The Rollup TV: Monday, June 9th

Transcript

Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey.

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey. Hey.

Hey. Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] Hey hey hey.

[Music] And we have our friends Mad from Maven

11. We also have our good friend from Sky Rune and Lido from Socket. So, fun little DeFi episode today mostly uh with a bit of a mix across the board and quite a few headlines as of the last several uh weeks. Um even over the weekend into today uh there's been quite a bit. So, we're gonna try to run through these quick and then we're gonna get Run up here real quick. Once again, guys, thank you for being back here at Thrillup TV. just me today. Robbie is absent dealing with some personal stuff.

Um, but we keep it going. So, let's go. First up, we have the SEC is finally in talks for the market structural bill that's actually happening right now. Uh, one one of my favorite accounts to follow for this is Metalex, uh, a lawyer uh, type of of account. Um, they do a lot of, uh, kind of like DAO work. And Gabriel over there is actually, I believe, is on the ground right now. just trying to pull that up. And so basically what they're trying to do this week is essentially try to uh get first the Genius Act bill passed. They want to get that through. Um but they also want to figure out this market structure bill. Uh you know, a couple notable things uh that that Gabriel posted is

one that this hyperlid pure airdrop approach to avoid high FTV low float. This new bill makes it crystal clear that that is legal. Um, so you know, if you're a fan of that model, then that should be good for you. Uh, a couple other things that I think are important that are tied into this crypto foundation model. Uh, one is unlike the current over-the-counter OTC markets in SAFS and other token rights, this bill, if passed, requires that the exempt insider sales be reported even if they are occurring on the private market uh, prior to the systems maturity. basically prior to TGE. Uh this should this should essentially mean that the market will have more transparency into these kind of OTC deals which we frankly have seen

a lot of FUD about. Uh two, there is not complete prohibition on exempt insider sales prior to system maturity. Again, system maturity in this sense means like TGE. Um so insiders can sell again uh but it's just limited to 15% of their holdings in a given year and 50% in the aggregate total. Uh, it's actually far more generous than current security laws. We've been playing in a world, I suppose, in crypto where, well, there hasn't really been too many laws. Um, couple other things for you. There's a huge political point here, which is these autonomous systems, quote unquote, are special because they are autonomous and therefore this bill doesn't provide a massive loophole to the existing securities laws. Um, you know, we kind

of have to be we have to be under the understanding that this bill, if passed, will um allow for major fundraising and for insiders, investors to cash out before, again, these systems are autonomous, which in the lens of like of protocols is when the token launches. Um, and and you know, when the when the protocol goes live. So, there's quite a few different things right now happening. They're actually live streaming this on Twitter on a couple of people's accounts. Uh I'm not sure exactly what how or when this is going to get solved. It could get passed today. Uh the other interesting thing on the political side is we are potentially going to see the Genius Act get passed this week. We had Cynth Cynthia Lemons recently, I I believe it was Saturday or

Friday, um pushing for it, saying that she is going to be advocating to get that over the line this week, which would be very very bullish for the stable coin arena. Um so that was uh that was that's happening right now. this second. Uh you guys can tune in on Twitter. I'm sure there's uh some live tweets and streams. Um and yeah, that's the market structure bill. Overall, excited for more regulatory clarity. Unsure the ramifications in the immediate term of this bill, but we'll be watching closely. And uh my take is just more general kind of dos and don'ts in the space is important. You know, for example, our fund it's it's um it's offshore and it's you know, we we had to do all these entity dealings and such because in order to get into a lot of

these early stage investments over the last two years, you had to have a offshore fund outside of the US because not because there was a lot of scrutiny, but just because the rules weren't really clear. And so I think that having more clear rules is going to benefit everybody even if the rules uh impose potentially a bit more stricter uh you know regulation. So up next we have the markets and media convergence. One of the most interesting things that I think is happening more broadly in the world which is that markets and media are colliding at an insane rate. Obviously we have our tickers here. Um but before we get into that plasma had a massive sell out today of their round. People were complaining. I think they did 250 million in the first like two minutes before the tweet went out and then uh

they raised the limits to 500 and then that was sold out in 5 minutes. one user spent $100,000 to in gas, which is, you know, transaction fees, uh, to deposit 10 million. My take on this is not that necessarily that ICOs are back. This is an interesting model. Also, side note, I think people are fading pump.f fund. I think um, you know, I I spoke to a couple uh, investors here in the city over the weekend and and late last week and they're trying to allocate serious amount of capital into the ICO. I know it's at four billion dollars FTV. Um, but I think people are kind of misreading into the value of that. Uh, so that's kind of like aside the point.

Plasma though, um, successful launch, I think they're going to end up raising this to being around two billion. Um, general take here is that there is demand on the sidelines for new tokens that are fundamentally strong. Uh, I think we're seeing way too much of like this Bitcoin dominance only, that alts are dead, even if you want to call them alts. Um, and so I think this was a strong sign for the demand also for stablecoin exposure. Circle is up 4x from its IPO price. I think a lot of institutional investors. I read a tweet today from from the Dragonfly guys and they were saying that um I think it was Rob from Dragonfly was saying that he's been getting calls from non-crypto native uh investors per se or institutionals and they're asking about how to get stable coin exposure. I think

Circle is one example and I think clearly plasma is another. Uh there's other chains, but I think that general trend is only going to accelerate. Um and it's funny, I had Yano on the pod uh and on the TV last week, and we talked about how stable coins have drastically improved the perception of the space. And I think more broadly, if you're looking for stable coin exposure, there's only a couple vehicles to do so. That's why Plasma's uh ICO today was super hot. Again, disclosure, our fund invested in the earlier round of Plasma. Um it was it was at a lower valuation than than than the current. Uh this this current one is at the round that founders fund came in at uh which was 500 million. Um and I think that this thing is going to do really really well.

But of course uh it's my book. So you know that's the disclosure. All right. Uh last one before we get run on. I think we have again I was talking about this convergence between markets and media. And this to me is uh particularly compelling. Um you know I we've seen this this idea of markets and media colliding for a while. Uh and so as of as of recent uh X and Poly Market have came out to make a announcement that um they will be uh collaborating to be that Poly Market will become the official prediction market of X. Again this was like uh last Friday I believe uh this news dropped. I just think generally that this is a massive win for the crypto space as a whole. I think this is a consensus take. Um I think the the

more kind of intricate second order thinking is that uh actually the world is heading into this more and more financialized state. Uh I I kind of call it like the degenification of the world in some capacity, right? Where like everything is becoming financialized. You'll be able to bet on a lot of things, right? We have Kaido, we have noise, we have these mind share markets. Poly market is this uh prediction market. And so my general take is that if you can long in whatever capacity this trend of like the f the financialization of uh the of the the world and also just the gambling culture of the western world I I think if you can find ways to long that idea that that you you'll do well. Um unfortunately we we didn't get a slot in

noise but I think that that's going to do well. Um and and I think that a couple others will do quite well uh in that realm. But the larger the larger kind of idea here with Poly Market and X is actually more around uh this this idea around crypto adoption that I think people have struggled with which is that we've been kind of pushing this idea of blockchains and crypto in people's faces right you know you got to do it you know you have to have a wall you have to have a ch you have to get on the chain all this stuff. What Poly Market has done really well is that it's done a good enough job of breaking into the broader mind share of the of the you know sports world of the politics world of the pop culture and obuscating the the kind of

crypto aspect behind it. And so when you look at at what Poly Market's really doing it's it's bringing tens of thousands of users and transaction volume directly to Polygon which is where uh the application is is held on and uh it's onboarding a ton of new people to the space. X just happens to be where all the news is nowadays as well as all the crypto users. And so this just kind of seems like a natural fit. Um so media and markets generally I I believe will continue to collide and coalesce. It's just a matter of of how can you find the opportunity to like long that combination and then also on like that more uh degenification gamification of the space as well uh and

just of the broader world as as a whole. I've seen some really interesting uh early stage stuff uh that is kind of doing this right um a and I'm excited to kind of see how how this broader trend plays out. Um, so that's the markets and media segment. Um, and and those are our main couple topics for the day. Um, we're just going to take a quick break here as I as I pull up something that I've been looking for. Hey guys, thank you for bearing with us today. Robbie will be back very soon. Uh, we have four awesome guests coming up. Uh, I believe we're waiting for Rune now to join up. Um, and we will be ready to go. Um so Run is a the original founder of Maker. Um and he he

is one of the larger kind of early stage early minds of DeFi along with the Stanis and the Canes of the world. Uh originally known for Maker Dow as many of you guys know uh which is now transition into Sky and USDS. Uh USDS has has pushed over $8 billion in their trading va or in their stable coin um total supply and we're going to talk to him about that. I think he's just running a bit behind here. [Music] Um all right. All right, guys. Let's have a look at what the markets are doing today. Uh BTC looks great. 10844. or we usually play the game with Rob of what

is the price going to be at the end of the stream. Uh I'm going to take higher today 108470. Uh we'll see where we end up. Um I know that uh people that are watching the the markets are excited. Um I think ETH is poised to actually come back and do quite well. So I'm excited about that. Of course, Hyperliquid's being one of the faster horses. Miad is right with his S&P, which is hilarious to me. Um you see a lot of videos from that. and stocks are pushing to new highs, which is which is uh I I think a bit surprising for a lot of people uh who who who thought that the macro game was going to be uh you know not in in their favor. So, we'll see kind of how that plays out and uh we'll get Run up here in a sec, guys.

