Platforms in Crypto: The Next Phase of Crypto Growth | Roundup

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And I could make that argument for like so many different chains and maybe there are apps sometimes but the apps aren't differentiated and there's like an overupp of apps and an under demand of like people actually using the apps and like getting utility from the apps. So I kind of think right now where we are in crypto is like rethinking apps I guess and like demand for like what apps should even exist in the first place and thinking very very hard about that problem. And I think in general, if you manage to solve that problem, like I guess Hyperlquid did with their per exchange, you're in a very very unique sort of place to build a platform on top of like the product itself. Quick shout out to today's sponsor, Katana. We'll hear more about Katana's 1 billion CAT campaign later today, but for now, let's

get into the episode. Hey everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. All right, everyone. Welcome, I shouldn't say back to another episode of Bell Curve because this is a different uh Bell Curve roundup than it's been in the past, but there's some familiar faces for longtime listeners of Bell Curve here. Uh, but this is the new roundup and I'm going to talk about it a little bit, but excited to welcome uh Miles O'Neal here uh and Xavier Megan.

Guys, welcome. Welcome. >> Thank you very much. >> Awesome to be here. Awesome to be back, but also yeah, starting starting a fresh new roundup here. >> Yeah, change is in the air. Uh very excited about this next generation here. maybe uh we got a great show for you today, but to get into just give like a couple seconds around how the roundup is changing and how we're thinking about it moving forward. Um two big changes to note. Uh one has to do more with this roundup. The other is just on the the trajectory of bell curve in general as a show, which is we're not doing a news roundup anymore. So we're going to tackle one topic, do a bunch of research, and go deep in the weeds on what that is. So today we're going to be talking about platforms. So how they've

existed in web two historically, how that maps over to web 3, where it does and where it doesn't, and then go through a bunch of examples of gen purpose platforms, how they differentiate, how they go to market, and the lessons that we can learn from, you know, 25 years of business uh that people have been ignoring for the most part in crypto. Uh the other thing on bell curve is uh we are, you know, bell curve endeavors to be thesis driven and on the zeitgeist of the moment. And for the last three or four years, we've been really really deep in the weeds of infrastructure and we did some great seasons on MEV and DEX design and things like that. We are going to zoom out here a little bit and actually try to look where crypto intersects with other big technologies. Uh so AI, RWAS, that type

of thing. Uh, and we're also going to talk more about business strategy like go to market leveraging open source in a competitive way and try to adopt some of these lessons that are kind of table stakes in other industries and apply them to crypto. Uh, because the thesis here is that we're in the scale up phase of crypto. And so maybe some of the technical details that we zoomed in on historically are less relevant than they used to be and instead it's going to be much more on picking the right strategy, executing in the right um sector. So that's how you can understand the sort of changes to bell curve here. and I've got the two best guys in the industry to do it with and my buddies.

So [laughter] I'm excited to be ripping this with you guys. Um, okay. Uh, Miles is the Miles is the uh the hero of this session. So, you drove a bunch of this agenda, but I will just level set on what we're going to talk about today. We are going to talk about platforms. Um, and specifically uh there's kind of three acts to this to this uh podcast today. one, we're going to try to do a little bit of a comparison around how how to even define what a platform is and where platforms map over into like, you know, platforms like Google or Amazon and how much that applies to Ethereum, Salana or Morpho or Hyperlquid or Uniswap, right? Like where is the analogy real? Where does it break

down and how should we think about um platforms and valuation things like that in crypto? Next, we're going to talk about the different approach to growing and scaling platforms. So, we're going to talk about Miles, you've got a little 2 by two matrix I know you want to run by us here with productled versus true developer platforms and we're going to get into some uh examples of where that's worked in the past. Uh, and then finally, we're going to get deep in the weeds on crypto. And Zave, maybe we'll call in your expertise here. Um, and yeah, talk about go to market, but then also like we're going to analyze um, you know, the jobs that some of these uh, you know, platformish uh, companies have have done in crypto historically. Um, okay. So to just start with a level set and this is about as long as I can hear

myself monologue here. So I'm going to ask you guys some some questions in a second but uh yeah I just wanted to actually start with the definition of what a platform is. And I think this is one of the things you know this is one of the uh you would hear this and say I know it. I know it when I see it. But actually there have been some really great you know different uh tech moguls over the years have taken a whack at trying to create a litmus test for what a platform is and you know the the simplest definition that comes from Mark Andre is a platform is a system that can be programmed uh and therefore customized by outside developers. So the characteristics that you would look for is frankly a lot of the words you've heard in crypto over the years. So

extensibility composability two-sided network effects, nonlinear value. So all my metaf's law people are fist pumping you [laughter] know fist pumping at that. Uh and then also increasing returns to scale. Uh so the simple the simple litmus test would be you know if you were to remove all thirdparty developers or apps does the thing still make sense? Um there have been a couple more specific definitions that maybe we can uh take a look at. I actually really like this quote from Jeff Bezos in particular here, which is uh do your internal teams have to compete with external teams? Right? That's a that's a really good one. Um and actually maybe

an analogy there would be meta in the past and what they did with Farmville, but do your internal teams have to compete with external teams? Um the other quote from uh Bill Gates is do others make more than you? This is an ancient Zave. I know you're Cosmos and Miles too. I mean like like there was a huge debate in Cosmos at one point around economic security and should the apps make more than the platforms and you know you start to see it in a lot of the dialogue here but that's a that's a really good one. Uh do others make more than you and if you're a point of integration um then you're a platform.

Uh and then there's a there's an interesting one here from this guy Steve Yedge Yedi. Um which is uh a platform is a product that can be used by people who do not work for you without talking to you. So I thought those would be three really interesting kind of litmus tests that we can use to run through crypto crypto crypto platforms. where I'll turn it over to you guys is before we even get into what this has looked like historically, how platforms gone to market and what does it look like in crypto today. I would love to just align, it's probably not possible on this podcast, but how cleanly does the way that we've thought about platforms in web 2 map over to web 3? And you see this all over in these debates between hive and Santiago about generating fees

versus metaf's law. And it feels like people are just talking past each other. So before we even get into the weeds of, you know, mechanically how this works, do you think that these analogies map over cleanly from what a platform is in web 2 into a web 3 context? Maybe jumping off there. >> Yeah. Um I can I can jump in. Um and I think maybe specifically the debate was like are these tech platforms or are these monetary platforms, right? And um you know I'm uh head of product at Delta. We're building a new L1. Um, I can tell you it's there's really no like pragmatically there's no way to build a monetary platform. Like I'm not

sure where that would really take us at this point. Um and that to me I think in hindsight or like as an investor might make sense but um you know there's very little difference between like what base enables as a platform and what Ethereum enables right those are like basically clones of each other except one is faster. Um so why is Ethereum a monetary platform when base is a clearly a developer platform? Um, so I think just from like the perspective of of folks that are that are trying to build these today, you should be paying attention to the the I'd say like traditional technology platform playbooks um of the

