like in fact if if it's trading like an appropriate multiple it's probably a very boring business with with no growth right that's just sort of sort of how how it works and like in crypto of course every everything's gonna of course everything

is going to be mostly a narrative trade right like most of the stuff is is the cash flows are far out in the future if if this thing works and I don't know for me the mean thing is really like an admission that yeah none of this stuff will will ever have have value right you're kind of like thr at least the mor thesis at least the Morad thesis is is basically that the Morad thesis is utility tokens were just meme coins right they it's just that their meme was complicated to understand whereas the mcoin meme is simple to understand so a lot more people are going to ape that and to me that that's just like not not true I mean I respect morat a lot obviously but that to me that's just not not the case like I think a lot of the stuff is going

to be incredibly valuable and wouldn't be in the space if I thought that it was all just memes I think he I think he's just you know being hyperbolic for the sake of of getting attention and and it contributes to it and I think he's you know he's knowingly doing this right I don't think he 100% believes what he's saying I think he he he's it's intentional it's it's marketing I I like and respect Mar a bunch um but you know even going back to the uh argument around it being productive for uh incentivizing good Builders I I think that even falls apart because I would say meme coins are a disincentive they like good Builders are just like wait they just launched and then it pumped whatever and they made

how much and I'm G to be here building for two years to get just [ __ ] on on Twitter for like you know what I mean I think negative Catalyst for yeah I think mcoins you know I just like where am I gonna spend my time I can try taking a 100 shots on goal with one of these meme coins and keep kind of iterating and eventually one will hit and I'll make a bunch of money or I can try building and who knows you know this the space will shift I just think it it it it skews uh like the reward mechanism Mechanics for for Builders and and excuse incentives if you get if you create if you create a new good primitive with a good token you know not a bunch of shitty unlocks and everything not a crazy high FTV this

mcoin capital is going to like bid the [ __ ] out of that narrative and so the mcoin capital I don't think is like just always going to be in memes I think it's kind of waiting for something that's like worthy of a bid and we haven't really had that like it is very hard to bid a lot of these new tokens that are coming out it's just like it doesn't really make sense but I guarantee you when we get like some new good organic and most of the good things to bid historically in crypto have been like organic random things that have popped up um like obviously a lot of the defi summer stuff telegram Bots right those just came out of nowhere um like there's a lot of kind of examples of that the other the other

kind of argument I thought was was really good was the Alexander good one just that like the The Tam and this is like my problem with with the with the Mad sort of narrative too it's just the these things are not Cults like they're not religions like religions develop over like hundreds or thousands of years and and like they're not United by a coin going up they're they're United like by Deep cultural and like spiritual beliefs and like these these these things uh like the only time where they seem to have that is when the token's going up right and then like they'll obviously when token goes down that that that veneer disappears and to me like the Tam like if you're GNA tell a good a good meme is a good story right it's

just a good narrative and the meme around something like AI but even around crypto around like a permissionless Global Financial system is just so much bigger than than the meme you can tell about like um I don't know even like retardo or or whatever the the meme of the month is like the time is just so much bigger it's so much easier to tell a bullish story about TA or some icoin than it is about memes that I just think memes just aren't thinking big enough they're like ah look at Doge I traded at like 90 Bill and in May 21 or whatever like that that that's where these memes will trade at it's like the time for some of the the I stuff um even some of the cryptos pure crypto stuff is just so much bigger that I think yeah a lot of

people will end up missing the I think you can argue that both ways though because you know part of what helps memes is there is no fundamental value so the ceiling is is somewhat uncapped there whereas for some of this other stuff eventually fundamentals come into play and and they tend to Anchor price a bit uh granted yeah I think it'll be hard for memes to to surpass previous valuations just because of the so there there's like opposing forces on one hand you have like the dilution right now you have multiple nine figure me or 10 figure memes many and then and then on the other hand memes are much more consensus and I think they represent a larger percentage of people's portfolios than they ever have right and so those

are kind of offsetting I do think they're really useful to bring in capital into the space though that's what I was going to say I was just waiting to say that it's like memes that the thing that they're good for is they're onboarding people people like you know apps like moonshot and stuff it's like these are actually onboarding people and like yeah you can throw some money in it it's fun but then you know you learned what a token is you learned what a wallet is you start transacting with this stuff you're like oh wow like there could be a lot more here Beyond um just the meme coins and obviously that's making the assumption that you're going to graduate from just like chasing these meme coins to like you know appreciating this technology for what it is but I do think it's bringing a lot more attention around

