Live From DAS: Is PumpFun’s Peak Behind Us? | Round Table

Transcript

But I also want to challenge the notion that um Pump did have a blow up off top at all. Pump's share of total crypto revenue is still higher than it was mo most of 2024 today. It's it peaked at 15% of total crypto revenue. It's down to 12%. [Music] Nothing said on Zox 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. What's up, guys?

Welcome back to another episode of Xerx Research. Today, we're here at DAS, the Defense Asset Summit, the digital asset. Digital asset summit, not the Trump one, the other one. We actually came up with the name first. They kind of stole it from us. stealing Canada. They're stealing Greenland. They're stealing D. Fun fact to our listeners, Daniel Smith is actually Canadian. So whenever he brings up Canada, you should remember that. Proud Maple Maple Leaf guy. All right. What are we What are we talking about today, Von?

Um I guess Daniel Smith, you've been here for some time. Ryan, you're relatively new and I have only been here like one year. Dan, how many DS have you been to? uh second D I think fifth Block works conference. Okay. Last DAS was D London. Um and I was told it was like a suit focused con uh conference with a bunch of you know bankers and traditional finance businessmen which it was but this was uh if you remember back to the time of like the slurf memecoin launching uh that happened during the conference and everybody was talking about it like I think every single panel mentioned bonk. Uh, so it was funny.

Everybody was wearing fancy clothes and having the exact same conversations you'd have at permissionless or uh any of the other more retail or builder focused conferences. I will say this one feels a lot more institutional than I've ever felt before. Ryan, would you agree? Uh, yeah. I mean, the names are all names that, you know, from Tradfi. Um, I'm pretty impressed with the turnout. Uh, super packed. uh you realize that there's a whole other part of crypto that maybe natives don't really interact with or don't prioritize like a lot of service providers, private blockchain things like institution like you know more institutional facing startups working with banks.

Um it really broadens your horizons. I was pretty convinced that the only thing that mattered was crypto Twitter. So this is news to me. Yeah, this is unironically what I think. So um I will say I felt like what I would have expected would be more like blockchain not crypto but that has not been the case at all. People are very happy with crypto. Um is this something that you guys also expected or were you already convinced that this is going because of my experience uh last year at Dash London? I would I think my answer was no. I was kind of thinking it would be the same crypto focused conversations with just a more uh buttoned up lens, if you will. Um, people are really excited

about changing the world with crypto rails, which is exciting to me. Uh, and it's just a good sentiment shift. I feel like the last six months have been pretty tough for the true crypto natives. Um, so it's just like it feels like a breath of fresh air. Yeah, the institutions are bullish, I think, definitively, and they don't really know what we know and probably aren't going to invest in what a lot of cryptonative funds would invest in or might toy around with. And I think that that's the reason the reason for the divergence. Um, you know, like you can be bullish when like you weren't you weren't really paying attention to the memecoin downturn and never thought it would be relevant. So you're like your view on crypto would be way different if all you care about is like regulatory

clarity, right? So there's just a different narrative uh on this side of the business. Let's talk a bit more about what institutions invest in versus what you and I and Dan invest in. By that do you mean these guys are mostly focused on Bitcoin, Eve, Salana, or is that like you think they're focused more on protocols that raise that make money, not raise protocols that raise money? Yeah, that's what crypton natives are used to. I think there's very strong evidence that the most relevant assets are Bitcoin, Ethan and Salana in that category or sorry in that order. Um you see it with um you know more trady institutions though they will prioritize only those assets to talk about. Um however there is I think there's an

increasing chorus of um institutional managers that are actually familiar with deepen uh because the the businesses map to things that they're familiar with and they make real revenues and like block uh platforms like block works research are highlighting the fact that these things do make revenues and that's something that um makes it very easy for a traditional institution to get behind. So I see some evidence of that as well. I think that that's super interesting. Yeah. And I I feel like that's like the next hurdle that um that we need to make, right? Is I think people are pretty comfortable with those first three assets you listen to uh you listed and it's about like getting past those three. It's like okay, we know what we get. I feel like

the the general intent of what these systems are doing um building these digital onchain economies where other businesses get built on top uh seems pretty compelling and I think people are comfortable with that idea. The question is like what are those businesses going to be? All right, you know, right now it's really been focused on trading uh different assets, but uh if you read like the Stripe annual letter or PayPal's recent commentary or even any of Robin Hood and Vladv's commentary, uh there's a lot of exciting things, but I think the unanswered question for me uh that I'm hoping to prod at throughout the rest of this week is okay, like let's say Robin Hood goes all in on crypto. Like what does that look like?