past. And I think yeah, we've been kind of speedrunning through a lot of a lot of history here and a lot of lessons learned. Um, but yeah, I'll pause there. Z, do you agree? >> Yeah. Yeah, I think uh yeah, thanks for the intro, Mike. And I think uh the topic itself today is super interesting I think for all of us because all of us are involved in different ways. I think my is actually working for a sort of platform himself right now and is very much in the mix with how to on board developers, how to make it neutral, etc. Mike of course you're a distribution machine. So you're very much on the sort of product side and myself in the past I've been very much heavily involved in infra and these days a lot more focused on product and distribution. So it's maybe somewhere in the middle of you

guys. Um I I think right now like my high level comment would be that I there is certainly analogies to like the way that history um has occurred in terms of what we can look at in crypto today. I think if we were to think about analogies here in terms of like web 2 like AWS of course in the generic sort of platform space has done probably the best job um on the internet. I guess where that sort of leaves me personally is just thinking like you know there wasn't a massive amount of like winners in a generic infrastructure space in even in web 2 and I think like in crypto Mike you mentioned before that I was actively involved in the cosmos ecosystem like the Cosmos vision was internet of blockchains where you have

like a bunch of blockchains all different infrastructure like lay ones everywhere. The problem with all the Cosmos chains was that like there simply wasn't enough apps building on top of the infrastructure and I could make that argument for like so many different chains and maybe there are apps sometimes but the apps aren't differentiated and there's like an over supply of apps and an under demand of like people actually using the apps and like getting utility from the apps. So I kind of think right now where we are in crypto is like rethinking apps I guess and like demand for like what apps should even exist in the first place and thinking very very hard about that problem. And I think in general if you manage to solve that problem like I guess Hyperlquid did with their per exchange you're in a very very unique sort of place to build a platform on top

of like the product itself. Like I think Mike you might have mentioned earlier like maybe like someone like an Apple or like a Microsoft sort of did this as an analogy and I think like that I think is sort of a a very interesting opportunity right now because it's such a hard problem to solve but I think we were speaking you know earlier that I think in general it's it's very very hard to do both right now. It's very hard to build generic platform like extremely hard and getting harder over time and also to build an app that has PMF that has a lot of distribution and everyone using it and it's super sticky and then building a platform on top of that I think is very hard and I think hyperlid again here is probably the front runner at least in my opinion in terms of like

building a great product that then turn to a platform and one of the reasons why they did both well is because the product again solved a massive problem but then the platform itself the infrastructure and how much they optimized that the Cosmos SDK and everything else that's just like best in market by far and I think like again they're leaders here because we've seen other players have apps trying to turn into platforms and maybe not going at the same rate that Hyperlid is right now. So I think it's super interesting to see we're in the newer sort of era for like products turn into platforms whereas like platforms that are generic like AWS and maybe like an Ethereum that's is something that we've seen a lot in crypto in the past and we can kind of see what works and what doesn't.

So it's interesting sort of comparing and contrasting both those approaches. >> This episode is sponsored by Katana. Katana is a DeFi first chain built [music] for deep liquidity and real yield by redirecting chain revenue back to active DeFi users. The 1 billion KAT campaign is live. Bridge and deposit directly into vaults in one simple click and start earning immediately on your Ether, Bitcoin, [music] USDC, and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to get started. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. Do your own research. I actually wanted to because there is a difference here in between a product and a platform. And I think partially what makes this so confusing is everyone wants to say they're a platform because you get to hire

multiple evaluations. So everyone's a platform. But again, I think it's I think it's helpful to actually run through the example of some of these um as a litmus test because especially the big tech giants like the hyperscalers and the Mag 7s of the world, it's quite interesting to apply this to and Apple and the iOS platform is probably the best example of this where it's absolutely a point of integration. you absolutely the apps are generating more than the underlying platform uh owner is and also internally you do sort of have to compete externally. There's a huge caveat with this that actually Apple applies extremely stringent requirements and frankly a really fat take rate um on their on their their platform here but

by many standards of the definition it absolutely is. Uh there are other companies here. So this actually isn't listed on my list. Oh yeah, Facebook is a really good one. Facebook has probably the most interesting history of attempting to be a platform but then eventually defaulting to a product. And you might look at Facebook or Meta and say obviously this is a platform. Look at how large it is. Look at how many users it is. It's a marketplace that facilitates. And actually early on in Facebook the the blue app's existence there was a developer platform and the idea was and Miles this is going to get into a little bit around productled platforms. They led with a social graph right. So they had this asset which was the social graph. They were going to open that up to developers and try to

create a real platform like Farmville. But then for many many different reasons uh that didn't end up working. Um a huge part of that was actually the shift from web a browser where they thought they could build a platform to mobile like iOS and Android and then Facebook couldn't take 30% if Apple was already taking 30%. Right? So there are sometimes things that look like they can be true platforms, but then you know when business forces intersect, you see who has the actual leverage. And it turns out that while it looked compelling there for a second, um Facebook was going to start with this huge social graph and you're like, "Wow, that's so valuable." Eventually over time they had to shove that entire thing. They shut things like Farmville down overnight. People will remember. So

I I think that there are lots of maybe to start to translate a little bit into to crypto here now. We're getting into, you know, the app first or the product for lea uh platform ecosystems versus true developer platforms. But I think we should run through maybe towards the end of this podcast the litmus test for protocols who are all trying to say that they are true platforms. But I think if you were to run through this test, I think many of them are most likely not. It would be my would be my kind of contention going in here. So also Miles, I'm gonna turn it over to you. I want to get the the 2x2 matrix here that that you've got for this episode. But before we do, just a a um >> I guess commentary on how we're going to talk about this. I understand that it's

a it's an ongoing debate. Is Ethereum and Salana monetary asset versus a tech platform? Uh open debate. I think the the perspectives on this show would be probably it's more useful to just talk about them as if they are tech platforms because Miles to your point there's nothing we can really do if this is a monetary asset other than say this is a monetary asset, [laughter] right? So this is a little bit more aimed at practitioners >> and I think it's probably just more useful is if we talk about them as you know more analogous to tech platforms. >> Yeah, I I I agree like and especially from my perspective it's much easier and more pragmatic to do so. But it is it is kind of interesting like if you were to try to like what what would you do to try to create like a monetary platform

first, right? Um, and it seems like uh proof of work is back in vogue. Um, or at least folks are talking about that, right? And and you could kind of argue that like if you try to do this fair, you know, dis fair launch proof of work approach and just get this asset into as many hands as possible and then just try to basically, you know, meme your way into um you getting developers because people are holding the asset and because you have attention like it could work.

Um, would I like put all my eggs in that basket as as somebody who's like trying to build a platform? No. But, um, yeah, I would call out like maybe nochain as as a project that I've noticed recently that's that's trying to do that and has, um, seems to be like getting some attention. Uh, so it's it's an interesting kind of thread to pull on. Um, you know, we've definitely thought about proof of work as well, but it's uh I think it's it's hard to square those two things or like know what to prioritize. Well, can I uh maybe skip ahead to one comparison here around Ethereum? And I know everyone's, oh, Blockworks hates Ethereum. Not at all.