this space and I think it was cedus who shared you know like the amount of like by Broken Out by generation like uh how many people like or what percent of the generation owns crypto and I definitely think you know as uh Zoomers and kind of the younger generation spending more time online getting more comfortable with digital value like meme coins is a good foray into that and then you know as they understand the technology more they might graduate Beyond them but I definitely think it's positive for bringing in users to like just get comfortable with the technology in itself in a fun way like but yeah every cycle like people buy some token like buying tokens brings in users like it doesn't have to be me coins it could be

any for sure but it's like this um the Simplicity of it is nice the Simplicity and these apps like moonshot is like that sort of stuff is so cool yeah on like the the good Alexander Post though I read that and I actually agreed with a lot of stuff he said said he had that chart too that was like Nvidia trading volume versus like gme trading volume and just how much bigger and you know I've always kind of thought I've always been just thought to was like you know not like a real thing um and I still think it's like just incredibly narrative driven but you know every time I update those like sector performances the you know we talk about

how like everything is basically down but the a cryp oi stuff is always like actually standing out beside memes and I actually kind of I read that I started thinking about it more I actually considered buying like too for the first time um because I actually kind of believe in that like big Tam and it's like to is basically just a meme but it's AI right and so I kind of is there like a AI itn't just though that's like that's like super unfair like to I mean what you're saying it's a meme relative to its valuation it's a meme relative to its valuation but yeah I know it's not just a meme but no I agree with this

point that like the you know you can dream a lot more right like there's a lot more dreaming to be done with this like AI uh and then you start comping it to to kind of private valuations too if if you believe in like the the value of of crypto and AI you start comping it to to to open ai's 180 Bill and and things of that nature and then there's also just the fact that there aren't too many quality AI coins which is set to change over the next uh it's say like six to 12 months so it'll be interesting to see if if how much of its value has been because it's the kind of canonical crypto AI bet that people make right now yeah it's just what what has more like

product Market fit as a meme like uh um whatever SPX I guess SPX 6900 does have pretty good prodct Market it but I mean like uh retardo or or like AI you know like replacing all human like cognitive and physical labor like what's going to let people get more excited speculate more like I don't know it's just to me and and crypto has a bunch of memes like that that that I just think are way more interesting than than uh than a think these there's a certain amount of people which will never like buy meme coin or take them seriously whereas like you can kind of probably you know convince a lot more people on something like ta where it's

like this is the future of AI versus like a lot of these meme coins is like everyone at some level or at least a a large part of the the capital that could flow into these things knows that like this is just a trade right like I don't know if this cult Vision comes true because like the whole thing like it sounds very convincing and you know also a lot of respect for mad but like the whole idea is like okay we're all going to get rich off the and it's all going to be a called but like to actually get rich or like make it like you need to sell at some point so that's kind of where it falls apart it's like is everyone just gonna like have millions and millions of dollars of unrealized gains and all these m coins and never

touch them to sell and like who is the eventual bidder for those things right because like I don't think any like super serious funds or people or like large portions of capital are going to come in and like take really big positions in like something like a doge or a ship and like as a long term con conviction BET right it's maybe more to play like the market dynamics so it's like I don't know who's going to be kind of like the exit liquidity for that cult if these people actually want to realize the whole vision of becoming wealthy but it definitely is an intriguing narrative and you know says a lot about the space and people pissed off with the the low float High fdv stuff which we've talked a ton about um and probably will continue to do well as long is like Doge

exists at you know multi-billion dollar like10 billion dollar market cap 20 billion doll market cap and all these new meme ones like you know can launch and get to a billion or something like there's so many meme about a billion yeah like there's just going to continue to be more of them but I do think it's good to to onboard people um yeah different investment buckets though right like I I don't you're not you're not kind of putting money into to and expecting a similar degree of of return over the same time period as you are putting into kind of some of these short uh these these uh low market cap memes so I think there's a different bucket like it's not I'm not I'm not satisfying my meme exposure because Tao also has mimetic value I think I'm getting my AI