And then what are the implications of that? Because I think my base case right now is they just try to rebuild everything themselves. I think Guart had the banger tweet of uh I think you guys all spent the last 10 years, you know, building open source code that Robin Hood's going to take and make a bunch of money with. And then um yeah, I I've been thinking about that tweet every day since it since I first read it. And then you see uh you know, Coinbase kind of going the more friendly route of depositing or giving users on the platform the ability to deposit into Morpho. They could have built their own morpho but instead they used morpho which I think is pretty interesting. But then you see u Robin Hood launching its own like per prediction march marketesque product with the March Madness uh contracts that you can trade

in platform and then they built that themselves. They did not leverage poly market right and so I think that's like an indication of the direction that they're thinking and the direction they want to go. Um and so like if that happens then what does that mean for all the other general purpose infrastructure that you'd want that would want to have that activity being built on top of them right like base wants that Solana wants that any blockchain building for activity wants Robin Hood to be building on top of them uh and like that's this unanswered question that uh I'm really trying to get deeper on well it's like oh go for and if you're Robin Hood why the hell would you use somebody else's contracts like you can just build it in house um there's less risk I assume because they'll probably have better

engine developers and engineers. So to me, you want to own the full stack. You want to make as much money as possible. I brought up how much money these pools, especially some of these like trading bots and these terminals take. Somebody from Trafi and they were like that's incredible. And I feel like that's how they approach it. Like if you see 1% fees on a trading bot and I'm Robin Hood and I'm like dude, if I just like cut that down to 0.25% I'm already making billions. Why the hell would I not? Yeah, the um our takes are high here, which means someone's going to come and arb them down. A lot of people in this building are kind of realizing that they might have seen it in 2021 and then Luna happened, FTX happened, they went away.

Now they see the take is still there. The industry is on the up and up. It's being legalized. So, you have to think that that take comes down. But it stayed way long. It's stayed high for a really long time. I think we got a ways to go, but beginning of the end of the high take. 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, I will say I have been slightly worried about Dexis competing against Texas recently.

And I think this kind of ties into the Robin Hood thing where if regulation gets a lot clearer and a lot looser like the ex the thing that I was thinking of was hyperlquid because if let's say there's a lot of US users for hyperlquid there shouldn't be but let's say realistically there is if not Coinbase Coinbase is bad but if Binance launches a perpetual platform because regulation is looser then like how the hell does Hyperlid compete? You had to throw shade at Coinbase there. Well, Coinbase is I I will say it here. They hold people's funds hostage and I've seen a lot of comments about this. So So So the question on how they compete, it's it's it's all about distribution, I think, right? The reason

that that the reason that Robin Hood doesn't believe that they need to go to the chain is because they already have the distribution. However, if you don't have the distribution, then you have to go to the chain. Binance, I mean, great point. they have the distribution already. They they don't need to go to hyperlquid or or whatever. Um so it all depends. I think that 2025 is going to be 20 25 next 24 months I think are really important for the industry and leadership like so like why like the US government has is going to legalize crypto? There are a bunch of things with users and installed bases and volume and market makers and service providers and the like the tools that are right there.

So you open the door and where are these users going to go first? They're going to go to the things where you can already do things. This could solidify I think it's going to solidify a lot of the most popular products today. Um they're it's such a it's such a massive advantage. I think I will say one thing I have found that some protocols have started to fumble their lead and the ones that I'm thinking of a expand because I was looking at the stats here and they're still absolutely crushing market share. But I think that a spent 12 months maybe two years building out a social platform on Polygon. I mean All right. Continue.

This is fantastic. Keep going. The second thing is that they did some weird corporate restructuring. Fine. And now they're launching a second token for Horizon which is an institutional product. I will say one thing. First of all, a should have spent time launching on Salana because that's a lot of money that they missed out and they gave a big opportunity to Camino. Second thing is why the hell are they instead of Salana, they're launching on Aptos? Okay, so hold on, lots to unpack here. So one, I think the overarching point here that's interesting to dive into is a DAO versus A Labs, which is now called like Avara. Yeah. So um that is okay.