And actually, the I will say I personally, not speaking from Blockworks' perspective, have disagreed with a lot of the words that I hear coming out of uh some people from that ecosystem. But I think the strongest thing that you could say for why Ethereum is a platform is over the last 3 years they have essentially tried to fire a huge portion of their users right they've said don't transact on my layer go up to L2s they've also had clear product market fit with DeFi and not only didn't try to foster that but kind of actively tried to distance themselves at one point historically and still even with all of that there's an enormous amount of traction and clear network effects that are acrewing to ETH1. So to

me actually if you look at the last three years I don't agree with everything but I think Ethereum is frankly the strongest case by far for a true platform in crypto. It's probably the only thing you could say that for actually at this point. >> I think I agree with that. Um I think I would put Salana in there as well. But I think that's mainly because the um you know I actually would you know block works data might be able to tell us this but what I I really do like the definition of okay it's like the GDP of what's happening on your platform you know multiples of the amount of money you're making or like you know the cumulative revenue. Um, and I do think that, yeah, for a time, um, Ethereum, you know, I agree with you, but for a

time, Ethereum was actually probably making more or like as much as all the apps on its, uh, on its platform. That was back when gas fees were really high. Um, and yeah, I'd be curious to see like I would imagine today, um, Salana and Ethereum's like ratios are probably pretty similar. Um and and both and both like very in the platform category uh of that definition at least. >> Miles, can I call on you? I want to understand again whether or not these things are monetary assets or we're going to set that aside for a second and I just want to talk about how web two platforms how they've chosen to go to market and position themselves. And I think one distinction is leading with the platform versus a strong app and

building a platform around it. And then another is yeah productled versus being true developer platforms where there's just no product on it whatsoever. So right can you help help expand on that? >> Yeah exactly. Um so I think uh there's two paths to becoming a successful platform right um you can either build a product first um and that gets lots of users and then users uh you know basically if you have users that developers want to reach like this is to me like the the clearest like most obvious path to success. um now building a product that like can get that sort of success and leverage and positioning to

be able to go like horizontal into a platform that's that's difficult right um or you can start with the just true developer platform approach um and within that I think there are you know basically if you take the the first approach like the product that you build is your wedge uh if you go as a true developer platform you still need a differenti iated wedge, right? Um and I think we've seen like market timing does make a big difference like if you are just uh building a platform and you're the first one of a new type of like compute paradigm or a new kind of apps like I would argue you know Ethereum was um successful in being

just a true developer platform without having to build uh you know firstparty apps itself just because it was the first to enable like a a new category of applications right like trustless verifiable applications that can move money. Um and other you know that's definitely not the case today in crypto. Um and then if you look at like uh other sort of platforms in web 2 at least um you know AWS like is a great example of a massive business a massive brand that uh commercializes its you know in infrastructure basically and could argue maybe base is kind of the closest to this today right it's like okay well we trust Coinbase Coinbase is building this

you know platform okay it's got a good name brand behind it and hopefully they'll help me out with distribution right from uh from their their massive user base of um you know centralized exchange customers. Um and then I think the the harder but like more uh you know I would say like the the more realistic path that you have to take as like a startup that's trying to build a true developer platform is just you need some sort of like capability edge, right? You have to be like and it has to start small and narrow and specific. It's like you need to be the easiest way to do this, right? Um or you have to very clearly present to the market um a

problem that is that you solve, you uniquely solve that is very top of mind for developers and then you got to get like showcases out there of um examples of how you solve this in like high leverage channels, right? I think that's that's kind of where most L1s are at today. Um, but yeah, I guess I'll I'll pause there. Like, does that sort of framework make sense to you guys or I know I know there's lots of nuances. >> Yeah, I think uh both you guys have touched on some interesting points. Um, the way that I've sort of thought about it and so going back to your question a little while ago, Mike, regarding Ethereum as like a sort of king platform, I think Ethereum still is the

king. I think none of us here know in 5 years time is it Ethereum or is it Salana or someone else. I do think that Ethereum and Salana both are like probably the biggest platforms in terms of just like mind share. When I'm talking about Ethereum, I'm more talking about like EVM almost as a platform. I think Ethereum has encapsulated the EVM the best. And then Bass is like >> lower fees, more users, but I think Ethereum still has the liquidity in TBL, etc. So, it's interesting. I don't know if you made this point earlier, Mike, but you know, Ethereum did go live as proof of work. You know, obviously Bitcoin money, Ethereum kind of has been pushed as money and I do think like at least in my experience and you know,

years in crypto sometimes price does attract developers. And so thinking about Ethereum, so it started at this super low price. A bunch of people made money, a bunch of computer people, you know, developers, and they're thinking, I paid all this money. I'm a programmer. Like why don't I make an app for fun because I've already made all this money. And so mix that with the fact that Ethereum was the first chain to allow developers to program with M in the first place. So like they are solving a problem that's very obvious and needed by developers and you know that's already been proven today. My question after that is more like you look at Salana again we were very active in Salana when that was getting started back in the day and Salana very clearly like not only was sort of price rising from the attention that it garnered from

you know whether it was FTX or just like completely different VM or like way of doing it. Realistically, the reason why I think Salana has done so well is because it kind of solved another problem that Ethereum didn't necessarily solve, which was that, you know, we saw in the last 2021 cycle that Ethereum was very expensive during like times of higher network activity. And layer twos were sort of coming but not really there yet. And Salana managed to find a way to create a chain that was easy for developers to sort of use because a lot of developers are already familiar with Rust. And that was the first sort of approach that really targeted Rust as a language that developers, especially good developers, had a lot of familiarity with. And so that was one thing which they felt very familiar with the technology already plus it was

cheap. Then users would use the apps and the sort of this fly was created. And so why I'm bringing all this up is because like I do think that Salana mixed both the kind of price and the attention and like all the liquidity etc with the fact that it actually solved a real problem of like the platform of Ethereum itself and continues to do so today. But for what it's worth, I also think that Ethereum is not going away. And I actually see both those chains as being used for different purposes long term. Although it is interesting to think about the fact that Ethereum did start as proof of work and still has a higher valuation and valuation frameworks, but that etc. and it's now proof of stake.

But yeah, I think in general like when it comes to platforms, these two come to mind as like real kingmakers. I guess I don't know how you guys see it, but like bass and then on on the flip side, I think it's also worth mentioning that what you're seeing now outside of EVM and Solar is like a lot of ones that have gone live in the last four or five years are kind of struggling a lot actually right now. And like it's I think it's really really difficult right now to create another platform because I think Miles you mentioned it before of like this problem is a bit more niche. And so then the question is like the demand from developers and of course like I'm actually curious to hear your take from Delta as well here Miles and the problem that you guys solve. But

it's kind of like the demand from developers has in my opinion been somewhat uh already like supplied in terms of like chains that exist. So then the question is like the strongest developers today in crypto like where are they going? Like I think most of them probably go into Ethereum and Salana because they either know Rust or they're already an Ethereum person and I think it's incredibly hard. I mean I'm curious from your again from you Miles but like Salana itself like my question would be as a developer right now in terms of like a generic platform like is there something that you think that these generic platforms today aren't really serving like an Ethereum or Salana in terms of like speed or cost or like familiarity with a developer language and like do you think there still is a gap for a more generic