Man, that plasma sale was insane. Jeez. Oh my gosh. This is this is crazy. So, the Paraguin president got hacked on their Twitter and apparently they've been hacked to to make it seem that uh BTC is going to be legal tender. I'm going to throw this up here. Um and and and it's obviously not going to be legal tender, which is which is crazy. Um and so this this guy uh his name is President I don't know, President something here. He gets his account hacked saying that it's legal tender and he posts a Santiago Pñena posts a

Bitcoin address with a call to action saying investors your investment today will determine the scale of this roll out. Secure your stake in Bitcoin now and post a Bitcoin address. That's insane. Um and and obviously should not be sending any money there. I would certainly not do that. Um, this is just this is just something else. All right, guys. As we wait for Rune, uh, I think he's just running a bit behind. Uh, waiting to get hear of him. Uh, yeah, I just want to talk kind of more broadly about where I think

we're at. Uh, so we had a we had a pretty good um call with um Yano last week on the TV and he mentioned that he thinks that we are in stage four of the cycle. Uh which I think is going to be particularly alarming for people who are not really ready uh for what's to come. And so you know with that said I I don't know it's just hard to tell when Jordy from Seleni that we had on the pod and uh Felix to macro people have been extremely bearish for the summer. Um, but you know, the these people keep raising billions to uh, you know, participate in Bitcoin.

Like there's another $300 million Bitcoin uh, raise today and that was that was it. It just seems par for the course now. Uh, which is just really, really interesting. So, all right, we're gonna give it a couple seconds. Um, and I think Run's gonna join. I just I just can't believe like we're just seeing so much demand for these Bitcoin treasuries and we're like the cycle already in the second half and it's just it's insane. So, I got some questions today for Rune around the rebrand, around Sky, um, around USDS to 8 billion in circulation, their agent

framework, what's going on with the savings rate on optimism and uni chain. Um, and just some interesting Bitcoin consensus takes. also got to ask him about Circle, what he thinks about that. Um he's been having some interesting tweets about Bitcoin's uh uh security model and more. Run put out a tweet four days ago

saying, "What if Elon defects to China?" Oh my goodness, that's so funny. All right, guys. We're gonna get Run up here momentarily. Uh, and then we should be good to go smoothly for the rest of the stream. Uh just a bit of uh backend stuff here. Should be no problem. [Music]

Cool. All right, we'll get him up here now. Here we go. And let's get him in the back end meet. And Vun is up. We're going to get him set up real quick in the back. There he is. Run, how are you, man? Hey, I'm great. Good to see you, man. Um, lot going on today. And, um, we got the stable coin super cycle, man. How are you? Yeah. Yeah, I'm great.

Uh, there's so much happening and, uh, I think, uh, the space is really coming back after, um, yeah, just the ups and downs that we always have to deal with in crypto. Yeah, man. I I got to start this off and just ask what your thoughts are on Circle. Um did you expect the IPO to come out of the uh out of the gun out of Forex here and trading at over 130? Um you know, do you think that the entire industry has has been caught off guard? What what's your take there? Yeah, I mean it's it's it's huge for sure. I mean, it also I I think it makes sense actually in the sense that it's always been clear to me that stable coins are just the most interesting and most powerful use case of crypto. So,

I'm not surprised that you have this kind of blue chip uh project just getting massively hyped and and just seeing so much interest. And really there's just that type of like I don't know what to call it like sort of Tesla like um FOMO right happening where a lot of people they just want to have some kind of stable coin exposure. And of course this is this is great for a project like Sky which is also offering a stable coin but really like a sort of I guess a much more advanced version of this. uh eventually I think a lot of that interest and understanding of why uh not just stable coins but DeFi in general why that is so powerful that's going to really benefit the whole space I think. Yeah man. Yeah. I I keep seeing

Vance from uh framework pushing sky when when we see big news from circle and things because it's like the it is the onchain uh you know version of something like like a circle like a tether but just in in a much more defi native way and I think one thing that that you guys have have really kind of pushed for in the last 12 to 18 months has been this these these uh permanent protocol revenues uh stable coin payouts uh and really just just trying to create a robust way to grow USDS. Um, you know, and I I remember being at the Sky launch party, I think, in Singapore. Um, was it Singapore last year? Um, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And people were, you know, kind of questioning about the brand and this and that, but now it's clear, right? Eight billion dollars or and growing of of of total stable coin um, you know, supply and and a very very unique flywheel. Um, so I'm, you know, I'm just wondering where we where the kind of revenue and the growth of USDS is is coming from primarily and where you see a lot of that actual activity coming from, which types of of users uh, and what type of activity uh, have you been seeing for USDS and for Sky?

So the thing that's um that's interesting with Sky business model is there's really there is there's USDS SUSDS right which is the savings version of USDS this is like the new um the kind of the flagship product of sky that was introduced yeah almost a year ago at this point and at this stage uh the I think most of them the demand for this is coming from like like institutional users like very large scale users Um, and it's actually quite a different user base than what I would call sort of the OG die user, right? which is kind of like where the that's where the network effect of Sky comes from which is the right like the the original die stable

coin uh that we launched with with as maker like 10 years ago at this point which grew to like a a quite a large size and got its own like unique grassroots um like deep DeFi audience and user base but then what happened is that user base is just like there it's kind of a natural limit to the extremely sort of deep dive like ultra advanced and sort of in the weeds defy users, right? Which a lot of them are really into using die, but for for a regular person and for an institution, uh as soon as it it doesn't have US USD in the name, basically they get confused, right? So that was a reason we're kind of branching out and evolving beyond um just like the original iteration of the

product with USDS with SQUSDS and then with a lot of the new features that are coming with Sky that are just meant to kind of um you know ultimately just finish off the like finish sort of fleshing out uh the concept of a decentralized stable coin managed by a decentralized protocol using governance and using uh advanced and transparent um control mechanisms to just make it the best possible product for the user. Yeah. And so you mentioned S USDS and it's now live on optimism and uni chain which I think is kind of collectively getting a a strong uh kind of foothold on this you know defy specific use case

chain being uni chain and of course optimism. Um I'm curious I if you see SUSDS and USDS in general being primarily meant for this institutional crowd or you know per perhaps this non you know this this different crowd than just die users if if there's a specific chain ecosystem or uh place where you want to be most active right is it is it uni chain is it optimism is it ethereum mainet um kind of how are you thinking about the the the evolution of SUSDS with regards to being kind of multi-chain uh and being in a place where the core people that you want to use the the product get the easiest

access to it. Sure. I mean I think actually in the end um the fundamental like the most important target user of USDS and SUSDS is actually um like to sort of really uh put it on the edge is actually mercenary capital right it's so it's like institutions and just like this completely um hyperrational uh totally sort of illloyal uh user right that's just looking for where can I get the best possible risk adjusted return for the next, you know, like couple of blocks, you know, and then I'll I'll I'll rethink it after a couple of blocks and

maybe I'll I'll switch to something else, right? And uh so ultimately, I think this is where like this is the type of DeFi and even just general finance user that is going to be the most scalable in the long run. Uh so the entire sky ecosystem and it's kind of protocol backing uh USDS is fully optimized for this type of of user that is just like basically you have to offer the absolute best risk adjusted return or they're going to they're going to jump ship right and then the thing is I mean uh if you optimize I mean and that's the other thing is like if you optimize your product to cater to the pickiest most sort of hard to please

possible user uh then you know it's also going going to be a really good fit for every other type of user, right? So, in my opinion, like a regular retail uh crypto user that's looking for a good stable coin, there's no reason why they should be left with an inferior product compared to somebody that is using like AI assisted robo advisor or something to get the best possible uh product for them, right? Um, so, uh, that's kind of I mean that's a part of the the the kind of the strategy and the philosophy around the system is that once you have that once you really the product itself, you've made it as good as it possibly can be. Uh, it's just very well suited to then be spread out to more audiences and and sort of target more

demographics. Um, the question is then how do you then actually do that? Uh and in the case of Sky uh all of these questions of like how do you achieve X Y or Z they're always answered by uh the use of the Sky agent framework right so the fact that Sky isn't just it's not just a stable coin protocol it's an entire ecosystem of um these tokenized agents actually that kind of split up in a sense or subdivide the system in system into different uh areas of interest and sort of areas of focus and then let individual communities um basically specialize in what they think what they believe is is the the

kind of the big opportunity for for for basically bringing USDS to market right so even if USDS at its core is optimized for this like hyperrational mercenary capital uh then if somebody thinks well this is going to be a great product for you know financial inclusion in South America they can go and do that and they can be the ones bringing USDS to the South American market. And if they do that, there's actually a way for them to make a really good um profit and and and sustain a solid business model from basically creating that connection and and and basically acting at this as that distribution layer. Yeah. I mean, I I saw you guys uh put out SP Beam about a month ago or so, and this kind of ties

into the uh Sky agent framework and and the stars, right? Where um you know, there's this automated rate automated rate setter per day, and you can kind of have these updates to optimize for your holders based on liquidity, rates, etc. Are these are these um are these rates adjusted by agents? Is that how they're actually being adjusted? like is an agent analyzing a framework and then being like okay we need to adjust based on a given set of parameters. So uh all of these components they're still just getting in place. So actually the SP also referred to as the rate setter is like it was implemented yeah like I don't know a couple months ago or something. It has uh not really been

fully activated yet in the sense that it's not it's not operational in its kind of final um its final form. And so the reason for that is actually because of the lack of active um star agents as they're called which are like the kind of the the workhorse of the sky ecosystem or these things called the stars which are basically like the business entities that um that yeah that basically focus on different uh like niche u markets or or business strategies and then they in some sense they kind of compete with each other.