I've been thinking a ton about this. So you mentioned Horizon, I guess. Quick TLDDR if you're not up to speed here is A Labs again let's I'm just going to keep calling them labs uh but they have they're they go by Avara they uh proposed to the A DAO that like hey you know we're going to build this uh more institutional focused product and uh we want to license the A V4 technology and we want to create a revenue share that goes back to the DAO for that when I read that I was immediately a little bit like frustrated because you know if you look at a's uh you know they're doing about $75 million a year trading at about $2.5 billion uh valuation right so there's a ton of growth being priced in here and I think that's re a rational uh thought process at this point in the

product's life cycle because they do they are crushing uh dex excuse me uh lending market share across many chains I think they've had some you know interesting uh competition arise recently with morpho but they're still doing very well and and oiler and uh but now you see that the labs entities is not necessarily onetoone with the DAO and like what does that mean and so they also proposed a new token in this that was very very aggressively shut down by Mark Zeller and the rest of the DAO um and credit to them for that so there won't be a new token anymore uh Stani already came out and kind of like turned that switch off but to me like that was a a symptom of the problem not the problem was the token right the symptom is the labs entity is going to build new

products and okay and the revenue will either go to a token or to the now without a token just goes back to the labs entity. Yeah. And so the DAO isn't getting that future revenue stream from this new product, right? It's only getting a revenue share agreement, which I hate. I absolutely hate that. Like how are we going to have I don't know and and like we've chatted about this on Slack over the time and you had a really interesting point about like yeah, you can maybe there's an interesting model to experiment with where uh each product kind of has its own token within a broader umbrella. Um, and actually when remember when Uniot did the Salana token, we talked about the same concept, but just a different product and different it's hard to compare one to one there, but I pitched the same idea

and I like the idea of the experimentation. I hate that it's like one of the five things we can point to and be like this is like a very good example of a what seemed to be a semifunctional DO that has a great market positioning and is going to continue building awesome products. Um, I hate that it was them that have to kind of try and experiment with this. And then one last piece to that he was like the icing on the cake of all this and I don't and I might be overreading into like a a single line in this comment but um in Mark Zeller's reply he mentioned that the A labs entity takes about 50% of the total service provider budget from the DAO and that's to do great work and everything but he's like implied or suggested that uh part of

that was used to fund the creation of of Horizon, right? And so that's like even worse now you not now you funded the creation of the thing you don't get all the revenue of. Um, so I again I I might be overreading into a one single line in a in a comment here, but that's just another interesting angle I had here. Before I let you speak, Ryan, I will say one two things. First of all, I know it's Oiler, not Uler. I just said that to piss off Westy so math people don't come at me. Second thing is the issue with a is that I think a lot of we they've kind of gotten this average bid just because like you said they're like a semi working protocol that you can show and say hey look we have lending on the blockchain and it's like a fundamental play but

realistically like have they really done that well go was a failure umbrella still you shouldn't be afraid to launch and fail products you shouldn't but you should also launch one good product then they have that with the lending the core lending infrastructure is is solid but they've had one since 20 what when it was well they've built V4 that's coming to market okay and I will I guess I push back a little bit on myself and say that the uh I am a recent Morpho user and I absolutely love the product I they you know I can basically put up my funds in a vault that Steakhouse or Gauntlet or some other man money manager uh manages and I don't have to do anything I pay them a small fee and I get my yield that

is a much better product than me having to do that myself. Yeah. So, I will say that the industry is kind of trending in that direction and um it's not something they support today. Governance structures in crypto typically suck. Yeah. Uh the labs versus foundation or team model uh it was has always been I think fraught with conflicts of interest. First time I noticed that in my time spent in crypto was DYDX when I believe the the equity was taking fees that should have gone to the Dow or there's some controversy over it.

Um going back to the thing about like incumbents and you know whether or not they can get disrupted as we see this like large influx of users. The interesting thing about crypto is that there are a ton of incumbents that deny that they are a useful money-making entity and that they need to behave like a company and defend their moes. So the interesting thing is like although there is this force of capital coming that should solidify some market positioning of some very dominant teams some of these teams and their governance their governance structures are um fraught with conflicts of interest and things that can take them down perhaps a

is an example there I'm not sure I'm not an expert they've clearly like there's been some questions there um but yeah it's going to be interesting to see like I as an investor, you want to identify the teams that are taking it seriously in this very moment and separate from the teams that are not as this influx of capital comes in. And I guess one more piece real quick, Boco, is um the A situation is honestly kind of it's pretty close to like what Maker Dow is intentionally doing where you pawn the you push the uh more risky uh risk-taking ventures off to what you know they called subdows that are now like stars. Um and Spark is the example of that here, right? Uh it makes a lot

