Too many tokens, too little value: what crypto got wrong

Transcript

It really calls into question the whole vision of of Ethereum for the last like almost 10 years, right? Started to think about, okay, how do we how do we scale this out? How do we give more bandwidth throughput to the network and Ethereum kind of aligned on the on the L2's vision. What's up everybody? It's LG Ducet here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that isn't afraid to admit we were all wrong about Q4 2025. Today is February 9th, 2026. Listen, last week was insane in a good and a bad way. We kicked off the week thinking 70K for Bitcoin was the bottom and we finished it thankful to be back at 70K. This week we have an absolutely loaded lineup. Tomorrow we have Scott Melker. The day after that, Matt Hogan and even Jamie Coots are all back on the

pod. Some of our favorites are coming back to analyze the market. So make sure you tune in, like and subscribe. Do all that stuff to not miss an episode. But before we do any of those deep dives into the market, we are going to zoom all the way out to something that is honestly maybe a little bit smarter and and a much better, more passive opportunity. You see, months ago when I used to do the DJ podcast, my friend Bech came on and told us publicly and even more so in private to me that he was making way more money or rather was having more success, let's say, in private markets than in trading. He was out of the DJN game, he told me, and he's like, "Listen, I'm just looking at investing, angel investing, wherever I can." Not only did I take that word to

heart, but I also set out to learn a lot more about that space and about the platforms that are available to us to do that kind of investment. And today, we have Mattie Oconor, the co-founder of Legion, who does a lot of these ICOs on the podcast to tell us all about it. Today's episode is brought to you by Sum. Turn crypto tax chaos into confidence and bridge send stablecoin payments instantly, simple, global, and frictionf free. Maddie, welcome to the show man. >> Thanks, LG. Appreciate being here. >> Okay, listen. We want to learn all about the ICOs. We We don't have founders like you on the show very often. But but listen, it's a Monday morning in crypto, dude. So, I think stocks are ripping. I haven't checked. Stocks are flying.

Crypto is not. Maddie, what in your opinion, man, from your desk, what the hell's going on in the market these days? What What is happening? Yeah, I mean you see a lot of rumors, you know, circulating of like exchanges distributing BTC and people dumping them. Um I think >> what happened with that? Is that a true rumor that somebody just air dropped like 500,000 BTC to users or something? What is that? >> Yeah, I've seen some headlines about it. Uh you know, investigations starting into it more formally. So I think there's a kernel of truth there to to something going wrong. >> Can can that explain all the price action? I mean you've also got you know um the narratives at least about quantum resistance you know jitters and um and you know these sorts of aspects gold selling off precious metals selling off

so Bitcoin also selling off a bit yeah I mean I think important to important to keep in mind that we've been through these cycles many times before right and I think this cycle is different than previous for for most coins for altcoins right like you didn't see a big uh alt alt season this time around Um, but I think for Bitcoin, if if there's any token where the cycle will, you know, persist, it's Bitcoin. We've seen these kind of moves before, they're nothing new in the grand, you know, the grand scheme of things, the the the overall history, track record. And so, I think this shouldn't change. If you were bullish Bitcoin before and you think it's going to become, you know, the the new dollar, the new gold, replace things as a as a as a treasury as a central

bank treasury asset, then nothing that happened this week should really change that hypothesis. And I think that's important perspective to keep in mind because it's very easy to uh to freak out when you see a 50% draw down in a in a in a blue chip asset. Yeah, >> I think it was the speed, Maddie. It was also the speed last week at which it happened, especially on Thursday, February 5th, where it's just like, why are we just cratering so intensely? Um, but it's funny you use the word cycle because I feel like a huge debate we've had on the show for months is like, oh, it's a different cycle. The cycle doesn't exist anymore. And yet >> all the evidence so far is pointing to this cycle. But like, dude, you sound like you're pretty experienced in the space. There's no way it's that simple

that we're still just in these four-year cycles that come down to almost the day every year or every every bare market of when it reverses, which is now what everybody's saying, right? Like, oh, sometime in Q3 we'll have this reversal. What's your take there? >> Um, yes, you're right. It's not it's definitely not that simple. Um, but I think even even tradi is is cyclical in a nature, right? It moves different cycles. you know, the the the macro business cycle expanding and contracting interest rates, but um I think there's all there's definitely a cyclicality to it of just the the the money flowing in and out, right? Bitcoin is largely a function of capital flows, right? You have a supply that's coming online, you have inflation as miners mine blocks,