exposure through Tao and and I'm like I I'm happy that it also has mimetic value that that drives it right so it's it's it's not I don't see them being as the kind of am certain amount of money that will like people won't just bid like a certain amount of people or funds or whatever just aren't going to bid memes there's more from the retail perspective no but there's definitely decision of buying like whiff versus to right like Tower is like double the circulating C obviously the fdv is bigger but like that is a real decision like am I going to buy like whiff or Bonk or Pepe or am I going to buy TOA right do you think for a fund that's a real decision serious Capital

that's going to drive these things and that's why listen you get like the grayscale grayscale has like some AI fund and they just increase their tow exposure from like two to 26% or something 30 30 so like again I'm talking myself into towel um yeah I have yeah speaking of uh fundamentals my own towel in this air do do we want to chat about the Off the Grid launch I feel like that was one of the biggest one one thing on crypto AI we're doing like week we're doing a huge like 3-we crypto AI thing starting next week um tons of panels like tons of different crypto AI um uh protocols and everything uh some investors this is a

three-week thing we're GNA have stuff coming out every day we're going to have um we have an analyst on Deli ping durian who is rating writing a four-part series on crypto AI Tower in the square is already free he's done like infastructure middleware and application soon and these are all going to be unlocked too so yeah we got like a ton coming out on this sector um that's just going to be like available uh starting next we yep yeah we we think crypto AI is or at least yeah a lot of us think crypto AI is one of the most exciting if the the most exciting sector in crypto right now so we're dedicating a whole month to it it's going to be some really spicy debates too like I think we've already had a really good tow debate actually with a very uh well spoken tow bear and

then uh just yeah there's a lot of tow ballls to CH choose from but I think we chose a good one then we're having like uh is crypto AI vaporware debate with uh K samani not exactly taking the barcase because they're they they're bullish crypto AI but at least like bearish on a couple of the sectors that people have been excited about and then Imad mustak the founder of stability AI on the other side and then pretty much all the best Builders from from Ritual from from uh all the top sort of crypto AI projects are going to be going to be there in in different panels and stuff so it's going to be a really good really good month tune in yeah so speaking of fundamentals wanted to touch on the Off the Grid launch obviously that went live this this week

it's a big uh investment for us at Del five Ventures obviously full full disclosure um but it's pretty much the crypto game that we've been the most excited about that we've ever seen in terms of like AAA quality something that we think could really bring bring in a mainstream audience I think it's the most likely game to bring in 100 million users into crypto um and so far the launch has been really good because obviously five years in the making they raised over 100 Mil uh went live on on Tuesday had some of the biggest streamers in the world uh Ninja Dr disrespect a bunch of others streaming it for hours um obviously some of this was paid but most of them were staying uh for for hours past what they were what they were paid for and a bunch of

streamers that weren't paid like Dr disrespect and others were also streaming this publicly uh there's a lot of really strong feedback I think people people were really enjoying the game play um there was I think 450,000 new wallets created on Avalanche over the last few days and obviously they launched on a on a Tuesday to give time to like bug fix and stuff leading up to the weekend which is the time where you're going to have the most the most people online uh over the last few days it was more streamed in games like war zone um and the target is to make it the most streamed game on Twitch over the next over the next two weeks there was like yeah 350,000 hex decodings um and like a bunch of yeah just I think people were all over the

world you were getting getting games in less than a minute so there's there was a lot of a lot of activity uh curious if any of you guys took a look at it and what what you thought yeah I put a decent amount of hours in actually um it's it's a lot of fun uh I think the one of the unique elements is just the obviously the the firefights are are really uh high quality you know good variety of guns the land the the terrain is is really interactive and I think so the biggest thing and kind of one of my initial gripes with Battle Royal is is kind of the ratio of time spent moving around and looking for weapons relative to

firefights which then makes firefights that you lose just more frustrating um you know just my I spent most of my FPS days playing like Halo and Modern Warfare where where it's you know two teams and and high high action con Rec L you know there's a full full map of players and so what they've done a really good job of is uh making Mobility uh a really important part of the game and So you you're able to Traverse the the map very quickly with various gear there's kind of different elements of the map that you know like ropes that help you get to the top of a building and so you're able to bounce around a map really easily and and which helps you one find users if you want to get