They cooperate with each other. They synergize with each other but they also compete in order to for instance uh drive the rates up or down. So basically what happens when you have multiple stars uh like in live operation which is coming really soon I mean that's going to be the case within like at the latest would be two months from now there will be like multiple of these uh actively deploying the collateral backing USDS and then uh like simultaneously cooperating and synergizing while also competing to basically deploy the the collateral in the most efficient possible way. And through that process of the stars

basically going out and trying to generate more profits for themselves by basically better managing the collateral portfolio of USDs, they're going to influence the rates. So let's say that a star like it it um it uh finds a way to deploy into a new type of real world asset, right? New type of like Trafi asset that has a really good risk adjusted return. So um you can deploy a lot of of um of collateral into it without needing too much of like a risk buffer, right? So so every time a star deploys into something uh it needs to put up like a little bit of of um basically risk capital like it needs to take a little bit of that risk itself and and if something goes wrong the star takes the loss first before anything

before Sky starts to be at risk of taking losses and even USDS holders, right? And so if a star then finds an opportunity that gives a pretty good yield and doesn't require too much of this extra risk capital on top then it can start to really like borrow large scale uh out of sky right uh and then deploy into this new asset and then the thing is what's going to happen is as you as this star like generates more and more USDs and basically increases the supply of USDS in the market if you don't have enough buyers of this new USDS right because there has to be a user somewhere that actually wants to hold it um then the system will just automatically use the rate setter to increase the rates. And so this way as Sky is basically able to automatically

through this decentralized process that relies on multiple stars competing with each other as Sky gets access to better risk adjusted return out in the marketplace. It will naturally offer a better risk adjusted return to it users. So this is where as a user you don't have to think too much about this stuff. you can just you can just uh sit back and the the savings rate that you get from holding USGS is going to be it's going to be the best possible savings rate that the market can source and also it's going to always be um properly risk adjusted right so so the risk doesn't change like even if the rate goes up that doesn't mean that now suddenly there's bigger risk of everything exploding uh if if the if the rate goes up that's because an actual better risk

adjusted return has been found of course this is not like I mean this is all managed by Sky Core uh implementing uh quite advanced um uh risk management frameworks and of course today I mean they're still relatively new uh they're actually based on uh banking regulation right so they're based on what's called Barcel which is roughly how banks themselves are are regulated but just you know more efficient and not so uh you know real time and and just doesn't have all the drawbacks that Trefi has But fundamentally, it's like a it's a conservative classic approach to how do you manage risk when when you're trying to, you know, prioritize that users

should not be at risk of losing the money. Like that that is just 1,000% the most important objective, right? And then once you have made completely sure that people aren't going to be losing the money, then you can start to deploy into interesting opportunities and figure out how to generate this uh very attractive riskadjusted return. Yeah. And and I think one of the one of the best parts about the mechanism which you've designed to build USDS and then obviously this core focus on the security parameters is around what what kind of got us all excited about DeFi outside of the you know the openness and the permissionlessness and the censorship resistance and and and the key ideas is this idea to kind of like stack these things on top of each other

and build different yield opportunities or different uh kind of protocol relationships um together. And so when you're looking out into the DeFi landscape today, what are some of the the the projects which you've been most impressed with with regards to their ability to compose well with others? Um, you know, or or even uh compose within Sky and USDS. Uh I don't I mean I think the really big ones is like um you know, ABA, Athena, Moro.

Uh there's also like I mean there's there's something there like Maple uh Fluid or some and Pendle like these are all examples of these like OG well-established D5 protocols that uh USDS holders are now uh you know basically able to tap into just by holding SUSDS. Uh and this is all managed through Spark the first star, right? So Sky just basically delegates um control of the collateral of I mean or rather a big portion of the collateral portfolio is delegated to Spark and then Spark is is taking care of uh interoperating with all these various DeFi protocols out there and then actually I mean because

of the magic of DeFi because of money legos because of interoperability it's possible for Spark to actually safely do this without getting stuck in the kind Dow process hell that is usually what ends up happening in this kind of situation, right? Because you have these sort of several layers where like Sky is using its own sort of governance uh cycles to just build the overall framework and then basically say look this is what the overall framework looks like. you can sort of play around within that but you can't break these rules right you can't take more risk than the framework allows you to take but sky doesn't like prescribe or really understand how to then make a good business uh once you are sort of um you

know as long as as long as you're not creating tail risk doesn't really care beyond that and just it's just it's a hard problem to figure out how to be make a profitable business out of this but then in Spark you have a a team and you have people that are you know very focused on this question then right of like okay once I once I know that whatever I do it's within the sort of the safety parameters of of of the risk framework now my number one priority is generating profits right like um tapping into new opportunities and moving really fast so you get this kind of like the best of both worlds where you have a secure framework keeping people's money safe but you have stars that are able to then actually be innovative and move fast and generate good profits and

sustain their business models And then it gets even better when you get multiple of them, right? Then you get a really really dynamic free market, right? Where you have multiple stars. They'll be competing with each other. They'll be learning from each other. And they'll also be synergizing and sort of sharing like sharing the total scale of the whole ecosystem. So I think it's going to be really really exciting to see how uh Sky is going to be everywhere, right? It's really through the stars. It's going to be tapping into every single um interesting every single value creating protocol out there. Yeah, everyone. One last one for you. As we sit here today, I believe stable coin total supply or market cap is around 250 to 60 billion. Um, with the with what I

would believe to be the road to 1.5 trillion uh over the next 18 months to two years, how do you how do you see that kind of race playing out? or maybe better asked what is your plan for for USDS and Sky to capture a large part of that growth in the coming two years. So at this stage uh the entire strategy is to focus on evolving the ecosystem of stars right and really promote the builders that that are growing these stars.

Um, so I think it's kind of I mean I would say I would argue like it's kind of like a it's a sort of exponential bet in the sense that if the star ecosystem really takes off and the amount of you could say decentralized institutionalized knowledge that exists in uh the star ecosystem, right? So whenever somebody comes and they create a new star, it's super easy for them because they can copy all of the knowledge and all of the learnings from all the prior stars, right? And not to mention the technology, right, which is maybe the most important part that you have this like huge ready to go uh ultra seccure DeFi technology stack, right?

That you can just use right out the gate that gives you gives you leverage. It gives you governance. Uh it gives you like um access to a huge contributor ecosystem of of with sort of a reputation and vetting and uh and and and kind of feedback mechanisms for how to how to get things done and how to pay contributors fairly to do work for you. Um and so yeah, if that takes off, then like I said, I mean the ultimate customer of stable coins is the hyperrational capital. Yeah. Um because the same thing that Sky is doing and the stars are doing, right, which is we are kind of it's like an it's like an AI arms race, right? like everybody that's deploying uh money, I mean actually most are probably still just busy doing

paperwork, but increasingly uh it's clear that if you want to have a chance at actually delivering a competitive risk adjusted return for your customers, you have to deploy, you know, um increasingly sophisticated uh you know, datadriven AI models and and just like automated solutions to this right. Um and uh but but it it also works on the other side. I mean that the users themselves they also have they also have access to tools that basically help them how to get the best possible risk adjusted return. So over time that's what I'm basically expecting that like even a completely random person that's

used some like phone wallet to manage the money that phone wallet is going to have some like halfdeent open source AI. Yeah. Right. that's going to help them not pick a stable coin that takes a 1% cut. It's going to pick the stable coin that gives them, you know, a really strong free market driven yield like SUSDs does, right? And then also that takes an extremely low spread, right? So that's the other thing with Sky that it sort of knows right out of the gate. It's not a good idea to try to take a big cut from the customer, right? You got to take got to get used to taking a very thin slice.

Run, I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining today. um ve very very impressed from the day one of of being active in in DeFi on my side in late 2019 into early 2020 and being part of that kind of crowd and then all the way up till now. So uh really appreciate your time uh and looking forward to watching USDS grow alongside Sky as the stable coin expansion continues. I think this sector is is one of the hottest now for good reason. So excited to kind of see this continue to play out. Thanks for having Thanks. See you soon, man. All right, up next we got Leo, good friend from back in the day, uh, running

crypto testers. Uh, we were doing some of the earliest DeFi content together. Uh, really interested to get his take on where we are now. I'm sure he's going to have some uh some interesting thoughts around uh where this is this space has has came as well as what he's doing with socket and more. Um and yeah, run is uh is quite deep in the DeFi trenches as you guys can tell. Um very much so interested in the development of stable coins more broadly um and just trying to do it in the right way. And so I thought that was the key takeaway from that conversation.

Yo Andy, how's it going, man? We got Leo in the building. What's up, man? Doing well. How how are you doing, man? Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, markets are hot right now. Excited to be here. I was just uh I was just giving you the intro as one of the the other core DeFi educators back in the early 2020, late 2019. Actually, you were uh you were you were before us at Defy Slate. You guys were doing crypto content way back when. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Actually, I think I was along with Bankless. I was one of the first to like do content on like DeFi and Ethereum and so on. And then at some point I stopped. I I got more involved on the operational side of

you know running crypto projects. But uh yeah, it's true. I started with uh content. Yeah. Yeah man. I mean it kind of felt like DeFi like kind of pulled back for a while there in terms of mind share in terms of yield opportunities in the 22 23 bare market. Um but now like quite the resurgence with institutional interest ras stable coins of course we just had run on talking about Sky and USDS obviously the OG maker uh stuff there. So yeah, I mean it's definitely like DeFi is coming back in a huge way.

Uh just far different than what you know perhaps you and I were used to back in the day. For sure. I mean the the thing is like the like 2021 2022 proved like these DeFi primitives, right? Like AMMs, lending protocols, all of these things. Then it's true that like 2022, like end of 2022, 2023 was like a bare market, but that's a good stress test for DeFi protocols, right? because like liquidation cascades and all of these things, you kind of see what what is actually like yeah sound and and uh secure and and sustainable and so on.