and you have demand, and then it's relatively simple in that regard. Um, and so as capital has flown out to other assets, you've seen kind of the price decline. But I think we'll have, you know, cyclicality reversing the other direction. I think the big question to keep in mind is one this quantum quantum resistance, quantum proofing aspect, which is a little bit of a, you know, of a scaremongering tactic for now. And but you also very much have a legitimate uh legitimate concern to think about in regards to these DATs unwinding, right? that could be very very volatile. If for nothing else, I would expect to see a lot of volatility with kind of the altcoin dats and some more some more explosions to come. Um, how much that will blow back to Bitcoin? Hopefully,

not too much. But that's that's what I'm current I'm personally watching is less the less the quantum stuff and more more when do these dats become for sellers. >> Everything you're listening to today is also covered in our daily crypto newsletter. And on Sundays, we even recap the best parts of the entire week's worth podcasts. So check it out at the link below. When do they become force sellers? Because isn't Tom Wasn't the headline last week that Tom Lee is down like $7 billion on his EI? When does is he does he even become a force seller? How does that work? I I don't know about it's a separate episode.

>> There's a wide variety of quality of debts, right? So it really depends on the specifics of what you know assets that basically how they finance their purchases, right? And like when that when that bill comes due. Um and so if you're people like Sailor where you've kind of structured them as long, you know, term convertible notes and you can kind of service the debt and there's no kind of uh specific catalyst to to trigger um the debt coming due, then you can survive a long time. But in terms of the overall market, in terms of the overall asset, we have to really look at like what's the weakest link, right? And all it takes is the weakest at to get liquidated and that triggers, you know, this cascade. So, uh, the systemic risk is hard to fully appreciate until after

the fact. >> No, please don't. Oh, man. No, let's not let's not even entertain these ideas, but we we we must. We must as a crypto show. Um, I'm going to jump forward a little bit because there's a few things I wanted to chat with you today. I feel like you've got a really great opinion on um, Ethereum and the L2s because you guys also uh, field a lot of these potential ICOs that we've seen come to the market lately. So, I want I definitely want to discuss that. But, while we're talking market right now, Maddie, um, for someone like Legion, for a company like Legion that's launching ICOs, how are founders who are looking at launching an ICO suit, how do they play this market? Cuz whenever I look on X and I see like, hey, I think like Rainbow Wallet launched their token over

the weekend and I was like, God, you've been around for so long. Why would you just wait? Like, why just wait for not terrible conditions? What's going on behind the scenes? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So, I mean, in terms of long-standing projects that have been, you know, talking about TG or it's been an option for years and like they choose now, honestly, I don't know why they would uh, you know, what what specific catalyst would would compel them to launch at this moment. That being said, I think now's like a great like the bare market can be a fantastic time to launch your token, but generally it's going to be for like smaller, you know, younger younger projects. We'll get into that in a second, I guess. But yeah, for the for the big projects that that have been delaying for years and could delay,

maybe they had some terms with investors that said you have to launch by this date. Maybe they lock the usual culprit is you lock in like a listing date with an exchange. You know, a big exchange that you want to list you, but that doesn't make sense in these cases you're mentioning. So, um I don't know. It could be could be just uh they've planned for it so long they just want to get it out of the way or it could be some kind of you know early VC uh deal term that they signed years ago. Um, but I think if you to answer kind of your original question, like if you're a founder, you know, navigating these seas, navigating this market and wondering, you know, how when do I launch my token, >> it all comes down to, you know, relative terms, right? Um, now can be a fantastic

time to launch. Bare markets, there's a lot less noise, right? So, you can actually stand out more. You can build a community. You can scale that up from there. Um, you can grind out positive price action over time, right? instead of this like launch high down only price you can launch reasonable and grind up uh because a bare market right you have the opportunity to do that market conditions will improve um but or or I should say all of that is given that you're launching at a reasonable valuation right and so looking at comps looking at you know oh our last raise or competitor raised in the heat of the bull market at 500 million therefore we should be 700 million right like no that doesn't fly be realistic right assume

the worst Assume assume everyone who's been farming your points is going to dump the token, right? Get that sell pressure out of the way, find a way to recycle the blood and launch at a reasonable valuation that leaves upside on the table for your community. That's how you succeed in the long term. It remains to be seen, you know, which builders are here for the long term or not, but that's an easy way to determine who's just trying to extract and who's who's building. Listen, man. I've met a lot of founders and a lot of them have that insane optimism that you're talking about where they're like, "These guys who are kind of like us launched at this valuation and that was in the best conditions possible. Now I'm launching in the worst conditions possible. Surely my token will do better."