into firefight but also makes trying to get out of one a lot of fun too and I think it's adds a whole new dimmension to the game in terms of just like and the limbs stuff is crazy skill of Mobility yeah yeah did you play with the limbs much because I know ninja was just getting wrecked because he didn't know he didn't know how to use it it's hard I need to just like I I I haven't done the top down look of every single limb to figure out what's what but yeah the idea is you're a cyborg and you know you have your torso and and your arms and legs are removable and they provide different skills and abilities from jetpacks to Shields to grappling hooks and kind of everything else between um which adds a whole you know level of kind of dynamism

to the game and and and creates so many permutations for fire fights where you never really have a lot of kind of repetitive interactions and also provides a lot of really cool counters to to what people are doing um yeah yeah definitely feels like it's increasing the skill cap because you know the big battle Royals that came out initially were um or like war zone wait what what were the other ones what was the big one war zone a fortnite you know there's one before yeah pubg pubg and War Zone uh like pubg especially was like why I feel like fortnite was such a good upgrade is because pubg lowered the skill cap so much in the sense where like you could just get screwed by The Zone and then you're running across an open field and he get shot in the head and you just

spent like the whole game like looting up and doing that and then you just like had a bad pull on the zone and you're just screwed and then fortnite like up the skill cap in a way with building where it's like you know you could create Shel wherever you were that building significant increase the skill cap but it also like you know for casual players could be a lot like if you face someone who's like a sweaty build they like you're just screwed yeah D ridiculous just sound like they're typing on a keyboard yeah yeah and I and I feel like Apex Legends did like a good job with the mobility but I think this is even like kind of an enhancement of that where you have this additional Mobility so it adds like a skill cap to the game where or like it raises the

skill cealing on the game where it's like you know if you get um put in a bad position you can still get yourself out of it and then with the limbs as well at the whole new element so I think uh that's it's it's a pretty fun game I haven't played it yet but I've been I watched like a lot of of twitch streams like a few hours when it came out yeah like it looks pretty sick I need to get my computer set up I'm getting a PS5 actually just to play it but uh yeah I think also the unchain stuff seems to be working pretty seamlessly like their AAC subnet yeah I think they minted like 350,000 hex decodings yesterday so like loot that's extracted from from the game than than minted on chain um and I think if it if it plays out like they they've

spent so much effort on that that it could also become like the winning sort of INF for play right there's like a history in gaming of this being the case where the successful games end up also like building the info that they need and then like commercializing that as its own thing right like fortnite with the epic game launcher Counter Strike and steam we saw that to some extent in crypto with axi and then Ronin right like attracting a bunch of games because you get get access to the a player base I think if this is as successful as it as it could be I do think like there there there's going to be a lot of people wanting to lunch Launch games on the on the gonzilla subnet yeah let's see like it it's competing right now on like twitch and stuff and obviously there's a lot of

hype around it but you know the game looks and it's just as fun and um you know it's getting just as many viewers as like war zone Apex any of those other battle Roy obviously this is like the initial hype but it's pretty exciting to see crypto game of this quality with like the real Gamers and like those level of streamers play um and have a good time so it's exciting for the space I mean this is big for Avalanche I guess too I haven't really heard Avalanche a lot recently right so this seems to be a pretty big Flagship thing for yeah I I just checked the chart Avalanche isn't really up but it would be cool if like how is how much value really accurs to the subnet do we do we

know or not really to the subnet or like through the subnet to Avalanche not I I wouldn't assume an insane amount because you know it still ends up being a function of volume of transactions which you know the the game itself doesn't necessarily operate on chain fully it's it's it's kind of the the claiming of items and so yeah that happens to a decent amount but I think ultimately most of the value will come from uh uh secondary Market volume on these assets right if you think about there's like tens of billions of volume that csgo did and and so that that's really where a lot of these games will kind of capture a bunch of value which

is great because it it it's directly correlated with the kind of onchain uh the the the the volume of the assets which is you know a function of kind of excitement around the game and and what people want to do and so um and it's also not not really related to any kind of pay to win type of dynamic right it's it's skins that are cosmetic and rare and just based on kind of what you've achieved rather than how much money you've put in necessarily all right guys I think this was a good one covered a lot of ground let's end it there thanks everyone for for tuning in and we'll see you again in in two weeks yep once again crypto AI starting next week three weeks all right say bye because uh we

got complaints about thanks see you y later [Music]