And now we we know that and now we have actually quality assets that are coming on chain with RWAS and you can sort of just plug them into these AMMs, these lending protocols, these interest derivative uh swap protocols like Pendle, what whatever it is, right? But uh what was always missing for a second leg of of a DeFi bull market was actually bringing you know quality pristine assets uh on chain which which is now happening. Uh I'm super excited about that. Actually I was like a year ago I was or even before that I was I was one of the first people or only people to to talk about like RWAs and you know people were saying like uh like you know who wants to trade stocks on chain and like all of these things and

and you know you know they were saying like synthetics had stocks in like 2021 or something. I was like, you know, with like transaction fees on on synthetics of like, you know, $150 per swap, like tiny liquidity, you know, broken UX, like obviously, you know, no one wanted to trade that. And plus, like those stocks were actually not real stocks. They were like synth, right? Like these synthetic assets. So they were not you were not even like guaranteed that you could actually like you know swap out of the trade at at like the right uh price and so on. And so yeah like it's it's really nice to see now you know the tide shifting and and uh RWA slowly becoming like a a consensus view. Um and yeah

lots of exciting projects popping up. Yeah, man. I agree. And I think there's also just a lot happening on chain uh as well, right? And you put out a pretty interesting tweet uh the other day with regards to to product feedback um you know using Bungie in this case. I'm actually just more curious like like what what is your you know what are your favorite onchain applications today? Like what are you what what are you using? Where are you getting yields? Like like what are some of your top uh couple onchain apps? Yeah, I don't think that my answer will like be, you know, surprise anyone or something. I think my like top three are probably Athena, uh, Fluid, and probably Poly Market. Um, Athena, I just think

it's amazing what they did tokenizing the basis trade, which, you know, on average like yields more than the T bill rate by Yeah. like 2x or 3x most of the time. And that has just unleashed, you know, it just has like increased yield in DeFi across the board. Um, and and it's just amazing. So, I found this quite a lot. Um, but then Fluid is is really my my like passion project. Uh, it's actually the first time that I really feel like I'm I'm a part of a project, like part of the community without actually, you know, being part of the core team. Really love that project. I'll just explain in in a nutshell what they do.

basically like what what they've really enabled what is completely unique is uh turning debt into liquidity right so um you have for example like this thing called smart debt uh which is like USDC USDT smart debt instead of just borrowing a single asset like USCT you borrow UST USDC uh smart debt and that essentially means that your debt becomes a productive asset which is completely mind-blowing right like for the first time your your your loan will actually kind of um generate yield and and pay off your your loan essentially. Um and and so that's how they've become like the second largest deck on Ethereum, you

know, uh they flipped curve in terms of volume. Um especially on on like stable swap pools and it's just the cheapest way to the cheapest place to borrow um stables. So you just need to change a tiny thing. instead of borrowing USDT, you just borrow USDT, USDC. Um, and you still can like withdraw the money and like spend it on whatever, like you know, go go yield farm with it. But it just means that your your borrow cost instead of spending like 5% on your loan, it'll be like 2% or sometimes even 0%. In the best cases, you even get like, you know, paid to borrow, which is crazy. Uh, and so that that is completely, you know, mind-blowing stuff like real engineering innovation. And

um, yeah, I love that project. Poly Market. I mean, I think that's like it's a consumer app, so I don't really need to explain it, but it's it's crazy how that one has like broken into the mainstream, you know, like uh it's being cited by all the newspapers. And I I just love like, you know, having an opinion and having like putting my money where my mouth is. So, I'm I'm regularly like, you know, putting money on on whatever market and yeah, having a lot of fun on chain for sure. Yeah, man. Yeah. I feel like um while while all of this is happening in terms of RWAs institutions as you mentioned different yields new primitives fluid poly market there's also been a like a opposite force almost in the market which is you know uh the EF has has been pushing for

uh you know kind of not constricting the treasury necessarily but but you know formalizing their program right and I think across the board across different foundations and teams you see a bit of a restriction in in uh non Bitcoin asset prices, right? A lot of that kind of uh market has been dry for some time, which I think the sentiment is very on the far side of the spectrum of that never coming back uh when it does feel like, you know, we're probably closer to that coming back than we have been in the longest time. Um but these are like kind of like contradicting forces in in a way. And you know, I'm curious a as of the research that you've done into the EF

and just kind of like what what you're thinking if you were running the the EF Treasury, um you know, what would you do as a result of this of this of this previous uh Treasury policy? Um you know, how would you improve the way that the EF is spending money? It's a great question. Well, first of all, I will note that like I I do think it's it's a very tough thing to do, you know, as a as a credibly credibly neutral L1 foundation to, you know, start kind of like using D5 protocols because by definition, you'll like cherry pick, right? Like you'll pick winners and so on and and you know, they've already done it by, you know, using a and I understand I understand

why, right? Like a is better tested. it has like you know ma massive liquidity and so on but but in a way I I I know because this is how CT operates you'll always have people that are not happy about this and they they'll start you know turning this into fun essentially right what's what started as actually like a positive thing so super super difficult um line to walk and they need to walk it very carefully but um yeah I think they've outlined a bit of their like strategy in in in the recent blog post and I think they they definitely want to on the side of like you know security and and running very conservative strategy strategies but I do think uh it would be cool in the next step to kind of like show appreciation

for some of the uh other lending protocols right these money markets I think like you know oiler moro fluid they've all done like amazing um over the last you know few years and I I think it would be a nice like token of appreciation to show them like yeah um we see this and we like it and any other team that uh does like you know innovates um and and works hard like will get a similar kind of um gesture and um you know obviously like yeah some of these lending protocols also have like better terms and so on so it makes also sense from from a rational perspective but more importantly than all of this I think what I would do um is I would fund something like uh an Ethereum um focused version of alliance

dow right like a very like consumerfocused startup incubator and actually if I if I wasn't working at socket I would probably like I would step forward you just build it yourself yeah honestly I would ask you for funding like you know you don't need much like honestly 10 20 million uh and you know write small checks but most importantly really help young founders with like hands-on support um I think this is really what's needed right like right now Ethereum was always this yeah incredibly neutral neutral place but also a hard place for uh founders to kind of make it and and get discovered and so on. That's kind of what tools have now taken on their job on them, you know, like based and stuff. They

incubate apps. But like what I would really do is is yeah, like uh build this incubator, provide small like CeCe into promising consumer startups that build on Ethereum or L2s and and really help them with everything go to market, right? Because that's what what I feel like what founders really want in this day and age. Um, but yeah. So, so, so this is this is really what what I would do. And I've seen some cool stuff. For example, just the other day I saw this project pop up called Ethereumism. I don't know if you've seen it. Ethereumism, but Ethereumism. Yeah, I'll send you a link if you want, but essentially um I have no affiliation by the way, but they are and I saw some like Ethereum OGs had also funded it and so on, but basically they've realized

that like Ethereum needed more marketing and especially what drives attention right now is these like short short clips and so on. And so they are they have like this kind of like open marketplace where any like creator can come and um edit videos, right? They they'll have a format. So, for example, like uh the recent speech of of Vivvec from Etherealize at the Congress, uh that's going to be like the canonical piece of content and then anyone can like come in and edit that into make it like, you know, very Tik Toky and and with like sound clips and animations and so on and the best will kind of win $1,000 or something. And and I've seen there's like great submissions already.

I think these are all like cool grassroot uh responses to to this marketing uh problem that that the Ethereum has and and overall I think like there's amazing you know signs right now across the Ethereum ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah. And I think within Ethereum and then within L2s and then more broadly um we we're also getting closer and closer to solving a lot of the interop problems which I think a lot of the the naysayers have been essentially saying that you know we wouldn't be able to solve uh in some capacity. Uh- which I think is I don't know it it's it's like the L2 road map worked. um it it did what it's it's supposed to do, but we are still stuck in this state of um

kind of figuring out how to play bring it all together. Um you know, you you've been working quite closely on Bungie and and socket as of the last, I don't know, about year or so, maybe year and a half. What's the state of things from your perspective in this interop world? Um, I know that you guys recently brought Bungie over to be an open marketplace rather than being an aggregator. So, you may have some thoughts there. Um, just kind of give me your rundown of of the state of uh multi-chain and kind of where you guys are placing most of your focus. Right. Right. Yeah, you're exactly right. Like we we launched Bungeie Marketplace and like why we launched this, right? like um we you know Bungeie started off as an aggregator and we kind

of uh you know we were aggregating manually as a core team. We're integrating each bridge, you know, across Stargate, you know, native bridges, all of these things across all the chains and so on. And we do that manually and and and we realize this is not scalable, right? Because we're we're entering a day and age with where like interop is getting complex. There's a there's a million chains, right? And and so really what we did, we we copied uh the Amazon playbook, right? like if if I don't know if you read the Amazon like Jeff Beos's biography that explains how he built the company but essentially they started uh by you know selling books and they identified books as just being like a very good product to to

sell uh online um because physical bookstores are like capacity constrained and so what they did really is is they aggregated all or like you know the 10 largest book suppliers in the US and when an user order came in they would just route it to you know any of those 10 book suppliers that would have that book and then the the supplier would send the book to to the user right but very quickly Amazon realized like we actually don't have you know all the books and you know integrating all of these book suppliers and the inventory systems it's a it's a pain in the ass there's not 10 there's a million right especially if we want to cover like every book and there's lots of niche ones and so on right and and so what they did is they opened their marketplace and and suddenly they didn't

have to integrate the book surprise anymore. But the book suppliers, all of them could just permissionlessly join the marketplace, right? And suddenly they were not constrained to books anymore, but they could sell like, you know, garden tools and uh electronics and whatever. And so we did exactly the same thing, but but for crosschain liquidity. So we essentially have built like a marketplace where a user signs an order and then we, you know, we have these agents that can sort of like uh come in and and fill the order of the user. And we don't care about how that is done, right? It can be using like active liquidity. This is what's often referred to as fillers, you know, like you know, a lot of these intent bridges work with like fillers, market makers

that have active capital. But we have also like agents that don't need any capital to do what they what what they want to do. For example, they can just like um you know integrate because we haven't integrated for example, let's say wormhole nTs. You're familiar with them, right? like a specific token standard. We haven't as a core team, we didn't get around to like integrating it, but one of those agents might have, right? And and they can then like just submit a proof um in in our marketplace system and say like and then they get they win the order and and you know they they get to fill it for the user and the same. So this is super extensible. We also have like these kind of um actors that like we call solvers. They don't

have any capital either. they just route in order to you know the best decks. um you know because that also is a is a huge kind of uh you know difficult problem to solve like how how to best route a a swap across you know dexes because there's so many dexes you know it's comp complex algorithms and what we've really realized is like um when you outsource a problem to the market and make it permissionless very very good actors will uh step up and and uh take on the challenge right you've seen that in MV for example, um or even like in in in the security space with audits like things like Canina like you know you you just put the thing there on the