of money for itself and but the key difference is that it's perpetuating the success of USDS which is the underlying core business of what Makerd wants to do or Sky Protocol. Um and that to me that's a meaningful distinction between the the A horizon and the A DAO is Horizon was just a four-year revshare and then what's done is done. Yeah. Uh, which that's just like a sad outlook in my mind. I will say one thing is I I've just been like thinking about it just now like what products have failed um not failed but like are slightly fumbling their lead and what I could think of was a maybe unis swap um maker etc. But I've also noticed that I might

just be annualizing a trend. Um it's just like salon has just been doing very well. So a lot of salon apps are getting attention versus I'm sure like if Ethereum and the L2s were doing well. So I don't know if it's I don't know if I'm reading into it too much. A very interesting filtering mechanism is just looking at the teams that refuse to go to base in Salana. I think that's a very easy one. So like you start to question um the execution cadence of those teams. There are a few that come to mind. We don't have to name them. Especially since Salana lasted for so long. Like I'd imagine if it was a free month like I don't expect people to launch on it's not like harmony last cycle, right? Like it's not a flash in the pan. Yeah. Like it's been there for a year and a half.

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What's this contentious thing that we talked about? Contentious. Yeah. Was like intense. Dude, I forgot. A pump fund is still over 10% of all app revenue in crypto. That's literally what I want to talk about. Okay. Um, Dan, what would you say is your position on this? Because I want to fight. Wait, what's the position? Well, my position is that so we have to state the Yeah. What's my belief is that, and I'm saying this on the pod, which won't be great, but I will say I believe that the memecoin season that we had on Salana, and this is why I brought this up to Lucas and he looked at me like I was an idiot, but basically, we're annualizing this like Salana memecoin activity and

it might just go away. I want to preface this. Can you can wait, can can you annualize something that's gone on for 18 months? No, I I'm going to take the single week that Trump token launched and annualiz what I do in all my models. I don't know. That's literally what you do. What I basically want to say is this. I think someone's going to be serious. That was a joke. Podcast is done. So, no. What I wanted to say is the memecoin activity that that we've seen on Solano with pump fun and like all of it. I think it will not come back in the form that it is at right now. as in it will there will be a material shift in the form and a dynamics that exists today. I believe that it is too I'm gonna say extractive.

Don't get upset with me but it is the pump fund version of memecoins is too extractive. I don't think meme coins will die but I do think that we will see that form that dynamic that structure die out. And Ryan Connor believes that it won't and that everything will constantly be the same and there will be no changes whatsoever. That's it. No, that's your official position. Well it's probabilistic, right? So, I mean, if I were to Okay, so what we're trying to frame is like, will Pump Fun live on?

No. So, like, not will Pump Fun live on? I believe that Pump Fund will not live on to the extent that it lived on. Like, I believe that Libra was a blowoff top for it. It might not die, but logically to me, it feels like that's like Well, Trump was the blowoff top. Libra is like a knife in the back. Knife in the back. And then maybe it'll be like dominant still because it is cool product and memecoins won't die. But it won't be the same as what we had before. And that's why I believe that it's a mistake to say priority fees are always going to be very good. That's the SIMD228 conversation. We don't need to get back into it. Please. I think that um I think pump is is objectively the most

successful product in the history of crypto. Hyper. Um I think that well from a revenue perspective agreed. Yeah. So, I think that um and and just given what I see in US gambling markets, like I think that there's staying power for an app like Fun um or sorry or like Pump. Um do I would like if you were to give me odds on whether or not um pump fund volumes will hit record highs within the next 12 months, I'd probably take it. Like whatever. Yeah, I'd probably take it.