platform to take its place? >> Yeah. Um so I think short answer is like no like you have to be something very very different today. Um, and I think, you know, in my role, I'm constantly trying to like square and balance um, let's say like the playbooks and lessons learned from the history of the internet and the playbooks and lessons or like you know uh maybe not written in stone but written in pencil of like what's worked in crypto specifically for the past five years, right? Um, and it felt like there was a time in crypto where like there was a playbook for new L1s that was kind of working like kind of and but but the

playbook has had like increasingly diminishing returns. And so, you know, it was let's say like after maybe Ethereum and Salana had like maybe when Salana was like just taking off, this is probably at its at its peak. Um, and it follows like this hot ball of money sort of, you know, behavior from investors as well. Um, but if you were like the next well-funded hot L1, um, your launch was seen at least within like the crypto developer community as like a land grab opportunity, right? To go fill out all like the foundational DeFi, you know, things that have worked in other ecosystems. Um, and you would, okay, cool. like you would go grab like a DEX

and you know a lending protocol like I think maybe Avac Cchain is a good example of this where like all of a sudden it's like oh we got Trader Joe that's a sushi swap like uh fork and XYZ right um and the more and more of these L1s that came out like one more saturated like the developer you know market was uh and two like the less attractive it became to developers like this land grab like sort of opportunity became right and so you would just get apps that were like less and less differentiated. Um, and they would put, you know, these developers like you you could incentivize them with all like the developer incentives and grants in the world, right? But like it just the adverse selection kept getting, you

know, stronger and stronger and stronger. Um, you'd get devs that would be putting in like very little effort to go throw out a smart contract, you know, app that was basically a fork of something that existed. you give them a grant and then they would probably like move on to the next ecosystem, you know, in a year a year or two later. And so that's kind of where I feel like we're at right now is okay, everybody's looking at this, you know, playbook that was and being like very clearly this is not working anymore, right? And we've got like pretty famous, you know, flops that we've seen over the past like two years just to to sort of back that up, right? Um, and so I think we're kind of back to this like, you know, chicken and the egg problem for platforms, which is

pretty clearly that, you know, to get users, you need apps, but to get developers for those apps, you need users that those developers actually want to reach, right? >> And so, >> um, you know, even I just the cold start problem and and starting with, uh, the developer side has is is really hard. like it's rarely been successful and even Windows like failed at this miserably when they were um you know in the in its early stages like they felt like they only had influence really to exert on the developer side um that they didn't have like a you know a strong user like a strong ownership of like the end customer and so you know they

actually like paid out big cash incentives to developers to build apps on Windows and it didn't go well like the really strong builders said, "Okay, I'm not going to come like build an app for like an empty graveyard of like a platform, right, with no users like it will cost more. It will cost me more to maintain the app than I will be getting in revenue." And then other, you know, other developers that were like, you know, less strong or like put in a little effort. It kind of reminded me of like the the later stages of, you know, uh this L1 playbook before it died. Um and you know it just became very very clear that like um it is not a chicken and the egg problem at least for

consumer app platforms like first come users once there are users there will become demand for application and like this is the by far and away the strongest and only incentive out there. So, you know, and to your point, Mike, like look at Apple. I mean, their like app store policies to developers is egregious. Like they take a they take a 30% >> uh take. Um there is a term called Sherlocking that uh was created because Apple B there was a there was some app a long time ago called Sherlock and Apple just you know cannibalized that by putting out a first-party app and now every year techrunch comes out with like

what did Apple Sherlock this year and to be fair they're not usually trying to sherlock like huge apps apart from I would say like Apple Music versus Spotify like that was that was you know going after one of the biggest apps on the app store. Um, but you know, it just gives you a sense of just how much leverage you you can have as a platform and how like, you know, well positioned you are if you own the user relationship already with a killer product. And so when it comes to the uh consumer space, you know, platforms are typically symptoms of products that moved the needle for the market. Um, and the only way to be a platform company is to be a product company first, acquire users, then incentivize developers. And so

that's kind of where I think we're at and I'd pose it to you guys like, you know, is there um is there any choice these days as no one of what to do? I I think that's what I want to underline here and get at is so I want to because so oftentimes in crypto people moralize and say things like you are a great example that actually I think is the setup and mission of the Ethereum Foundation versus the Salana Foundation and what the criticism of the Salana Foundation is look they're so active they're doing things like building a phone that's immoral or centralizing and to me that's the result of business strategy necessity because they didn't

have the option of doing what Ethereum did when they launched of just being this open developer neutral platform and they had to do things like the break Salana app or serum they they maybe they didn't want to do these things I doubt they really did who wants to take on extra work but they said hey we can't be this totally lead with this blank slate like Ethereum did we have to suggest this to the market and I think that since [snorts] you've seen that and again to give like really famous examples of like starting with a wedge or product and building a platform around it. The Office suite from Microsoft is probably the best example where they just built this unbelievably sticky product and wrapped a ton of stuff around it. Uh versus something like Linux where you start from totally

blank slate and those are very very different approaches and first of all both are totally fine and acceptable strategies like there's no reason to put moralizing around this. Uh however I do think within crypto miles to answer your question I think that I think that the market does force your hand as a developer platform in terms of what will work. I think the huge you know people talk about the immaculate conception of of Bitcoin. I think Ethereum has an exorbitant advantage of being able to be neutral from day one and that was their strategy that worked at the time. I don't think anyone since Ethereum has truly had that had that privilege of being completely neutral in a developer platform.

>> And I think over time what you've seen is evolving towards what you're describing which is more productled and more strategically uh um differentiated right opinionated versus unopinionated. And the how I would take everyone on a on a journey here is Ethereum completely blank slate developer platform. the Ethereum Foundation just sets up to maintain that that structural advantage that wedge that they had. Great. That's an advantage no one else has. Salana needed to be more active in their you know they built uh you know Serum or they you know supported Serum etc. They're much more supportive to specific apps but they still they my sense is the Salana Foundation prefers not to kingmake. They

also try to do things like the phone, the salana, the saga, right? Like these are attempts to lead with product. And then you have something like hyperlquid, which is the next evolution, which is far more opinionated, far more uh first of all, not only around the organization, um, which is a relatively small team, but it's this is what our block space should be used for. And is it totally open? I mean, you you saw the RFP, the stable coin RFP was a pretty interesting example of this where okay, uh maybe the team had some influence behind the scenes. I don't know. Uh I have no I but it certainly wasn't just hey, you know, you can technically build however you want, but like fully in practice, right? It was not uh that that Yaggi definition of you don't you don't

have to talk to your customers. Like that's doesn't feel like the case. Now, I can hear the hyperlquid stand saying hip 3, all of this stuff. That might change in the future, but to me the direction of travel here is getting far more opinionated and I don't think that's because of some moral thing. I think it's just the you got to play the game on the field and that's the game on the field today. >> And yeah, that's what I would >> Yeah, I kind of want to double click into the the Salana piece because to me this is like the you know playbook that I look at as been the most successful and being a true developer platform within that's active, right? and would is is somewhat reflective of what could be successful, you know, moving forward.