internet and suddenly there's like you know seven billion people some of which are insanely smart uh some of which have capital some of which don't that can like do it right and um so this is this is this is how we think we can you know have similar to Amazon you know had the best user experience for consumers we think we'll have the best uh you know user experience for crosschain swaps and, you know, lowest latency, best prices, highest coverage, like all of these things, right? And and really what Bungee now is is is really the same way that Amazon kind of guarantees that when you order something from a seller on Amazon, you'll get your you'll get your your your your product. That's the same thing that we guarantee, right? We

guarantee that you get your funds on the other chain. and and we make sure you know with our like settlement uh contracts and and like proof system and all of that we make sure that you know this is trustless from a user perspective and um yeah super excited about this. I think this is the this is the direction because the the the space is getting so fragmented. You need something that can just like wrap everything and and consume everything and and offer it in a in a seamless um you know opt like way to form factor to users and yeah obviously like you know we have all these wallet partners like Rabby, Coinbase and so on. They just you know they just integrate our our protocol and and then users get you know just get to swap it within within a

second or two in their wallets. And so this this will get us a lot closer to you know a seamless uh yeah interrup world that that you just you know mentioned. Yeah man. Yeah I mean I'm looking forward to seeing that as well as the evolution of further natural language models to interact onchain was something that I'm excited about more on the front end for users. So lot I appreciate your time today man running low here. So um we'll have to run this back in six months and see where you guys are at. See where see where the market's doing. Uh, always a pleasure, man.

Take care, man. Thanks, man. Cheers, man. Always good to speak to some of the OGs in the in the DeFi education space as well as just broadly in the uh interrupt space trying to make this thing uh a bit more seamless and put together. Up next, we have Mads, good friend of mine from Maven, just raised a hundred million dollar round. Um, MADS is leading a lot of the charge on the research side. Uh, one of the more prominent researchers in the space and I just found a amazing tweet to start this conversation off with that he's not ready for. So, this should be hilarious. Let's let's get him up here.

Hey, Mads. How are you man? I'm good. Good to see you again, Andy. Good to see you, sir. I'll see you in Can probably in what, a couple weeks as well? Yeah, I think it's what, three weeks or something? It's quite soon. Yes, sir. It is the tweet that I was talking about, Mads, um, is one from Shia Wang, uh, which I think you'll actually resonate quite deeply with, but I'm curious what you think. He tweets today, 20 minutes ago, L1 monetary premium will likely compress to zero in the coming years, and the process probably already started one to two years ago. I don't know if you saw in any of the uh Hib and uh Gwart podcast about the L1 conversation uh but curious your take on that tweet from Ciao.

Yeah, I mean S reaction is I agree with them but also I think if you look at most of the uh successful applications of uh of today all of them wants to become their one. Hypol is a good example. I could see a pump at fun chain down the line as well. Um, so and even like the big sort of considering DeFi is today's uh theme, even like the big DeFi giants of of past ages and and some of them are still quite large today also looked into getting their own chain at some point. Um, so I' I'd say that I'd agree with it, but also there's a reason why all applications want to control the underlying infrastructure and I think

that's just a matter of how uh value occurs. Um, so that it's a it's a good point and I do agree with him. Yeah, man. I mean I think there's this very populist um like infra towards apps trend and um kind of you know I don't know however you want to assess revenue to no revenue or kind of you know I called it a meta and got destroyed on Twitter for it. Um but I think it's I think it's quite funny because it's like okay we have apps that want to uh basically as as you say have this opinionated block space or kind of have this kind of full stack uh execution of you know or control and then and then you look at some of the best apps today

that people are raving about as you said Hyperlid is a good example a and it's a perfect example of that kind of full stack uh kind of all the way from the top to the bottom stack. though. I I think what Chiao is probably mostly speaking towards is is like the undifferiated L1 kind of like the copype DeFi ecosystem ones. Um but yeah, I don't know. I it it's just hard to see how like like I think also he's he's kind of pushing on like the monetary premium thing of like oh some of these things will have like that money status like that you know Jordy from Seleni calls it like community money uh kind of how Bitcoin does. Um but I'm I don't know. I'm not sure that that that's really a conversation that's going on anymore either. Well, I I mean I put it

this way. Pumpy might have made 750 million dollars in Salana by being just an app on Salana, but if they had been Salana itself, they would have made billions instead of 750. Not sure what they would they would do with that, but um hey, I mean they would have made more money in that case. So I I do agree with him like on differentiating all ones. I think we're seeing this quite clearly in terms of what people are excited about. like I'm not excited about the another EVM L1 um where the apps will be exactly the same and it doesn't matter that you've built an L1 that is you know has concurrency so like parallel par parallelism if nobody builds apps that take advantage of that parallelism then like it is going to be the same what we

have on on Ethereum or the L2s right so I think if we do see like net new applications on those net new L1's then maybe it'll be a different conversation but from what I have seen in terms of like steals coming by that has not really been the case at all. Um but I I do see like applications that are creating a lot of me. So this is mostly trading applications. Pump the funds good example. They realize they're giving so much fees away to radium um that they build their own AMM, right? And then the next step is like okay, how do we take advantage of arbitrators that are extracting me? Well, if we can control ordering or like be the the auctioneer in that ordering process,

then we can extract that. and curing that's obviously um Salana validators themselves plus jetto um with a jetto router um so I that would be the next natural step but also you do give away a hell of a lot of um composibility which is fine hyperlid's case because it's a per exchange you just deposit USDC and then you go go wild um but it also gets harder to get users right I need that you need to bridge arbitrage and then bridge the hyperlquid which might stump some people um from actually doing Yeah. So with that in mind, kind of this I think you called it opinionated applications or opinionated applications that have their own kind of like verticalized stack. I is is this the a core party of mavens or your personal

core thesis? And maybe even better ask like how has your how is your like idea around the types of of founders or investable uh projects kind of shifted in the last six to nine months as we've seen this kind of flip in sentiment with regards to types of of of of companies and and also kind of more renewed focus on I mean more than ever just blatantly product market fit revenue and like returning value back to shareholders like it are you are you analyzing things any differently? Is your thesis has your thesis developed uh in in a new way that is uh you know you know different from mid2024 kind of where you at with

regards to like how you're thinking about investable ideas. Yeah, I a lot to unpack there. I'd say first yeah it is that opinionated application thing. Um, I think what we saw in 2019 to 2021, and I think that's when most people should have stopped investing in in infrastructure was that we saw sort of the building blocks for what is allowing us to build these new applications and build this new stuff on top of the the info that we built. I think a lot of people, ourselves included, got caught up in that info funding um theme and just kept doing that for years after we should probably have stopped doing so. Um so I think there have been a clear sort of okay do we really need a fifth restaking protocol uh a fifth EVM L1 with slight changes that doesn't seem to be the case

right what we do need is like okay I want to use net new applications I want to use net new financial instruments um I want to trade uh CME futures on chain I want to go uh go trade options although I don't think anybody's trading options on on chain so that's maybe one thing we have yet to and also fixed yield that has to take off either. So, but there's still a lot of cool stuff that we could see. Um, so there I think there's been a clear both from our own perspective but also from other people the people that I speak to there's been a clear desire to do less infrastructure investments and I think with our new fund three we haven't really done much infrastructure investments at all. If we do any infra, it's mostly like extensions of Ethereum or extensions of Sana and the rest of it is is really

applications on chains or even offchain in some cases or things that we see integrations that will take off, right? So whether that be hyperlquid, Salana or Ethereum, I think those are things we're all excited about. Um and then it's up to us to sort of find interesting applications there. However, like in a lot of those cases, there are kind of they're constrained in what they can do. And that's also why I spent a lot of that time writing about these opinionated applications and using hyper liquid as the example there. Um I think pumped funers will probably go down this route at some point. Um but we'll see how much like staying power Salana has.

If they can keep these massive applications on them, great. And they're kind of trying to do this with uh implementing multi concurrent proposers on Salana. So they do want to allow you to like control order ranking to some extent. So maybe that will keep some people around um and allow more sort of customization as application. Yeah. I mean you also put a a paper about uh the the kind of multi- aent AI uh uh is it is it MCP um or MPC? So there those two right there context protocol AI. I wrote about the proposers. So multi concurrent propos but it's the same uh same shortening.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, now on the on the pump.f fun uh side of things, the like the current CT sentiment is very bearish. It's very uh it's very like overvalued. Uh they're going to extract another bill, but I've spoken to quite a few people here in the city the last week or so who are like allocating capital and and they find it actually to be quite interesting and appealing from a from a a investment perspective. what's your uh you know what's your take from MADS not not necessarily from Maven as to kind of like where you're at with this uh pump out fund ICO right so I guess I'll start with saying like a lot of the the negatives around it is saying

that they're not making any money money anymore that's just out outright false yes they're not making the top of Trump fees but that was only for half a month they're still making a hell of a lot of money um and if you were to extrapolate that out to like what hyper liquid makes and then look at it from like an annual occurring revenue then like $4 billion seems pretty cheap. Um and I think another bonus to this is if you look at the the plasma ICO today on Sonar um I think they raised 250 million with way more demand than that in extremely short period of time. Um and while Tesma is talked about on Twitter, it's nowhere not as much talked about as pumped that

fund. Pumped that fund is alongside Hyperlquid and Binance are the most talked about applications in crypto and 4 billion for that um seems pretty uh like low in that sense. Um so like I I would say that I think there's a lot of hype around them trying to raise that amount of money. I think if you look at the plasma race, I don't think that'll be an issue. Um and if you look at the revenue they're making it's quite impressive. They obviously have a lot of hate and I think they have structured this entire setup correctly to make sure that they don't get um more hate but at least they have always taken the brunch brunt of that force in terms of hate. I think when they come out with like and make it public what they're going to do and how they're going to you know

redistribute whatever they might end up doing. I do think you'll see a different sort of um reaction and I do think some people have sort of pointed this out on on CC um that like it doesn't seem too crazy. I do get it like okay they sold 750 million and so okay maybe they should have uh given that back to the users but like okay if they want to scale quickly then like obviously you need money to to do that right um and then I think in terms of like longterm and I can see some people obviously worried about that in terms of long-term um I think they really have to double down on they're trying to double down on the streaming I think they have to double down specifically in the kind of front end application the Robin Hood of crypto the issue is that right now you

have to fight against shop and hood um which I think is a completely different ball game and and will be quite difficult but it's interesting to see if they can actually uh do that. Yeah, that that seems to be somewhat of the uh consensus opinion outside of the actual reasoning as to why like from people that are actually looking to allocate size into into this and then yeah, Twitter seems to be like uh kind of saying that that pump is way overvalued and that it's a problem. So look, we'll see what happens. Um it's going to be a very interesting uh couple of days when when that launches. Yeah. On the plasma note, I mean our funded plasma, so kind of uh disclosure there. But when I look at at the demand for that all just today with