>> Right. Right. >> That's I know so many I've met so many people like that, relentless optimists, if you will, uh who really believe that. And that's I I imagine that puts you and your team in a pretty challenging position. You have people coming to you being like, "Okay, we're ready. Let's launch." and you're like, I don't know if you do. You do you ever advise people to be like, maybe you shouldn't launch your token right now. Is that is that something you do? You're comfortable doing it. >> It's uh yes and no. It's less about the timing. It's less, you know, I mean, maybe in extreme circumstances, we've said, okay, let's, you know, delay like let's delay a week or two. Um, it's more about if we simply can't get to the terms that make sense with that project, we'll just have to and sometimes it's

painful, right? Like all else equal, it's a great project. It has traction. that would have a lot of interest to a sale, but we know that like this isn't going to give the best uh the best chance of success for legionerous users just have to pass. Um, and so there's been a couple cases of that, you know, over over the over the years we've been operating. It's uh it's frustrating, but then very very rarely I can't really think of an example off the top of my head that does a team go through that process. We have that conversation, then they launch and and we were like, "Oh, wow. We we we should have launched them at the inflated valuation anyway, right?" If anything, it's always like, "Oh, thank God we didn't pull the trigger." So, >> yeah, it's it's a it's always a negotiation. You look at the comps, you

try you try and beat, you know, stubborn founders over the head as much as you can, seven different ways with different slices of the data, but uh but people are um are stubborn and and optimists for better or worse sometimes. Yeah, >> totally. We've seen a lot of uh interesting ICOs in the last couple years, right? And I I came up in the NFT streets. I was formerly running a a podcast on this network called Milkro DJN where we kind of studied some of these things and looked to some of the opportunities. >> Pump Fund, probably one of the biggest ICOs, right, in recent memory and quite a few others has been Monad, a lot of other ones that have been publicly available. In your opinion, Maddie, like what what is the holy grail of this kind of combining, >> you know, an ICO with maybe kind of like

airdrop for users of a platform or people who have grinded to air to to farm it or whatever? what what is like what is the right way to do these things and who for in your opinion is kind of the the golden child in this current time to do that? >> Yeah, fantastic question on airdrops versus sales, you know, those mechanisms. Um, in my opinion, airdrops used to make sense as a general marketing expense, right? um you know the first the first popularized airdrop ever at least unis swap came with no one was expecting the airdrop but now everyone you know and their mother expects the airdrop right and so you have almost every airdrop it's not a question of if it's being you know

farmed by sibbles it's how much it's being farmed by sibbles right and some teams go to great lengths to design like a very like lighter for instance did a pretty good job of designing a points program that's like not too transparent where you can game it but also kind of feels organic and like rewards users but a lot of projects don't put much time and effort into their points program and just say okay do this action you get 10 points right and then you just make it >> Can I just interrupt you for one second Maddie I just want to interrupt you just to clarify what a civil is for people that are not freaks like me uh a >> a civil which also is used when people talk about um if you were to uh uh hack the Bitcoin network and you would be

able basically to take over 50% or more of the validators or whatever and we have a lot of you you discussed quantum fears uh for most chains and that's one of them is that realistically an AI could figure out how to do this. Um but when it comes to airdrops I probably explained that last part really terribly so don't kill me for that part folks. Anyways, but for airdrops, the idea of syibles is that where somebody is running like a bot or an AI or whatever and they're creating thousands of wallets that go to these chains or protocols and do all the very simple, you know, 101 actions required to qualify for the airdrop. So, uh, unis swap, I think, is a good example where it's like that was one of my first airdrops and you got a nice airdrop even if you just did one swap on uni on unis

swap and my airdrop was I don't know even at the time was like 2,000 bucks which was amazing. Um, but people took that and they're like, I must now create thousands of wallets that will all do a handful of transactions a day across every protocol possible and they automate that. So, what you're saying when you say civil is that you're, you know, you have a lot of um protocols now trying to take steps to prevent that. >> Yeah. I mean, with you you effectively have one person pretending to be multiple people, right? Yeah. >> Is and you have thousands of people.

>> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. hundreds or thousands of people in some cases. And so, um, going back to kind of the the point like airdrops, it's just how much are they being farmed is really the question, right? And so, um, there's you can you can distribute tokens to what you think are 10,000 unique holders could be like three people, you know, in North Korea and then they just dump your token. And so, long story short, I think airdrops um, unless they're very very carefully designed, right, where to be exploit resistant are are really tough. Uh, one of the one of the many advantages of a sale is that you have a non-zero cost basis, right? People are kind of putting their skin in the game, putting their money where their mouth is, especially if there's some kind of vesting associated. It doesn't mean

that, you know, you get none of the tokens that unlock, but maybe it's 50% unlock a TG 50% vest over 3 months, 6 months, or maybe you even make that an element of the sale, and you bid on how long you're vesting for as part of, you know, to win to win allocation in the sale, which I think is a really interesting mechanism. Um so all these aspects kind of add up to um the the the wise teams the wise you know people approaching token distributions are really thinking critically about we know that an airdrop is going to be industrially farmed. We know, you know, it's it's a business. It's literally a business. It's an industry to farm airdrops. And so, how do we design our token launch holistically to to resist to that, right? To be to be ready for

that that abuse and actually get into the hands of real users, real people who are going to hold the token, real people who are going to use the protocol. Think increasingly um these like widespread air drops. So, like everyone out there, um are going to go the way of the dodo. Although of course, you know, high-profile projects like Monad sometimes that, you know, the the the the super tier S tier ones are the ones that can kind of afford to break the rules, right? But for most most projects, you're going to want to avoid like a super wide distribution via an airdrop and go a much more calculated, much more kind of um datadriven distribution. And and that ties into why we built Legion the way we did, focusing on sales and focusing on what we call merit-based allocation and kind of the

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free at milkroad.com/sum. That's sum.com. Milkroad listeners can also unlock 20% off their first year subscription with code milkroad 20. Mhm. So, who's the golden child? Who's done the best airdrop/ ICO? You can't just say airdrop. It has to be one that had some form of ICO. >> Oh, some form of ICO. Um, I think uh I think yield basis then I'd have to go with so uh >> one on your own platform. >> Yeah, but seriously, you had you had the co-founder of Curve, right? you know, the co-ound of Curve launching a new project. Curve multiple billion dollars TVL, right? You probably think, oh, they could they could easily do an, you know, an ICO at a billion dollar FTV, right?

But they intentionally didn't. They intentionally did an FTV of 200 million, leaving some upside on the table for holders. So, I think that one was was a good example. >> Okay, here it is. We're on the we're on the Legion site right now. Uh, legion.cc. So, amount raised for yield basis. I remember reading the white paper and like it was a little bit beyond me. Uh yeah, I mean it was a little complicated for me. You guys raised 7.2 million on the platform and there was 183 million deposited. So a massively overs subscribed route. So clear. Oh, I have to verify my account. Damn it. Anyways, I'll go do that later. But that was so what was yield basis? 60,000 people.

Holy 60,000 accounts wanted this. >> And and and to go back to our earlier point, some of those were definitely sibils, right? Some of those were definitely bots and people trying to fake, you know, allocation. We weeded a lot of them out. But, um, >> yeah, I mean, yield basis, not to belabor it or get hung up on it, but uh, but yield basis is a is a is a tool, a protocol to basically monetize, earn a yield on the volatility of uh, Bitcoin itself. And so, we all know about impermanent loss, right? Um, where if you provide liquidity to an AMM pool and the prices change, you kind of end up worse off that if you just held those assets. Well, not to get too in the weeds, but yield basis say does some clever things and says if we constantly rebalance our LP uh position in the in

the liquidity pool and we leverage up our our liquidity position in the pool, we can actually eliminate mathematically impermanent loss. And so we're left with making uh fees. And so if the fees collected outweigh the kind of costs of like rehedging all the time, then you make a native yield. And just just empirically it works out that way where most of its life or almost all of its life people have made like a 20-ish percent APY on their Bitcoin simply by providing liquidity in in this, you know, clever AMM pool. So, um, yeah, it's a pretty it's a very cool project.