Like break Salana. I don't know if you guys remember that app. It was an app where you just slam the keyboard as fast as possible. Uh every time you touch the keyboard, it made a transaction on Salana. Um and at the time, I mean, I think we were paying like $50 per transaction in gas on Ethereum. Um that was the number one problem that was top of mind for every single user and developer and it was what was stopping you know these applications from being actually really useful and uh consumer friendly on like a day-to-day basis right we getting priced out of Ethereum and then you look at Serum you go okay they clearly want to attack DeFi their

marketing tagline was NASDAQ on chain right and because they solve this problem. You could put an order book on chain that like the point of serum was not like hyperlquid I don't think where they wanted it to be the canonical like exchange of salana or they kind of viewed it as well if it does become that great if it doesn't that's fine too because it inspired basically a whole like class of defi builders to understand what's possible and what they can build on Solana um and then the phone I think is also like yeah it's it failed But it was I think like spirit like like in spirit in the right direction where they're trying to

basically um accelerate distribution of these apps. They say okay the thesis is that like mobile is the future for all of crypto. Um mo you know current mobile like phones or app uh you know iOS and and Android they don't actually support crypto apps very well right there's nothing built into the hardware that that allows them to do that. we can create a best-in-class like product experience for these apps if we build a phone ourselves and we can you know get that into more hands. It didn't work out. But I do think that like these are the sort of things that you know if you're not going to actually if you don't have the DNA in your team to like build one specific app like these are the sort of things you have to do.

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Terms and conditions apply. do your own research >> on go to market here. I one thing that we can start to do is pull in specific examples here and I I know we've been talking about Ethereum Salana and Hyperlquid but there's lots of other examples um from maybe let's focus on kind of the gen purpose L1 L2 ostensibly trying to be a developer platform and how that's evolved. They'll just talk about the current state of play and what the strategy has been for Monad and Mega ETH and actually Barachchain uh which I know people have strong opinions on but they I think their innovation was they did lead with a bunch of firstparty applications and people didn't call it

that but you know they had a homegrown uh borrow lend um homegrown borrow because outside of like the control and the economics there is a UX experience of you don't want you no one people to go bridge over to your chain and have there be nothing to do or missing core infrastructure. There's also been really there have been discussions around this on the Ethereum side of things if people remember the Lido and the IEN layer. I mean, how hilarious are those debates with in hindsight, right? But they were going to take over Ethereum and there was I think I I frankly think that was, you know, way overblown. But I do think there was a shred of real genuine truth of maybe this is really core infrastructure. Do we want someone external to,

you know, having maybe misaligned incentives there to be running something like this? So, I think maybe we can uh also start to focus in on the the more targeted and opinionated approach of someone like uh a mega ETH for instance who takes um another big question around develop like platforms in general are being totally neutral versus kingmaking. Um, and kingmaking has this really negative connotation. But again, to take the moral element out of it, I think it all comes from business necessity, which is we don't have thousands of people trying to build. You know, we have a more limited number and we want to support who we view as being the best teams. If you only have 10 good teams and 200 really crappy teams, I think it's a super viable strategy to pour

more support behind your 10 good teams because trying to maximize the chance of success here. Can we talk about a little bit of the evolution of go to market and distribution for and you know maybe start talking about some of these specific gen purpose sort of chains and then we can get into uh finally some of the app layer examples. I'm really curious to get you guys perspective on the morphos and unis swaps of the world whether or not we should view them as a platform or not. >> Yeah and I I think just maybe to to start uh in terms of like starting with maybe solar and ethereum before moving on. So in terms of the foundations and the sort of bottom up versus top down approach and kingmaking apps like you mentioned mega eth as well. So interestingly enough as miles was saying

before so Salana you know it did start like very top down and Ethereum sort of more bottoms up as well but what's ended up happening probably in the last 6 months I think we've seen this like Ethereum Foundation is for the first time taking a much more top down approach on the business side and I'm like super bullish on this. Uh I'm actually working relatively closely with their business team at Ethereum Foundation and you know they're sort of catching up a bit because I think they realized that Salana did such a good job at this of like Salana was so appealing like probably if I was a developer to some extent I would have built on Salana in the last two or three years because like the support they give you. They're all around you. They're like connecting you with everyone in the ecosystem.

Ethereum didn't have that. Cosmos didn't have that back in the day for what it's worth. And so like in terms of top down versus bottom up and foundations etc. I think one of the reasons why it's so hard even today Ethereum started bottoms up but it's more top down again is because like bottoms up is very decentralized. It seemed like the ethos of crypto which I think all of us are in it you know for that reason but at the end of the day so many foundations and also many decentralized organizations including D what it's worth like they've somewhat failed at coordinating. Okay. So, like you mentioned before, like you might want to have five or 10 apps and like, you know, sort of pour resources into those strategically. That makes sense because that's like a good business decision. If you have too many people talking at the table, people get

confused like they sort of lose focus. Things don't get done and the execution is actually terrible. And to some extent, one might make the argument maybe in the last four or five years on Ethereum, even though it started bottoms up, incredibly neutral, like it lost a bit of focus and we all saw that. And I think since they've been a bit more centralized and top down, like I feel like there's this new energy in the Ethereum ecosystem. Vice versa and Salana like they're top down. I think they always get the priorities right and it's kind of like grass is always green at to some extent like probably they're looking at the DeFi ecosystem on Ethereum being like oh like this is such a great eosystem how they get TVL liquidity etc. stuff that Ethereum's already done. So in terms of the newer ace chains like you asking before Mike

like you have like a monad and a mega eth and uh you know everything else and ver chain etc. So monad I would maybe make the argument in terms of the earlier definition of like what is a platform and like how do you be as hands off as possible and everyone builds on top. I might even make the argument without a whole lot to back it up, but like I haven't seen any chains in the last like two or three years launch where like I come out and say I'm launching a chain and you come to me and you come build on my my platform. Like unless I'm paying you or like something's involved like a cohort where you're being selected like I don't think you can actually create a platform that's like in the definition of a true platform that we're talking about at the

very early stages in terms of like no support given whatsoever people just building on top. Maybe that will happen in future like who knows like someone might come up with an idea to actually solve that in the meantime because we know that that hasn't worked in the past people going further and further towards a centralized approach eg hyperl liquid I think the best example here again mega e is is very similar like I think I don't really have an opinion on mega eth and like what's going to happen in the ecosystem I think they've done a really great job at finding high quality entrepreneurs like it's as simple as that like the idea could be anything like shout out to oh I'm forgetting the name right now but the tap to like the options thing. I forgot. Well, that's cool. When you guys can jump in here.