500 million filled, you know, I saw some uh discourse around whether it's like ICOs are back or, you know, if there's just this latent demand of capital wanting to allocate to, you know, more quality fundamental plays. But then you also look at circle uh up 4x from the IPO and you kind of can draw a line here that I think there's a lot of demand for for you know exposure to the stable coin uh boom you could say. Um you know I'm curious if you guys have done any investing into this kind of sector or you know if there's ways that you're thinking about getting exposure to the stable coin boom if you have thoughts on plasma. kind of curious about this general uh realm here because I think a lot of people are looking at their book

right now inside of crypto and out and wondering how to get exposure to stable coins. Just curious if that's a part of your thesis or kind of how much you're considering that personally or with Maven. Yeah, I mean it's something we're looking at of course um and I think if you were in crypto and I've used crypto for a long time I think it would be very clear why stable coins are great. Uh a lot of that reason is because blockchains are great. Um, we have obviously done investments. Some of them are not public yet. Um, some of them are in terms of the past. But I think if you look at where most stable coins are either used or deployed today, uh, I mean either you'd buy Ethereum or you'd buy Tron. Um, you'd buy Ethereum if you believe that like stable coins are going

to be used specifically in like DeFi onchain. Uh, and Ethereum is king here. So like if you want to get exposure on that and we talked about L1's earlier like some of that value although not as good as onron because there it's actually activity of when being sent um about and that obviously agrees to the to the L1 that's greater but I fear mostly DeFi is still the the main thing there. Um in terms of like plasma I see a lot of people like saying why do we need a new chain just to send um transactions. I think that fails to sort of realize that like a lot of these companies that are utilizing stable coins are not necessarily onchain. Um they just have some provider they they tap into and then everything is handled

on chain, right? And if the the biggest stable coin in the world goes out and says, "Yo, this is the the chain that all of our USD has gone on. You should just plug in here and we'll solve everything for you." and then we don't have to be reliant on on Tron and we can say whatever we want about Tron in terms of security issues. Um but like we'll do this just for stable coins. I I do see the value in that, but I also see sort of the anger and saying why don't we not change just for stable coins. Well, if you're the the biggest issuer, then yeah. Um and then I think you could also it's the easiest way to get sort of exposure to stable coins is probably also other D5 protocols. Yeah. Yeah, whether that's yield um stable coins like Resolve or Athena, other types of

loops um vaults obviously going to see a lot of traction as well. And then these default applications are very easy to take a small fee on um which obviously means you'll acute value from the growth of stable coins itself. Yeah, I mean I think it it's left a lot of people in a funny spot where they're like, well, you know, I've been using stable coins for quite a while and been, you know, invested into uh using onchain applications and such, but you know, if you missed any of the Ethereum or kind of Salana waves, then uh it's it's been hard to get any upside to stable coins.

I think people are looking for that. Like when I post about plasma, they're like, "How do we get this?" or if you post about you know different stable coin uh you know trends they want to figure out how to get exposure. So I mean circle is also uh you know pushing that forward and very clearly bullish. Um, but even outside of stable coins, the last thing that I have for you is I I think that there's this larger trend happening and perhaps it's because the sentiment around tokens and crypto is quite bad right now, but perhaps it's just more so because of the regulatory regime being more favorable in that uh like two separate things are happening.

One is companies like Gemini and others are like going to IPO, which is like okay, let's go IPO on the traditional stock market. um and let's try to have a have a you know a liquidity event in that fashion. The other thing that I think is like more kind of straddling but will probably catch up is this idea of of like onchain IPOs or like companies that are perhaps not necessarily big enough, right? I think you know somewhere around like $500 million per year in revenue or something like that to even think about doing an an IPO or to qualify or it's some very large nine figure amount per year. Um but smaller companies perhaps like medium-sized wanting to you know instead launch a you know onchain IPO and launch

a token uh in that in that regard. Uh do you see um either of these trends as particularly compelling or uh you know do do either of these trends answer any given kind of question with regards to uh you know crypto staying power investors should think about uh kind of the exit opportunities of their investments. Um, you know, I'm just curious. I've heard both, obviously, we all heard about Circle and Gemini, but I heard more about this like kind of onchain IPO thing last like two, three weeks with regards to internet capital markets, which I know that you've been excited about. So, just curious like how you could see that uh developing or any kind of conclusions to tie from that.

Yeah, good question. Um, have answers to both. I think we were joking in the chat about hey we have some portfolio companies that should just launch a stock and IPO instead of uh launching a token because it lends itself better to that especially if you're doing stuff that is attractive to institutional investors which circle are doing and Gemini yes to some extent I think I've been out competed by others but there's clear demand for exposure to stable coins circle great example so we I could see others doing this and it makes sense especially if you can't with regulatory scrutiny and just general like where your demand is probably going to be why it doesn't make sense to launch a token.

In Circle's case, it makes a lot of sense to them to go IPO. They're more of a traditional company. I will say though in terms of like smaller companies and we have a lot of those in crypto that are nowhere near the size of institutional sort of size companies that institutional investor would be interested in, there's a great answer to this. It's called uh and you might think I'm going to say Launchcoin, but I'll get to that later. It's called HIP3 and it's on Hyperlquid. Um, and hopefully in the future it'll allow us to launch uh in theory stocks on chain. Um, so like you could go IPO and then you know have most of your trading happening on chain. Um, I think that would be super cool to see. I will also say like there is deep value in like helping people launch their own token

and then acrewing some of that trading value but then you're still just the the only thing that's really happening here is like okay you're you're just gambling and then some of that value might end up of the gambling end up in your pockets. Um I I do see more and more applications starting to say okay either we do buybacks which is a big thing in the past um by the way it's not a new thing to buy back of a token and that was often looked down upon as like this is too simple why are you just buying back you want to hold up hold everything um I think that's fine if if they don't plan on like selling all of it and it's pretty bad if like high liquid you know single market sells 75% of the supply in a couple of years um but like it's a

good way to just acrude value to the token there but there's buy Sure. And the other one is like becoming a security and like giving fees that you're making to the token. That's easier now with regulatory scrutiny becoming less of an issue. I could also see that changing uh you know in three or four years if Trump isn't around. Um which I think according to US law he's not allowed to but we'll see what he figures out. Um I I will say though like I can see a lot of these web two and this something I've seen in real time on the the mi side. I'm seeing a lot of non-crypto like application developers coming into crypto and be like okay I'm going to build something here and I'm going to build it here because it's way eased me to actually not extract value but create value either for himself the

company or the people that want to have a exposure to the company and that's a lot easier with a token um so I I am actually quite excited because we're seeing I think in often case better application developers and like crypto has been an issue for a long time we had no application developers this is a cyberpunk decentralized network uh place for developers to be and those developers not the best at building a good application. I think that's slowly changing and half the people that we're seeing now on the info side are actually new um sort of founders and I think that's probably going to have some lasting effects in a year or two down the line when you see these things start to come out and I'm pretty excited about that to be honest.

Yeah, I saw um I I saw a a kind of staggering uh change in the types of founders that were coming to the space at the A16Z uh crypto uh event in the city like I think it was like last week and uh in that there was people from you know Stripe, traditional finance, PayPal, these types um and they were all basically pushing uh for different types of like in RWA based uh ideas or um just the quality of th of the people that were in in those rooms compared to like some of the founders that you would see uh previously has been has been quite

surprising. And then just on the like internet capital markets front with launchcoin people are are excited about it and it just feels like it's democratizing access and also just allowing smaller uh types of companies to to enter the space. You know, I I think that there's a world where Only Fans could uh could launch a coin rather than an IPO. Well, maybe you'll get an AI only fans that takes over Only Fans. That could also be a possibility. Um and it might come out at some point. I I will say though on the the launchcoin thing, I think a lot of the price action now um not to get too much into price action, but we all look at the markets.

I think a lot of that is also a reflection of the news about pump fun. Um meaning it probably is getting some reprising and more attention from that. Um, I still think we may just see like very cool stuff being launched by by people on Launch Grind. A lot of it is, you know, slightly red flaggy. Um, but hopefully that that changes. Uh, and I do think Pasag is sort of a relatively serious sort of web two founder that's now trying his hand at doing something in crypto, which is cool to see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's gotten a bit a bit of flack. We'll we'll put it that way. But Matt, it's a pleasure to see you, man. Uh, we'll see you in Ken. Uh, congrats on the recent fund raise. Uh, it was good hanging in the city as well.

And um, yeah, man. We'll we'll we'll be on the beach soon. It's a cloudy day here in the city, so I'm I'm ready to get out. Sounds good, man. I'll I'll see you in France. Cheers, buddy. All righty. Up next, we've got David, uh, good friend of ours on the show. We've ran a couple Joker race competitions with him. Uh he's got some thoughts on persuasion markets kind of next evolution of prediction markets. Uh he's ran some interesting uh competitions as of late. We'll talk to him about that. Talk to him about the state of uh the degenification of the of the world. See what he thinks about that. Uh and more. So excited to chat to David. Let's get him up here in a sec.