>> Yeah, it was a cool clearly clearly worth the the popularity as well. The other one that stands out to me here on your on the page, Giza, I remember I remember that was a pretty big deal. Um, I think you guys looks like you probably did the raise a little bit before it kind of landed on my radar, but that that's a good one. But the one that stands out to me probably little bit more consumer product was sports do sport.f fun, which was football. Fun craze back in August. Um, that everybody went totally ballistic over. Now they're launching other products. So that's another one. Five 5x over subscribed as well. 4,500 participants. So that's that's pretty cool. Maddie, who are the people that are that are coming on and buying these things? Um, like who like I just want I want maybe give our audience

like a a profile that they can kind of relate to uh in terms of who the participants are in the ICO because we're getting a good view of of the companies doing it, but who who are the buyers? >> Yeah, it's a great question. Um, we've got people from all over the world. Uh some of our biggest markets include uh Asia markets, you know, Korea, Vietnam, Turkeyy's a big market, Ukraine is a big market. Um and so they generally, you know, thanks to the SEC tend to not be Americans, right? and no nonacredited Americans. Uh although that might be changing soon, but um pretty pretty international uh base of of buyers, which is um you know, helpful if you're trying to if you're trying to reach a lot of uh a lot of people and not have your your token kind of coordinatedly uh

farmed and dumped. >> Well, are they are they are they do you have like an average contribution from users? That's what I'm kind of curious, right? people coming to this and being like, um, okay, I've got I'm going to put $200 into yield basis or into sport fund or do you have like a slightly higher average spend? Like are people coming and be like, I've got, you know, and I've got a couple grand for this or more and do you have like larger organizations also using >> Yeah, so we we have a mix. Um we have you know people investing as little as like you know 10 bucks uh ga you know some some sales are on like ETH L1 in which case a minimum would be higher because of gas fees but uh but on kind of L2s and that's a great topic for us

to chat about um you know minimums can be very low and people can invest a little 10 bucks and we have people on average I think it's around you know 10,000 maybe maybe like you know 8 to 12 uh you know varies from sale to sale but on an average in that ballpark. Um, and then yes, we do also have um, you know, tie-ins to to OTC desks and institutions that want to participate. Um, so one of the things we've really focused on is being the world's first ICO underwriter, as we put it. And so, and you know, for those who don't know, an IPO underwriter is someone who works with a company when it goes public, right? When it has its stock market IPO. And things they do is like price the the shares, right? find the right buyers. Make sure you're talking to the right, you know, market

makers listed on the right exchange, going on road shows to institutional buyers that will be buyers, not just in the IPO itself, but afterwards. And so, all of those aspects of what we do with projects we work with at Legion. Um, you know, getting into the weeds of their arrangements with market makers to make sure they're not, you know, getting ripped off or or getting set up for for failure. Um, helping them negotiate the very intimidating, you know, exchange listing negotiation process, right? not all the exchanges out there necessarily worth the bang for the buck of what they're trying to charge you. Um and so working through the teams with that um and also you know getting them in front of liquid funds and helping them find you know the buyers that are going to be um supporting them not just in the ICO but afterwards and so yes we've had

institutional buyers VCs hedge funds participate we've had uh retail participate it all comes down to um you know transparency and kind of kind of indicating like okay this portion of the sale is for retail this portion of the sale is kind of you know set aside can be done via OTC um or or or you know OTC desks such as J or retail uh institutional and buyers. So as long as there's transparency up front and people kind of know what they expect, know the split similar to a token distribution overall, you know, people just want to know what the what the what the splits are, have the have the transparency. We found that's a it's a recipe for success, right? It sets up the project for success because they have buyers, they have institutional buyers as well, supporting price after TG, and they have

retail coming in. Um, and these tend to be the strongest performing projects. >> Got it. Okay. Thanks for sharing. That's that's really helpful. We'll I'll be keeping an eye out for sure because I had signed up for yield basis and then I think I got scared away by how oversubscribed it was. >> That's I was like, you know what? I don't know. But $200 million in a smart contract in like 24 hours. Yeah, it was wild. >> I could get $5 of this token. Yeah, >> that's that's another lesson we've learned really quickly is like people uh they would most times rather get no allocation than get dust, right? And so we >> Yeah, I don't know why it's that way, but it just is like I got like a small monad airdrop just from like my onchain activity and I've been watching it go

from $50 to $80 to $100 back to $50. And I'm like, >> cool, man. >> Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy. Yeah, it's a nice dinner, a nice little a cheap dinner or a nice lunch or something like that that where I live. So, but I do like I will say and one thing that we're going to talk about in a second is is the role of L2s and L1's and how that relates to you guys and also what Vitalic um said last week that has really caused ripples and probably will affect you guys as well. Really quick, one feature that I do like on your product is this uh social score, which is good for me because I have a decent Twitter following uh that you've got me here.