Um, too many names of projects. Miles, you know, >> I know exactly what you're talking about. I also >> you're for it. Euphoria. So, >> there you go. There you go. >> Great founder, like cool product. Like it's it's something new and it's actually consumerf facing. I might also make the argument here that like Mega E would be interesting if there is a breakout app like a Euphoria, which I think is super cool. uh there comes a stage when you have all these users and attention where it's like I might be a little bit too bearish on infrastructure here but like I kind of think it's so easy to create an EVM chain to some extent now where you can sort of if you have distribution and adoption like what's stopping you moving off mega and we've seen kind of this happen a bit maybe we don't really know the inner

workings of mega but some teams have kind of come in they've been selected and they've sort of gone out you know maybe there's other people throwing money at these people like if you're an app developer in crypto right now building something super cool you're very high demand. People are going to pay you a lot. And so like then it comes down to a game of incentives as a platform. So then like Monad's raised like how many hundreds of millions? They're the best example right now probably a platform that has a lot of newer apps going live because they have so much money they can probably throw this in at these developers. Mega E raised a lot as well and but they've gone a bit more top down. Ver chain also raised a lot but maybe like where potentially they didn't go as well was just in terms of like kind of things

that hadn't been done before. And I think really Mega E from what I understand is like they're really trying to push this angle of like kind of new apps that haven't been done before like reworking what you can do with EVM super fast a bit like the Salana pitch back in the day. I might also throw a sort of spanner in the works here as well in terms of like going against the grain. So what I'm actually observing right now personally is actually the opposite. And so like you're seeing okay we've talked about platforms so far on this podcast and we've also talked about products maybe turning into platforms a little bit. What I'm actually seeing is the reverse is also true. So like a lot of platforms or like infrastructure let's say that I've actually invested in maybe in the last few years I think a lot of

infrastructure has failed in crypto like generic infrastructure in the last year or two and I think like most people understand that. What has been interesting is like the teams that have managed to evolve and pivot into like turning that infrastructure and platform into a product that then serves as a market which I find like very very interesting. So they're actually going from platform to product which I think is actually very very tough and potentially zero examples exist of this in crypto right now where there's been infrastructure which has been generic. I had this like high IQ thesis of some execution layer going live that was going to completely disrupt crypto. Turns out like that didn't happen. But now that execution layer, they're sort of productizing that and trying to serve the enterprise market actually which again is completely separate topic which maybe we can talk about on another

podcast. But what I'm saying here is that like I think in real time right now you see in crypto like many many different approaches you can plug up like pull apart all of them and every single approach is different right now of like different teams going live especially when it comes to infrastructure including delta and I actually Miles I'd love to hear like your approach versus mega e etc in a second but like I I think right now like jury is out in terms of like can you I don't think you're going to be a like just as a neutral platform when people come to you anymore. I think incentives do matter but then at the same time I think that the application developer themselves the product themselves they have the power now of like even if they get a bit of distribution through your

platform they end up taking some users and the product is good enough I wonder if they just then go out to build their own product and then platform that on top if that makes sense. So yeah I think it's a very interesting time in crypto and it's like a very timely topic. So yeah Mars I'd love to hear like they also like how you see it. Yeah, totally. And maybe maybe I'll just like reference like I can layer, right? Um they put out a very sort of generic uh infrastructure platform that it you know does like open up a new design space for verifiable types of services, right? Um and there was a lot of hype in the beginning and uh I think the lesson learned there was that you know um basically they had to be more opinionated uh that as we're not you know developers are not just going

to figure out like what the killer AVS's are to build right they had to basically say okay no we're going to build a B2B product right we're not going to build a consumer app necessarily ourselves we're going to build a B2B product that's targeting a specific vertical right in in AI like verifiable AI. um that's like sort of the end goal that we see and we need to like basically pull that in to today and give you know a a very like targeted specific tool to do that right um and then I think there's uh for if you know platforms that are that are trying to get application developers um you know I would say like from my seat

at Delta we're we're kind of doing both right we've uh incubated two B2B products um because we were going out to all these existing companies and like postpmf existing companies or or fintech startups basically outside of crypto like okay here's this you know the delta domain SDK like there's so many things you can do with it and they're like I'm I don't we're not going to like just go figure this out ourselves right you have to like figure out what you can build with this what problems you can solve right and then we incubated two companies that can go themselves to those existing companies outside of crypto with a very narrow solution that is leveraging, you know, a delta domain. Absolutely. But

it's not just this like open-source general purpose SDK that you can you're just going to have to figure out what to do with, right? And then on the consumer side, we've also, you know, incubated um applications that we think are super differentiated and highlight things that only can be built on Delta. And I think that's the only way to do it, right? I if we I get asked all the time like are you guys EVM compatible? like we can be, but I don't really want to get into that game because you're it's it's kind of a big grants and incentives game going after the same like, you know, handful of maybe 25 to 50 at any given time like, you know, free agent highquality builders, right? And it's like you're

just it's so much adverse selection. You're just going to end up paying so much money, right, to get these guys. and and you don't I think you that's not like the most organic you know way to to develop an ecosystem. Um that's not going to inspire the next generation right of application developers that you shouldn't have to give grants to if you're successful right if you're just putting out clones. So if you're not doing something that enables like applications that can't be built anywhere else it's really tough out there. Um, and I think you know, Mega ETH is like, sure, it is an EVM. Yes, it goes faster than any EVM uh before. Um, and that's like I think has given them

enough to go find applications that that really couldn't exist elsewhere. Um, I don't know for sure, but that's my sense. I have a thought here and I want to eventually transition us to maybe some of the stuff that we've thought about being more in the app layer but lives in between what could be potentially a platform and and an application with a product. But I also want to ask you guys about focus and the downside of and how difficult it is to either transition from a platform and infrastructure play to a product or what you often see is hey you we need to build a product so we can dog food our own infrastructure. I will just say from a focus standpoint that there's a drawback to that for sure and as someone who is a founder of a company that

started as a media company and you know now has you know 30% of our revenue coming from you know recurring data that type of thing it is really difficult to do uh you know the the from an operational standpoint you I mean just repeating to everyone this is where we're going this is how it's changing talking to like having kind of two different parallel orgs run. I mean, there's a real uh complexity and drawback and cost and speed impact there. And I'm curious from both miles from your seat at Delta, but also Z maybe more from the investing side of things, how are you advising here? I I sometimes you just got to do what you got to do. But uh I also see from maybe personal experience here, it's tough,

right? It's not like in you don't just wave a wand and say, "Hey, we were info. We should be in product." Boom. [laughter] you know. >> Yeah. I I just think right now in crypto like >> thinking long and hard about demand is like so important. Yeah. >> And so like taking you back to the example I gave before of this Porco that was like building sort of a plat literally a platform and they had a competitor pop up doing a very similar technology let's say and the competitor they were trying to be a platform for third party developers to build on top of and they popped up maybe a year after this uh you know company had already started and the company learned after six 12 months that like there just wasn't enough demand from developers to like kind of build on top of their

initial platform, but there was a market for what that platform enabled in the first place, if that makes sense. And so to like dumb it down a bit. So, you know, what it does enable is like sort of like it's a browser node where it sort of looks at what's happening in your browser and collects data. Let's say if you're prompting an LM or something like that. And this data is like very valuable for anyone to understand how like how you're how you're prompting something before you make a purchasing decision. You can imagine many many companies want want that as a product, but they kind of made the decision to target companies that would want this data over developers almost. And so now I think there's an open question right now in this overrule of like in crypto do you target the developers or maybe

you already have so much insight into how your platform or infrastructure can be used that you just end up building the product yourself almost and then you kind of productize the infrastructure which is a completely separate thing to what we've been talking about before. So, I think a lot of it comes down to like how flexible you are and then when you find any PMF whatsoever, going back to Mike's point, like you then have to double down and focus and like get all hands on deck for like selling that. And this is actually a big point in general when it comes to platforms as well as someone that's worked with quite a few in the past at Chorus One as well. Like BD is like an art in crypto and I've worked in BD selling infrastructure etc.