Um yeah, good good refreshing convo with with Mads. there's uh one of my uh closer kind of VC friends if you will who has a lot of a lot of interesting insights around kind of like the broader sphere of things but then we can also go technical I had quite a few technical questions but couldn't help but but to understand what he thought about pumpf fun uh and some of these other opportunities in front of us now so um so our last segment of the day folks we got David in the building he's probably calling in from like two miles away from me here in the city um So looking forward to having him on uh and talking about Joe Grace. Cool.

He's coming on up. Cool. Persuasion markets. Beautiful. Persuasion becoming the highest form of capital. Yo, what's up? Hello. Hello. How are you, man? How you doing? Wow, this is a sick setup we got here. Are are you calling in from uh Appreciate it? Are you calling in from two miles away from me in Brooklyn or what? I'm actually right outside your window uh looking in, but I've been there all night. So, yeah.

Uh nice. Nice. Yeah. Nice. Well, it's it's good to see you in the fleshman. Uh you you've been on some on a bit of a tear with your uh new ideiations. got a lot of questions for you about what let's go what you're thinking about here. Um I wanted to start with like a framing of how I'm thinking about the broader kind of like like macro trend of of society if you will which is that I think there's just like this consistent like uh increasing speculative desire and like also like this like financialization and I'm calling like the degenification of a lot of things.

Um and I think a lot of people in our community are trying to figure out how to long that. So like how does one long that like and what are your thoughts around this trend? Yeah. Yeah. I I I I I think there's like kind of two trends going on, right, that are are kind of related to each other. And I'm spitballing and this is the first time I've had this thought, so so bear with me. Um but you know, if I had to find it's almost like a DNA strand of like these two these two strands that are kind of circling each other and and one is financialization and the other is vibes, right? the the viification of everything I think is like also just one of like the dominant trends of our time, right? And I think it's like I I was an

hour ago looking at this interview of this per you know this like tech supporter who switched from Bernie to Trump and everyone is scandalized like how could you switch from Bernie to Trump and guy's like well vibes I don't know they both like they both seem to me like anti-institution kind of guys who say whatever the they feel like. So I like that you know and everyone's like no you're not supposed to choose politics based on that. You're supposed to choose it based on policy. And he's like, "Yeah, I know policy, but like I'm into vibes." And and this is like really hard for an older generation, right, to wrap their head around, right, to be like, "No, the vibeification of everything is like very real." And it's like, how is Trump picking, you know, his cabinet members? It's like I had a friend of mine who's like, you know, he

picks the people who would be good on a reality TV show because he's picking by vibes, right? And he's like, he has a vibe government, right? Um, and so I think this is like like you look at these two things and then you think, okay, well, how do they intersect? Like like what's the intersection of like social capital winning out, you know, um, with virality on the internet and then financial capital being, you know, democratized, you know, accessible to anyone as well. And and the question is like really how do you long vibes, right? Like like what what can you do to long vibes? And I think memecoins are like part of the reason memecoins took off is like memecoins are a way to like long vibes, right? Um, and they're exciting like prediction markets kind of a way to long vibes, right? Um, and so I

think like what we're working on, what I'm calling persuasion markets, like yeah, it's also I think in in that kind of trend of like how do you how do you long the vibes? Yeah. No, seriously. because I think like like it sounds silly, but like it it makes sense if you actually are I don't know if it's in the trenches is is the right way to put it or if you're just been paying attention to uh kind of like the way that that things have been have been you know transitioning. Um yeah, so you put this this kind of formula speculation plus social consensus is these two kind of like uh uh different pieces and maybe you could just like find the through line there for us as to like how that how that

comes comes together like where you're seeing that intersection or or is that just kind of what you described? Well, I I I think like in crypto um like crypto is very divided, right? Um, you'll meet the best people in the space you've ever met. You'll meet the worst people. You'll meet the smartest people. You'll meet the dumbest, right? Um, but but I think like the main divide that almost everyone notes in, you know, oh, sorry, my my camera is giving out on me, but you can still hear me. Um, the the main it'll come back in a sec hopefully. uh the the main kind of like formulation I think that people talk about a lot is like of dgens um versus what we might call like I don't know governance people like social consensus people right so I think as like speculation and social

consensus are like really the two sides of crypto and so like the social consensus people are like the ones who kind of are like winning out in like 2021 right um and I think the DJ people are the ones who like really win out in like 2024 right um and the thing is like either one like has it has its pros, has its cons, but I I'm not totally convinced either one really works on its own. Like I think if you're just pure DGEN, you're just Ponzi's and like those eventually will collapse, right? You you go up, you go down. Sorry about my camera here. Um if you're like pure social consensus, then like you build this beautiful tool, but there's no actual like revenue model for it, right?

There's no way for you to like actually make any money off of it. You're maybe doing B2B SAS like at best, right? um off of that. And so I think the question is like okay, how do you get like the longevity sustainability excitement community building, positive values of social consensus with the actual ability to use crypto rails to let people earn money of the speculation, right? Um and it's like they each kind of solve each other's problems like like you need to be able to make money, but there's no been no real sustainable way to do that um like with any app, right? um on the one side and then like on the other side like you need people to be able to actually like build community, have fun, but there's been no way for people to do that that they actually make any money. Um and so it's like it's

really kind of fascinating to see how much these two sides hate each other and I'm kind of like no actually bring them together like like I think if you combine these two things and a good example of this is like polyarket, right? Like like poly market and prediction markets are like those are literally speculation plus social consensus and they are lasting, right? Like poly market continues just to kind of dominate because it's like really given a a way for people to be able to bet on like things they care about and things they want to see happen in the world and like you know things they're personally involved in and they get to long the vibes right so yeah a simpler way of saying like speculation is longing simpler way of like saying socialist is vibes it's just long longing the vibes yeah man yeah no okay

I appreciate that explanation because it's uh two separate things but like are very in like very kind of rooted in in crypto 's nature at least in its current state. Um, okay. So, kind of zooming out from the from the core thesis more on like the actual uh kind of like more like product or like thought process side. I put out a tweet today that was kind of, you know, elaborating on my current mental model around how I'm looking at like early stage investing and thinking about how some of these things are going to, you know, the old saying acrue value, right? It's kind of a meme, but but it's funny. And so my my first point was around uh just like the top of the funnel, highest level of user relationship and that wallets are like

getting this notable stickiness amongst a ton of apps that now like where where application builders first thought of wallets as like a necessary evil, they're now looking at them as almost like a competitor or like almost as like a way that that they should maybe think about siphoning off that's some of that mind share or you know user share. Um, so kind of like walk us through your uh every app doubles as a wallet idea and like yeah, you know, how how either joke race or how you plan to see apps, you know, or how you're thinking about apps going out and like whether it's siphoning off some of the market share of something like a MetaMask or a Phantom or Rabi or just creating their own kind of gap uh to bring new users directly from wherever they are uh onto

their wallet onto their platform. Yeah. Yeah. Th this this is I could get pretty deep into technical conversation on this one. So, you know, there's kind of two models for wallets right now and then I'll talk about a third that also is is kind of on the the front lines and and one is these like self-s sovereign, you know, wallets, right? Like uh that are standalone and interact with any DAP. So, MetaMask, Rabby, etc., right, is one model. The other model is an embedded wallet, right? an embedded wallet like lives in the app and so you can open the app, you have no crypto experience. You can just like add money and then the app is the wallet essentially. Um, and but there's issues, right? Like there there's there's I'd say two big issues with using embedded wallets instead of using like MetaMask, Ravi, etc. One is

that the main audience for crypto apps is cryptonative users who already have a wallet that they want to access. And so if you're asking them to like go set up a new wallet through your app, that's a lot of friction on a UX level. And so like a lot of times u embedded wallets are presented to us as like this panacea that like you know automatically lets anyone on board. But actually they create more friction for your your native user base which is like you know cryptonative users, right? Yeah. I think that's the first issue. The other issue is that you as the app don't own um the user anymore. The embedded wallet owns the user, right? And so like you start using an embedded wallet like fully and it the user like belongs to them. If they ever want to charge you like 100x

what they're charging you like you you pay that or else your users are getting locked out. And if essentially you're back in like the app store model, right? It's like you're dependent on this like app store that's going to take a giant cut of your revenue potentially. Um and it's the one that actually is like giving you um you know is controlling the user, right? Um and and controls the financial rails. And so So, for a long time I was like very anti- embedded wallet. I um I will say like we use parah um for anyone who like wants to create a new wallet and that's really nice like like par is really great because they integrate through rainbow kit and so we're not dependent on them like you don't have to create a par wallet but if you've never used crypto before we give you that option

and you can create it through parah par also gives like really nice ways for people to offboard their funds so like if anything ever happens like they can still retrieve their funds and take it out. Um, and we've built ways for people to do that on the site, too. And so, I think like we have this nice happy medium where if you're a crypto native user, you can come and you can use MetaMask grabby, but if you are like you've never used crypto before, we can actually like, you know, um, put you through a flow to create your first wallet all entirely in the app without ever downloading anything, going anywhere else, being able to fund it. We also use Coinbase Pay um, which we introduced a month ago and like that's really great. You just add a debit card and like literally add cash. Um, it's

also really nice because we're live on like 30 chains and so, um, if you have money on one chain and not on the other, like instead of bridging, you could literally just put in your debit card by $5 and like be good to go also. And so it can be and and you can do that regardless of what wallet you're in. You could do that if you're MetaMask, but still totally do that on the site. So, I'm really kind of like proud of like how modular we've built this. It's quite different, I think, from how other apps have have developed it. I will say like the long-term, you know, ultimate solution is smart wallets. Like like that's the third option that I was alluding to before. Like smart wallets are really cool because like you know you can embed them within your app.