I'm not taking it. Would you take it be? Because like the interest the interesting thing about oh like single if we're talking single day monthly or something like let's call call it monthly volumes I would January 2025 the Trump highs. Yeah. Yeah. Of that month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I I would I would bet that they that over the next 12 months you will see a higher month. Okay. I I would bet against them. What would you say? I feel like you'd have to give me juicy odds for me to take that bet. Dude, if the United States president launched a coin and you think that they can beat that? Can Yes. My base case? No. The interesting thing about like just like my last 15 years of like making bets in markets is that when everyone believes one thing typically

the opposite happens and right now like this is like this is the consensus view. So if I take your side right now, sitting in this middle sitting sitting in this middle seat is the consensus view and and I think it's and it's like if you were to do like a very silly like investment strategy but but simple cadence, you could just fade consensus and I think that you would do pretty okay like you might generate some alpha over some periods and just given like the historical success, the embedded distribution, the fact that there are like 15 to 30 million Salana wallets in like consumer US consumer pockets. The fact that like gambling in the US is so prevalent and it's like at the tip of your fingers and people love it. Fact

that meme coins really lower the barrier to gambling and like make it fun and silly and um I think it's really funny when people get rugged on silly like on coins with silly names. You know, he keeps messaging me stuff and he's like, "Dude, I got rugged on like this coin. Isn't that funny?" And I'm like, "No, it's not." He gives me an update like once a week on this one token that he bought. He's like, "All right, 99.96 99.97 trying to hit a new high score because cuz if you look at something like bar stool sports, right? The whole like the whole shtick of bar stool sports is like we are all so bad at gambling and we all make fun of each other and it's like a funny thing and it's a very US- ccentric behavior, but like that is the biggest capital market, right? That's like the

most disposable income. So, I wouldn't bet against it. Um I I under most odds I wouldn't bet against it. Yeah. So, I have like a similar view, but uh a bit of a different re reason uh that underlies it. So, I've feel like I've gone on this rant on this podcast before, so I'm going to do the abbreviated version, but uh Dogecoin to NFTts to memecoins to what? Right? And so like will memecoins uh will the same activity take the same exact form that we saw last cycle on I said last cycle that we saw the last year on Salana? You know my gut says no. Um but like you know who's better capitalized to take advantage of

the uh meta change or be the driver of that change than somebody like Pump Fun who is sitting on a stockpile of cash uh to go experiment and iterate. They've launched mobile apps. They've built some new onchain infrastructure. H they're clearly not just like rolling over and saying, "All right, that was fun." That is true. Thanks for the hundreds of millions. Like, all right. And then if you think about last cycle when this rolled over, there was under so all the NFT uh activity was obviously on Ethereum. Um and OpenC was like had its problems and you know, maybe you can say like a lot of that was regulatory focused. They couldn't really launch a token, but that's probably being generous. Um now they're kind of coming back and trying to revive that, but like that ship has feels like it has sailed.

So, I think that there's an interesting angle for like I do not do I think that the onchain specula uh speculation or the onchain gambling sector is dead. Absolutely not. Do I think it'll look exactly like it's looked over the last 12 months? No, it doesn't seem that's my argument. It won't change the same as it was. But that's okay, right? Your argument change. It's already starting to look different, right? Look at Zora. I'm very intrigued by what they're doing. All right. the Salana, for example, uh didn't didn't go over so hot for probably good reason. Tweet gets deleted and then somebody minted it on Zora. They downloaded the video before and then minted it on Zora. Uh did like a I think about a million dollars of trading volume and the creator made 1,500 bucks.

That's that's not that good. I mean, for just like downloading and uploading a video on the platform that's like relatively underused right now. And so you're already start my point here is like not that this was a huge moment but more so is that you're already seeing a shift in the view and util not utility but the use of meme coins in in products right and that that's what this is you're tokenizing a post that's the same thing as a meme coin. Yeah I guess okay so sure yeah I guess I am arguing for no I'm not really arguing for no change I mean like pump fun is an infinite game you're taking the European stance. Do you realize that right now you're saying no innovation, no frontier, we're going to keep the exact same thing that Well,

well, I I do that I do think that there there's a high probability that leaders will be cemented, but I I do think that Pump is like an infinite game. Like are you saying that like technology hasn't changed because like most tech platforms like have like infinite scroll or like that like the content at Instagram isn't changing. Like Instagram is a platform for like constantly evolving content. I think Pump is that same thing. So like so so so we're thinking about probabilities of how things may change. Like you have a you have a you have a primitive within crypto where like you can have a the game constantly evolve within it. And I think that that could be Pump. Yeah. And the associated infrastructure. I agree. And my I'm also intrigued to watch how other chains try to throw their hat in the ring here. You