And it's super hard and like Miles of course is doing this right now as like BDA Delta because like you're kind of trying to get people on board onto what you're doing but then I know Delta is different but let's say it's like Monet versus Mega ETH. you're basically pitching the same thing like come to my fast chain then it's all about like relationships and it's very hard to like sell and and on board and so I think like coming back to the demand point if you have a good product that sells itself like that is ultimately kind of a great end state to be in because then the BD spend less time trying to on board developers and it just solves a clear problem people can easily use it and that's why I'm also kind of bullish right now on like where we're at in

crypto in terms of like products because Like if you think about where we are right now like we've got all this infrastructure built already like platforms let's call it we got the layer one platforms but we also have at the same time is like the kind of middleware layer of like we have like whatever zk this TLS this like a lot of data stuff like chain link oracles like whatever data you want like we can get that on chain like pretty pretty easily now so the question is like now you have all this at your disposal like how do you come up with an idea that's interesting enough that you think has demand from some market inevitability to actually build and that is actually complex and I I think right now like there's only very very very few teams in crypto that can actually leverage all these platforms

and middleware and actually build a great application or product and that's where I think a lot of the opportunity is actually right now because like there is a lot of things that we can build and I also want to make another example here which maybe is more to your earlier point Mike of like these apps are the apps really platforms like poly market for me is like an app but it's actually somewhat becoming a platform in real time right Now there's sort of like poly market cohorts. There are people building on top of poly market right now etc etc. So like what's really interesting there and I had a conversation earlier today is like think about I don't know if you'd consider like UMA a platform like the the oracle but like UMA maybe more like middleware than a platform but in any case like the

amount of value that UMA accurs from the success of poly market is like insignificant compared to like the value that poly market as an application acrews to itself and then now is building a platform on top of that. So all this is to say I I think like just because of the power and how hard it is right now to build a great product with like what's there and find demand or something that actually people want to use like I think that is like really interesting to explore further. Maybe on another podcast we're going to think about like actual ideas for applications people could build that haven't been experimented with that much so far. But like yeah I I think in general trying to find PMF and demand and then focusing on that and putting everything there and being less opinionated. Actually, I think teams that are less opinionated on

where they the end state are going to do better because crypto is evolving very very fast right now. And then try and experiment with especially with a product hat on like test with users first and get user feedback before you build it. Like save resources and then focus on building the product when you really know there's demand for it. So focus is obviously critical. Mike at block works. I know like you've had some different things you've explored in the past at Chorus one. We also explore different things and then we always just realized that staking was a core competency of course one and that's what we did best and like so I think there's always things you could be doing but as soon as you have something really really good you just want to hang on to that and I think that is important and I I

think if teams experiment like delta maybe they incubate an app or maybe they have like a platform or something like that but then maybe they incubate an app that does really well I'm talking like this is a sick app like maybe the attention then is diverted to just that application becoming the biggest thing that Delta has and that could also be a huge market in itself So those are just some high level thoughts I would say on the topic. I I also want to introduce this idea of and this is maybe taking us out of the weeds but actually is a bit of a bullcase for the existing I mean if I were to sum up the last 20 minutes of our conversation is it's really hard if you are trying to build something that looks like a platform today and I think that it's funny that I mean I probably

do overindex a little bit on you can counter trade sentiment in crypto but I kind of think you for the most part and I do when it comes to something like Ethereum or Salon especially with Ethereum the time to be bearish was three years ago and everything that we have said about being forced into a specific positioning and go to market to me says the barriers to entry are higher than they've ever been and it's harder to compete than it's ever been. So >> that's a hu I think that's a really important observation to take away whether or not you want to value these couple chains as a monetary asset or as a platform. Even if you were to say these are a platform, I think looking at the competitive landscape going out,

it looks pretty good. It looks it's more difficult to compete than it's been. I wouldn't want to compete against Delta, but that's you that's >> No, I mean I think like uh yeah, if you're building a platform today, you have really no choice other than um to build a consumer app uh to build a developer like facing like a more specific developer facing app on your platform that you can then go sell or do some combination of both. Um I do think that there is more inherent tension that arises later if you go the with a canonical consumer app, right? and then try to explan expand into a platform out of that. Um, I don't think it's been done successfully yet in crypto. Like I

think I would consider unis swaps uh v4 like not super successful and I think that was also like you know there's a lot there's a lot of reasons for that. Um we'll see with Hyperlid in general. Um yeah go for it Mike. >> Should we get into this? I we've got 10 minutes left. I want to go through a lightning round of what you guys So, I did some work with chat GBT, my my thought partner here, and I was using these litmus tests that that we've reviewed as um or that we kind of started this episode with as you know, within crypto, what do you think qualifies as a true platform here? And you know the examples we've got are Salana Ethereum Salana base hyperlquid unis swap morpho a compound maker

USDC/circle tether curve um I'm gonna ask you each miles can you run down this I'm curious just do a quick lightning round yes >> yes yes so like Ethereum yes salana yes uh hyperlid put them right in the middle um unis swap No. Uh, Morpho, no, not yet. A, no, not yet. Compound, they still around. Um, and Maker, no. Um, >> tough for my compound stance. [laughter] >> I circle circle and tether. I guess you could argue they've expand they like you could argue that the stable coin was a

product. They are now launching platforms off that product like Hyperlid. Um I think they're coming at it from a much tougher spot than Hyperlid was like and expanding to that um you know the the general purpose like EVM. Um but like Plasma and ARC you know are very clear like attempts at platform plays that I think um are less of a slam dunk but they've got you know a lot of money. So curve convex no. >> All right Zave same exercise. What do you think? For me, Ethereum, yes, is a platform. Salana, yes, is a platform.