Yeah, I have a good onchain score, but my social rank is 169 on your platform. So, that's pretty good. That is pretty good, man. Look at my I have a lot of smart followers who unfortunately I've tricked into following me uh years ago over the years. Um anyways, let's chat about this tweet, dude. So, Vitalik, founder of Ethereum, um tweeted this out last week. It's a huge essay and it caused ripples through the industry and he was just basically saying that, you know, years ago I was open to L2s coming out because we need to help scale Ethereum. Ethereum was just like too slow and expensive and now he's saying specifically the original v vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense and we need a new path.

Maddie, let's step out of the out of the Legion talk for a second and just think about the broader industry. What kind of what kind of uh ripple effects is this going to have on everything that's being planned? Because um you have another L2 that's about to come online in Mega ETH which has a ton of funding, a ton of great apps being built there. You have base which is Coinbase's L2 that is supposed to have likely have a token this year uh planning and they are an L2. They're part of scaling Ethereum and they are the fifth or sixth highest TVL chain uh across all chains including L2s and L1's.

>> How does this how does this new direction from Vitalic affect the market and how people are planning their their tokens? >> Yeah, this is uh this is something I think a lot of people didn't expect to see, right? Vital has been a longtime supporter of L2s and so kind of a reverse reverse about face for him. Um it reminds me of what Kyle Smani has kind of said. I mean he he you know he he famously leaving multicoin also last week but uh he said like the future of Ethereum is base right because you have this massive L2 that is increasingly growing to be a portion of the network and has you know very very small gas fees compared to ETH and also like has the support of course of Coinbase which has all kinds of additional benefits.

They can drive all sorts of usage to it. So it really calls into question the whole vision of of Ethereum for the last like almost 10 years, right? Uh ever since like this first scaling problems kind of showed up back in the original ICO craze when people couldn't get into sales, the the the chain was jammed, wait times, gas prices just exploded and you know started to think about, okay, how do we how do we scale this out? How do we give more bandwidth throughput to the network? And Ethereum kind of aligned on the on the L2's vision. Mhm. >> Is that going to happen in the future? I don't know. Like I I it the the one thing that's clear to me is the economics don't make sense, right? Um you know, lots of people have said that L2s are kind of parasitic to ETH as an

L1. And it's hard to argue when ETH L1 block space is not full and yet you have, you know, uh gas prices on these L2s that are fractions of the cost, right? it doesn't feel like it's conducive to usage on Ethereum or the best interest of Ethereum in the long term. At the same time, I think Ethereum's got to be careful that it doesn't get out competed by some of these L2s, right? Um that are faster that have a decent, you know, mind share, decent TVL. Ethereum's been a longtime player, has that advantage to it. But is it is it unthinkable that another smart contract chain overtakes Ethereum? I don't know if we're to that point yet. Um I think

it's still on the on the table that somebody could flip Ethereum and if we're not careful if if Vitalic kind of doesn't like somewhat make sure to bring along, you know, everybody in this uh could easily happen. But yeah, I think personally I'm a fan to see L2s kind of change or the the L2 tokens that have no purpose for a centralized, you know, sequencer. Everybody knows that doesn't make sense. has been a dirty kind of not actual secret but an open dirty open secret of the industry for years now and um and we definitely need a change. So in that regard it's positive of what he's doing but it definitely spells volatility for Ethereum uh in the in the short to medium term.

>> Matty, are there too many chains? >> Yes, there's definitely way too many chains. Yeah, but at the same it's kind of like standards, right? Like there's that XY uh XY CD X KCD. Um, why am I blanking on the comic strip? You know what uh you know the comic strip I'm talking about? No. >> No. >> So, too many chains. It's It reminds me of that XK CD comic strip where it says, you know, you see two developers and they're saying, "Oh, there's 19, you know, standards. Why are there 19? That's way too many. We should make kind of an aggregator standard." And oh, news next day is there's 20 standards now, right? So chains are a little bit similar to that where everyone's keeps trying to solve the um the splintering and al almost by doing so makes the problem worse. I think we we of course