saw a pump fund clone launch on every single blockchain over the last 12 months. Nothing. Never got nobody got anywhere close. Uh which honestly doesn't make a ton of sense. Well, maybe I mean base is now Yeah, they got Clanker, they've got Zor. They're about 20,000 launches off from where pump pump is way down. Clanker is a little bit up and they're about like the token launches today or within the last few days like 20,000 off. Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's interesting. That's pretty good. Weekly hasn't yet, but the dailies in the last like three or four days there's been like alternating between more tokens launched on base and pump fund, which so you're seeing some of this and that always made sense, right? like where was all the activity the last 12 months? There was really two chains based in Salana. Um and now I'm

like really trying to figure out if you're going to see someone else get their hat in the ring meaningfully. And then you know given that we're at D and the talk of the town is sort of RWA is like if you think about all of the activity happening on chain and like these memecoin trading and whatnot and you replace that with like a less asset. Uh you probably get a pretty exciting landscape. And so how can we bring more exciting assets on chain? Like imagine if every pump fund token uh was like a you know whether it be like a startup that you're taking a bet on that's like most of the project tokens we see in the industry today or something like tokenized anthropic equity. Yeah. Um if you could short Ryan Connor or if you can short Ryan Connor short by time.

Yeah that's true. Time's not fun. Um and but I also want to challenge the notion that um Pump did have a blow up off top at all. Pump's Pump's share of total crypto revenue is still higher than it was mo most of 2024. Today it's it peaked at 15% of total crypto revenue. It's down to 12%. Okay. Like Aerodrome's Aerodrome share of crypto revenue has taken more of a hit than pumps. That's actually pretty. I'm really upset you brought up Aerodrome because now we're going to have the Aerodrome guys get upset at us on Twitter. Do you realize we like the Aerome team and I like what they're building. They're and they've done a great job of taking market share in base. But if you believe that memecoins

are dead, well, why has like a revenue decline declined to a similar degree? I agree. Like that that question has to be answered by the the meme coins are dead people and it and it can't be because we have the data and it turns out these all all these things fell concurrently. Yeah. Like in in proportion. I think that's the I mean everyone always points to the fact that uh you know onchain revenues are so cyclical because everything's tied to like the same waves. Uh that's why you're so excited about Geonet and other deepen projects because they can actually have a meaningful shot at at breaking this.

Yeah. I want to ask one last question and then we can be done because I know you guys are very busy. Um you can bet on two chains except for Salana. What would they be? So base and I feel like it should be a not base and not salana because okay not base and not salana what would they be I know my answers if arbitum would put some effort into scaling throughput I'd be very very excited you know what I talked to Steven on the pod last week and he I need to listen to that app it's very good I mean all my podcasts are great but that one was particularly great I will say he talked about how the 20 millisecond block times I was shocked I did not know arbitrum was that fast to

me fast but if there's more than 30 TPS. Yeah, that's true. It goes up like five bucks transaction spikes or transaction fee spikes. And that's the problem that I'm trying to rattle with. Um they're also launching time boost soon. Uh so and they've launched this onchain initiative. What is it called? Onchain labs. Onchain labs from offchain labs. Uh which is like an accelerator. Worked on that one. Yes. Yes, he did. The man is cooking. Uh so I think I'm I think there's pretty interesting things happening in that ecosystem. Um, and then Aptos and SUI definitely have strong tech. You got to pick one. Uh, we said two in total. You picked Arbitum.

What's the second one? Because I like ARTX. That's fair. Yeah, that's true. Binance and Aptos. BMBB chain build and build chain. Very good. And okay, BNB is very interesting stuff. They also have a MEV system that I don't think anybody has really paid any attention to. Um, I'm pulling some of that data right now, but Dash took the front seat of that. So, maybe next time I'm on the pod, we can chat about the B&M mev scene. I don't get you on the pod. You know that. Danny gets Yeah, I'll go to Danny's episodes and talk about that. Bring it up to him. Why B&B chain? Uh, Binance has showed stating power and in this new regulatory regime, um, it's going to have even more staying power. You see, uh, Binance has really

solidified itself as like somewhere in the top five at any given time. you really can't get rid of it. It has a stronghold on the Asian markets and CZ is back and he's concentrating his efforts on the chain and not the exchange because he's not allowed to with the exchange. So, um I think it's just with the stronghold that it has on Asia and the more I learn about that market, the more exciting Binance is now. Like, does it stay a circus forever? Like, maybe. And I think two years ago, I would have said that that's really bad. And now that I've seen these markets evolve and the staying power that a circus has, um I think it gives a chain the best shot at like becoming something uh bigger and better. So I think that Binance is a force to be reckoned with BNB. Um and I think Aptos

I don't know you're starting to see like the it turnaround over there. Um there's an increased focus on move um which is good. Uh SUI is like obviously the leader there. However, um the move language um um I but I I honestly think like a silly little catchphrase in crypto can like change like the the future of a chain line. Yeah. Seriously. Like that was like the most fantastic piece of cryptonative marketing I've ever seen.