Like you can still essentially like have control over the user um and uh have this like protection and they they have control over their own funds like through you without ever leaving the app. The problem is that there is no smart wallet that really is like built across different chains. Um they're really chain specific um because of domain issues. So that still feels like a kind of future solution. Um but for now I'm I'm really happy with how we built this with like PAR is great. Um they're just really nice at being able to like let you get all the advantages of embedded wallet without the kind of user lock in um that you traditionally incur. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you so like is there a world where then you go and you make like a joke race like downloadable wallet on the app store or

like a downloadable like or like a like get me get me from like okay my user uses my embedded wallet to like no no no like like I advertise on like Tik Tok and then my user goes and like gets my app that is but it's not my app it's like it's my wallet that then directly gets them to my app. like is that a is that a flow that builders should be thinking about or so it it it's pretty interesting to think about because like um traditionally in app building you wanted to like launch in the app store for a bunch of reasons like one is distribution right that they can like feature you showcase you there another is animations which actually is fairly close to being a solved problem like you can basically do a lot of mobile animations outside of the app store now

with a lot of the kits that even have been developed in like the past 18 months and we haven't implemented a lot of those yet but we're looking closely at them and when you say animations is that like a is that like a graphics like React Native like like React Native like you know button animations where you tap something and it comes, you know, and like hearts come out. Um got you know like like there's just a feeling you might sometimes have when you're like interacting with something on a mobile site versus like in the app, you know, where it feels more vibrant. That feeling is the animation, right? Like that's the feeling of like you're tap it and the hearts come out at you and there's confetti and stuff. So, it's just like there there's a bunch, you know, you're hovering over it and it

like changes colors and like a character jumps across the screen at you like like a lot of the stuff has traditionally been very hard to do in browser. It's much easier to do in in a React Native app, right, on the app store. But that's changing like quite a bit. Um, and then I think like uh the third advantage is notifications, right? Like if you can download it to your phone then then you can receive notifications, but actually that's semisolved if you get people to save it to your home screen. Yeah. Um, and so there it's interesting because like distribution from the app store is like the one major advantage and I don't know that that's worth 30% plus the need to like have a whole separate codebase for your app where you're both deploying it on a desktop

mobile version and then you're also deploying it in React Native. So yeah, I I think it's something that is like worth thinking about, especially as Apple is losing these legal battles and and people can claim it, but like I'm not totally convinced that like the app store is the necessity that a lot of other app builders do. A simple example of this is like you think about like what are the really successful apps from the past 10 years. Um basically they're all from crypto. None of them went to the app store. Like if you think about like a consumer app that's actually been really successful to the app store like you know be real Tik Tok like 2016 2017 are bad last times and the exception to that is is chat EPT and Chach EPT launched for like a full six months before it even hit the app store like

people were just using it on their phone and on the website basically you know and on the website and like that chatb is also interesting from a design perspective because it's literally like just text like it's one of the most raw basic kind of apps you'll encounter and that like actually fits a lot trends which is like people as as technology gets more hi-fi people like more lowfi kind of things. Yeah. Um and so like a nostalgic feel almost. Just simplicity. Yeah. Accessibility, right? Like Yeah. Um and so um I'm I'm I'm watching that, but I I wouldn't say that I I am like as excited I think as some other app builders understandably are at the potential of being able to launch through the app store. Um being

able to avoid the app. I've launched apps, multiple apps through the app store in the past and like being dependent on Apple is just like again part of the point of crypto is to lower your dependencies, right? So that's my whole point with the wallets. I think that's also my point with the app store is like the more we can lower our dependencies and have sovereignty like that's the whole point of why we're using crypto as our financial rails and and that's the closer we want to get to that because dependencies are what you over the company. It's like every time cloud fair is down, you know, like that's going to cause massive issues for our users and we're going to get blamed for it. So like just decreasing dependencies has been a major major I think you know part of how we build. Um couple kind of like off-the

cuff ones for you. What what are some of your favorite apps in the space today in in crypto? Um I mean the winner the winners are winners for a reason, right? like Hyperliquid and and Poly Market and Pump Fun. Like those are kind of the top three I feel like for a reason. Um and I would define it as like you know something to do with social consensus. Yeah, me too. Um, but like um there's also just like you know the UX of like Hyperlquid is just I am aed by it and I know that it comes with a lot of tradeoffs uh that I'm not thrilled by but like um some of the stuff they've done you know uh with like I guess signing on

your behalf um uh with the gas abstraction is just like it's it's really smooth and and Hyperlid's interesting because it's like it looks terrible like it looks like but it the UI is awful, but the UX is amazing, right? Like the UX of like actually being able to just interact with it seamlessly and get it to do what you want is gorgeous, right? And so I think like that's something I think about a lot too, which is like a lot of the consumer apps in the space like I think in my mind like really overindex on UI and they really underindex on UX. Like they really create this beautiful visual experience that's gorgeous, but it doesn't do anything that you want it to do and you don't understand. Yeah, that's so true actually.

Um, yeah. And like, uh, and so I'm trying to I will always prioritize UX over UI. Like I think that's far more important. Um, when you have a bottom line, and the bottom line is people want to make money, right? Um, if you could bring any two or three people from CT to join the Joke Race team, who would you who would you choose? Who would you poach? Oh my god. Who Who would I get to join the Joke Race team from CT? Uh, Andy, we need you. We gota We got to get you. Yeah. Yeah. Number one. Yeah. You're the greatest chiller I've ever seen in my life. Uh I learned from you.

I'm like, damn, man. Um, marketing. Get Andy. Like, this is this is it. Um, and then David Hoffman because it would just be funny to have the two of you, I think. Like, yeah, if I have you, I have to have David Hoffman. Hilarious. Um, last one for you. What What have been some of the best recent joke race uh competitions and uh contests? And what was the uh what was your take on the Salonverse ETH events thing as well? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so I I'll actually talk up some some ones that are coming up. I think I'm allowed to do that. Uh although you know things can change and it's you know it's up to them. But um Avalanche I believe has a has a big

community showdown and story has a giant story protocol has a giant demo day. I'm really excited for those. I think like the idea that um we just introduced this feature called vote and earn where you can show up if you vote on a winner you earn and so now there's incentive to show up like for something like a demo day that story is doing it's really exciting because people have incentive to actually go watch the demo day and figure out what's the best project because if they can vote on that they can earn money right um and so it creates this whole like almost marketing incentive loop for people to engage um there and using the financial incentives as like an engagement tool but then it also incentivizes them to go share those projects with other people and be like, hey, come vote for this so that it wins.

And I think it, you know, it should help with virality and it lets them signal that there supports these projects. So like, you know, I one question that that I think haunts the space and haunts me is like if you lose money, like did you have a good time? Like, you know, is this still something you would use again, right? Um, and you know, there's some gambler fallacies that work really well for stuff like memecoins where like people lose money and they have a terrible time, but they still come back because they want to gain it back, you know. Uh, and like that kind of works, but like I would like I would really like, you know, eventually like NFTs works like that for a while and eventually it dies and altcoins work like that for a while and then some of them die, some of them live on. Um, I

would really like something where it's like people had a fun time like like they like met other people, socialized, shared this thing, learned about projects they were interested in and then and then come back. Um uh and and that the financial piece is like, you know, it's a magnifier for the emotional experience that they're having. Yeah. Um so so that's stuff I'm really excited for. Um Dria is doing this like AI competition of like AI bots will be battling each other and if you vote on the winner, it steals the other one's treasure. Um and so you want to try to vote on the winner, not just so you can earn directly from the contest, but so you can be part of it. And I think I think the winner at the end of it will be like minted as a meme coin. And so you're

also like providing liquidity for like um this thing to go viral eventually. So like that kind of I'm really excited for. Uh you know speculation plus social consensus, right? Um what was the other question? Soul events as we kind of come to a wrap here. Yeah. What was the end? What was the result there? I mean I take the stance that the the none of it matters like uh like you know ETH is ETH is like obviously has a lot of issues with focus. Selena does not. Um, but like ETH issues with focus also mean that you can like really find the long tale of subcultures of like people who share your beliefs and are like interesting to you. And it's like yeah, if Ethereum is having like a thousand different events at one moment, then

you're guaranteed that one of those is going to be something that's really relevant to you, right? Whereas like Salana will only have one event and it'll really centralize. And so it's like it is interesting seeing that the centralization versus modularity like play out in events in the offline spaces as well. It's crazy actually. But I'm like, you know, makes sense. Monolith monolithic versus like modular like like that's the means. Like what you have to think of as the end, which is like am I actually like building a connection here that's going to help me build my company? And I think it's like I do feel like we're moving out of an infra era of of crypto towards a much more like you know BTOC um like you actually need an end user and like those end users are probably not at crypto conferences. Yes. Yeah.

Um, like if you're doing B2B, like it's good, but it is just interesting like in some ways crypto has been much better at building B2B SAS models to date than it has in building actual crypto native models. Yes. Yes. That that's a bit of a hot take um right there. David, I appreciate your time, man. Have a great week. Uh, my pleasure. Um, and uh, keep thinking on, you know, in public. People care. Same. Exciting for you to for you and David to join the Joker Race team, too. Stoked, dude. See you soon. And I'll be at the office tomorrow, 9:00 a.m. Okay, I'll see you at the office.

That's right. But it's right outside your window, so easy to get to. Cool. All right, man. See you, buddy. Bye. All right. Extreme today was pretty good. Couple hiccups here and there, but nothing to fret about. Um, I think the market, let's see what the market's doing. We said 1085 or 480. I think we're at 108634. Market's looking good. Trump just put out a tweet or sorry, Trump just said, "Every US citizen born between December 31st, 2024 and Jan 1st, 2029 will receive a onetime $1,000 contribution from the US government in a

tax deferred account that will track the stock market. They are literally printing money for our babies." Um, and uh that's that's that otherwise very exciting. It was very like DeFiheavy and kind of applicationheavy uh stream today. I think we'll probably have some different topics and uh overall subjects tomorrow and into Thursday. May have a special co-host as well. Guys, as always, thanks for being a part of the rollup. Uh shoot us a like, subscribe across the board, and we'll see you guys tomorrow. Thank you.