haven't reached the most performant possible blockchain architecture out there but we have way too many chains being funded at massive valuations that simply can't defend them. Right? I think one of the one of the issues is that the market structure that we're facing right now is just kind of screwed up. Right? It makes it hard for people to to know what to invest in, know what tokens to hold, know what tokens to buy. It's one of the reasons you saw no real alt season this cycle is that there are too many coins out there. They're trading at valuations that were bloated up in kind of private markets and are now just metabolizing all the float that is coming to market. Um, and there's not too much activity, let alone revenue,

let alone buybacks to to support the price. So, more pain is in the future, more consolidation. I definitely see a future where we have way fewer, obviously there's going to be tokens out there, but way fewer tokens that people actually follow, people actually care about, that are actually performing. You'll have Bitcoin and you'll have a very shorter tale of assets um that are actually that are actually relevant. Last question for you, Maddie, just to wrap out is one an ICO or I don't know if they'll ICO. I don't know what they're going to do, but one that I've been watching for a long time is Poly Market.

>> How would you and maybe you have insider or no? I don't know. I actually have no idea. I'm not even seeing that as a wink wink. I don't know. I I I hope they launch on your platform in some way. That would be I feel like that'd be really awesome for you guys. >> Oh, start if you if you were in charge, how would you design their token release? >> That's a great question. I mean um what matters to them is obviously uh liquidity provision and just but usage right so they have these they have the fortunate position of they know that there are these specific metrics that they need to keep you know keep rewarding and so I think they would I I would borrow a page from lighter and really look at you know uh retroactively of course applying their points program

but design a point points program that is engineered to reward organic behavior rather than rather than um rather than bot you know bot activity and these sort of things and uh don't make it fully transparent. Don't say if you do this you earn 10 points, right? Because then you're just going to make it abusable and then let those points feed into uh exposure allocation in a limited kind of access sale. I think that's the best way to do it. Uh you you know no one says points programs have to lead to an airdrop, right? That's just this this kind of entitled to be honest, right?

opinion that kind of we've all grown used to that like we just free stuff in our wallets, but we d we know we dump it, right? So, if you want to launch a project and kind of get, you know, the best supporters, get the best holders long term, um maybe a small airdrop to your highest, you know, highest most valuable people makes sense. But I think a big sale that is gated by, you know, the more points you have, the more allocation you have in the sale is how I would is how I would go about this. >> Nice. I hope so. I hope they have a sale. I'd like to participate. And I will say that I I I rarely share my own opinion on the show, but I will say that for Poly Market, the big difference to that for them versus a lot of the other

things that I've farmed in the past >> um is that if I've been using Poly Market, and this is where I would compare it to Hyperlquid. >> Yeah. >> If I've been using Poly Market and I'm one of the higher I'm one of the higher volume users, I'm probably in the green >> and I probably make money using Poly Market right? >> Versus, you know, maybe or maybe you've spent $50,000 in the red farming it, but then You know what I mean? What I'm saying is that it's clearly a valuable product for some people and I think that those people should get the token. Similar to Hyperlquid, right, where it's like, well, that's probably one of the most successful airdrops ever, right?

From from the point of launch to today >> and are also similarly, you know, zero sum, right? You got your winners and your losers. >> It's zero sum. That's it. So people who got that token are people that were already benefiting from the platform most likely and they wanted to keep using it and therefore probably more likely to accumulate the token versus a lot of these other things that >> we're talking about that I've farmed where I'm like >> I'm just going to sell it >> because it's been fun to click buttons, you know, 30 times a day, but when I get the token >> later. >> Yeah. And that's and that was the state, you know, I I really do think that like things like unis swap and defy summer kicked that off.

>> Yeah, of course. um that it was just like >> back then we you didn't expect it, right? You didn't even know you. Yeah. >> Yeah. You didn't even know. Now it's now it's expected. You have people that do this for as a job to air to airdrop farm. Um and that's a natural evolution of how that things those things have worked out. So So better to have higher value uh users and reward them. I I agree with you. >> Um great. Well, Matty, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. Great to chat with you on this Monday as the as the market uh does its best to to climb back up. Um and we'll be watching Legion. Man, I I really do think that that's one of the better opportunities that there are out there right now is to watch these types of sales. Um, and best

of luck to you guys in the future. >> Of course. Appreciate it, LG. >> Thanks. >> Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel and join the Milkro Daily and Pro Newsletters and start investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.