Like and I would I would expect that if the team grabs that and runs with it, like you can really make something happen. So like when life gives you lemons. Yeah. too. That was so funny that it happened to Felix. In case you guys wanted to ask me, I believe that it will be Bitcoin and Hyperliquid. Hyperl EVM. The audience will love that you have said hyperlquid six times this episode. Very good. And we didn't even talk about it once. I will say I did give one valid criticism of it, which was the Binance Perpetuals potentially launching there. I'm sure it'll be fine, but I think that's like a valid thing to be concerned about. Yeah, we haven't seen a ton of traction on the Hyper EVM.

Uh, and it just feels like it's going to get lost in. Can I give my take on that? Yeah, please do. I think that Hyperlid doesn't need a fantastic L1. I don't think it needs NFTTS. I think all it really needs is a way to make more collateral, like bring in more collateral onto the L1 reasonable um the trading L1, which is so it needs LSDs, um, lending, borrowing, maybe like tokenized vaults, which I know there's a bunch of teams working on. I don't think it needs gaming. I don't think it needs NFTs, which I feel like a lot of other chains need. The one thing is that you definitely want some form of a memecoin generation thing and we haven't had that yet. But we haven't had that in any chain. So, and it is a bit slow, but I I don't know. We'll see. It's early. Yeah,

I won't just a lot of competition in the new chain space, right? You got them, you got Manad, you have uh Mega Egg, Uni Chain, Fogo, Atlas. Yeah, Inc. is I haven't heard much about them, but y um crocken is one of those things that you only really think about when you don't want to be thinking about it, which is like when you have to take money out and can't use it. Based in New York. RIP. Don't know. Can you use it? Uh I don't know. I'm just a proud Coinbase user, so I don't know. Are you actually They're going to hold your money hostage. They don't hold my money hostage. They seem to like me. I like the platform. That's ease of use. If you're an influencer,

you can get your money off. If you're not, you can't. That's a compliment. Thank you. Did you have a problem with Coinbase? No, I've just seen I've seen a lot of people have it. I've had it on Twitter, so it's got to be true. I've I have friends who have had problems. Do you know I've I've had problems. Yes, I am aware. It's It's I mean, it's probably I don't know. I assume money changing in the US is like harder than anywhere else. Yeah, I don't think it's malicious. it gets painted as this because that's what crypto Twitter does. But I don't know there like I I don't think they want to be dealing with all these customer like I don't know seems like the sensationalism of Twitter strikes again if you ask me and I love I would be pissed if my locked in like locked up.

You actually have more you have to be more conservative as Coinbase than any other money transmitter because you're dealing with a separate money transmission system that you can't revert the transaction like everyone else. you can like talk it out once they send the money out. Like they are a hotbed for like Well, that's why they're adding this attack where you mismatch the time difference on the transfer. That's why they're adding KYC into base. Stop. That's not true. That was a joke. All right, send us home. Are we done? I think we're done. Ryan, Daniel, thanks so much for coming on this live research pod. If you're at DS, please come and say hi to us. If you're not at DS, you can come to Permission List, which is in

June in Brooklyn. Daniel, will you invite people? Ryan, you as well. Will you please invite? Yeah, join us. It's going to be fun. Uh, that's your camera. June June 22nd to June 26, Brooklyn. Yep. Look at that. Industry City. I will be a lot more comfortable there as well. So, it's by the water. By the is it? Yeah, we're by the water, too. We got this beautiful view of Is that the Hudson? This one's by the water, too. We can afford the water. Is the hunt on that side or the east side or is it both? Probably a dumb question. Uh, our tech got us hooked up, so we're good. It's It's the west side. West side. Do you guys ever think about how we've lost complete sense of how we understand directions and stuff because

of our reliance on phones? Like you don't know where north is. Not the only thing we've lost reliance on. That's true. No, I know north, south, and east, and west. Where? North is that way. Well, we're in a very grid built city, so it's pretty easy. Oh, that's I don't know. Whatever. All right, join the Xerox Research Telegram chat. Yep. If you made it this far, you're probably already in there. All right. [Music]