Base, yes, is a platform. Hyperlquid, yes, is a platform in a more limited way. Unis swap is even more of a limited way than Hyperlquid, but I would actually maybe argue is a platform. Morpho is like maybe somewhat. A I was actually going to mention this before, so I'm happy it's in this table. What I'm finding interesting about Ave and I think that they're going to be the start of many many more to come is that AR was like a protocol and instead of like building a chain they're actually building a more like kind of fintechy app like an end userf facing app and I think they're doing that because they see that there's more value that's going to acrew there. So I would say a is not a platform but they're seeing more value at the sort of fintechy app layer and so that's a very interesting approach by

them which is cool. Uh, compound, good question. Maker, I I guess depends cuz I they kind of change different entities. So, that's a tough one. And then again, I agree with Miles where like obviously circle and arc and you know, plasma etc. I think another good example which we didn't talk about in this podcast though is actually tempo. Like Tempo is a platform for me and like they're probably one of the best platforms in in web two if you want to draw any analogy is like what a sick platform they've got and I think that they're going to be a force to be reckoned with when it comes to platforms and I might teach everyone web three a bit of a lesson about how to build a platform like they've got some

great talent there right now got some cool people building very differentiated apps so and I'm not sponsored by um temp or anything like that so it'll be interesting like that's going to be the first thing we see in crypto I think where web two comes to web three and you know maybe who knows if Google and maybe Amazon builds a chain and see if they how they go to platform in crypto. So >> yeah, I'm super interested to see um what Tempo decide how they want to position themselves and how focused they are on payments. You know, Stripe is like the platform for platform. um they it would you know you can see how they would just like flip a switch and uh anybody who has you know business has like a link account now some of that's running on tempo right um but are they

actually going to like fully try to compete with general purpose platforms including Ethereum do you see like a rollup centric roadmap there like they have all the all the folks >> build you know like I don't know >> lives good lord >> but yeah I I wouldn't be surprised if there are roll-ups tempo. That's what I would say. >> Okay, let me call attention to a couple of things. I Miles, I'll take the other side of that. So, chat GBT, the only true platform it said actually was Ethereum. Uh, Salana being almost I don't know why it's knocking it here product first before becoming a real platform. But, um, yeah, I guess the knock against bass is that it's so heavily shaped by Coinbase. There was a really interesting discussion we don't need to go into. use Google platform

leading with search as the key product and then you can you know use but it's so heavily influenced and curated there probably is a bit of a distinction there around the amount of control that gets exercised >> it's an aggregator >> basically everything else is transitioning to partial unis swap morpho a compound and then just USDC tether curve convex or nose I I had a something that I wanted to maybe an additional litmus test that Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos did not um did not talk about maybe this will be the theo platform litmus test but what happens if you get rugged and I this I thought was a really interesting because all you know Miles you and I have talked about this a ton in the past around hey like

if leverage is truly moving to the apps then when are we going to commoditize these pesky base layers and that just has not happened and I'm going to show you this chart of a here which is deployed on I think like 20ome chains and still to this day 80% % of their revenue comes from Ethereum and you know I I I think through in my head like there are some other again towards the stickiness and the value acrruel I think people might be wrong. I think we've overrotated, right? Like we went from fat protocols thesis where all the value is going to acrew these fat fatty knife fatty protocols. Uh and and now it's all up to the application and oh no look at these fees and I think a hypothetical to

walk through would be how easy would it be for a morpho or unis swap to move off their main chain uh eth main chain and I think the answer is really difficult. I don't think it would be easy almost at all and there have been no like unis swap is super interesting right they you might have looked at it and said look at all this liquidity on mainchain of course they're going to go to a cheaper chain but then they tried with uni you know a bunch of stuff uni v4 uni chain haven't been super successful at migrating that and I have a feeling if a or morpho were to were to move right because it might be tempting to say it doesn't matter the the chain that it's on. It's the app.

People have the relationship with Morpho or eventually the curators. Yeah. But in practice, I have a really hard time seeing Morpho ever fully move off of Ethereum and my So, when I play through this in my head and I think it's really interesting, Z, to hear you describe a viewing themselves more as an app and a managed product. Yeah. I I think that again maybe the analog here and I know Kamani just sat up a little bit straighter there is I think that there are some things and by the way this is not there's no way that I can know I'm just speculating and talking out loud here but I think a really relevant historical example here is Facebook where Facebook looked and I think everyone would have said wow look at the social graph I mean eventually billions of users twothirds of the world

is going to be look at the leverage they have well when there was a shift in the tech platform you saw where the leverage really resided which was on the mobile platforms iOS and Android and I think that it's very important to un I think one interesting heristic here is you can play these what ifs in your head how likely is it for applications to move off their main chain have they been successful has anyone been able to migrate their users has it I mean Ethereum has DeFi right that was the initial use case and that's where it still got product market fit salana is kind of the the exchange chain there's been I can't even think of a single example where a use case started on one chain and then migrated to another even if it was far more optimized for that. I can't think of a single example. So, I

don't know. Um, this wasn't really the point in conclusion >> besides for tempo. >> I don't think tempo's gonna Sorry. Uh, I think that tempo is going to run into some challenges because >> this is where I do think the neutrality is important here. And I love Stripe. I listen to that podcast. What's its face? the one with the they're drinking beers and Cheeky Pint and I like Cheeky Pint and I like Paradigm a lot. Um, you know, I think they're brilliant. I think they're gonna have a brand perception and yeah, I mean, maybe you know what, we could even do another podcast here on enterprise chains and where you see them playing out winning and losing. I think that'd be a fascinating thing to get into. But Visa was a pretty great historical analog here of something that

started out from a bank and then it got spun out because hey, if we're if there's going to be this network of payment aggregators, it needs to be neutral. we're just not going to go and and another example of this was maybe the polygon a layer if people you know that's I think still kind of alive and kicking and brilliant idea for all int I'm not a zk guy but from everything I've heard it's amazing tech but the brand issue is it doesn't come across as neutral even if they would treat it that way so I personally on the tempo front >> they're going to have a brand issue that I think is going to be really challenging >> I'm gonna take the I'm going to take the other side of that one Yeah, I got I got I got rollups and no brand issue. And

honestly with the agar thing like I mean I've noticed this too like um solving like the interop versus sovereignty trade-off that's not a wedge like that's a multiplayer later stage sort of you know nice property to have but like you know that al has to do with it on on the on that side and for like shared sequencers and all the things that just never really played out. Yeah, I I do think maybe one final thing to mention. We spoke about earlier before the show. Um, you know, Blockworks Research put out today the sort of Salana deck share versus trading terminal share. And from memory, don't quote me the numbers exactly, but the trading terminals are taking like maybe 70% plus of the fees versus like the underlying dexes on

chain. to you know maybe what that means and hyperlquid is going through something similar now with the builder codes and you know potentially some of those terminals or apps or whatever end up acrewing more value than hyperl itself you know maybe those protocols you're right Mike like are they already seeing in real time like they're not building their own chain anymore they're going one layer further and they're actually going closer to the end user and so there's still going to be value that accrudes to Ethereum as a platform so these platforms with these great protocols already exist like you're saying it's not either or great inferral or great apps it's like value acrew different things in different ways, but I think we're seeing for the first time now like a lot of value acrewing at the sort of like enduser layer. And so maybe if you're a protocol onchain like a DEX

or whatever it is or lending protocol trying to get in front of users like sooner rather than later I think is maybe going to be a trend that we we continue seeing as like they start taking more market share. But let's see what happens. >> Let's see what happens guys. I think we've got to wrap it here. This was yeah massively fun for me even on first go here and uh listeners would love any feedback that you have. We've got a a bell curve a left curve telegram so probably best way to drop feedback is hop in there and give give us all feedback and but yeah guys uh Zave Miles excited to do this with you guys. This was uh this was a ton of fun.

>> Super fun. If we uh if we ever get in the same we get in the same time zone maybe we can turn it into a cheeky pint, you know. [laughter] But we're working out of three three different time zones and we don't want to ruin Mike's day. So >> yeah, 10 a.m. 10 [laughter] a little worrisome potentially, but yeah. >> All right, guys. That was crazy. See you guys.