Show notes
Sidney Zhang (Magic Eden CTO) joins The Zeitgeist to discuss his personal story to crypto and how Magic Eden scaled their way into becoming the top Solana NFT marketplace.Show Notes00:42 - Intro / Background08:46 - What prompted creating Magic Eden on Solana11:53 - Picking up rust and working in solana13:57 - Magic Eden: From underdog to behemoth16:52 - Building at Magic Eden20:35 - Engineering challenges that were faced23:01 - What they look for in engineers27:35 - Evolution of NFTs29:19 - Builders he admires in the spaceTranscriptBrian (00:05):Hey everyone and welcome to the Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers and designers who are pushing the Web3 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom and I'm super excited to introduce Sidney Zang. Syd is the co-founder in CTO of Magic Eden, the leading NFT marketplace on Solana. Syd, how's it going?Syd (00:29):Yeah, very good. Thank you for having us.Brian (00:31):Thanks so much for being on the show. I'm really excited to talk to you today about what you guys have built with Magic Eden. I'd love to start though if you could give us a little bit of background on who you are and what you were up to before you got started in this space.Syd (00:43):Yeah. My name's Sidney. I'm the CEO of Magic Eden. I'll go from the beginning. Actually, when I first graduated from college, I actually started my first crypto company right after college in 2013. At that time, I was the co-organizer of the San Francisco Bitcoin Developer Meetup Group.Syd (01:01):And so generally, I was really, really into crypto culture, especially crypto developer culture. I was also contributor to some of the crypto libraries that were used at the time. Funnily enough, my collaborator on the library is JP, the founder of Exodus Wallet, which is a very large wallet.Brian (01:20):Oh no way!Syd (01:20):Yeah. And JP actually slept in my living room when he was in SF, but shout-out to JP. So at that time, I was really also into crypto consumer products. And at that time, smart contract was just a concept that was coming up. But obviously, there was nothing. The Bitcoin scripting language obviously was not Turing complete, so you couldn't really do much. And so we created a lot of consumer apps that we thought was interesting at the time. We created a second Bitcoin tipper bot where the first tipper bot was on Reddit.Syd (01:59):The second tipper bot was on Twitter, and that was the one that we made. Our users started spamming celebrities with Bitcoin tips to create awareness for Bitcoin. That was kind of fun, but ultimately, there wasn't much traction. Another thing that I did was the first big crypto browser wallet, Chrome extension wallet, we built the very first one.Brian (02:20):Oh, wow.Syd (02:22):No one had started at that point. It was kind of magical. It was really nice, the experience. But eventually, we shut it down because we thought no one would ever be able to make money from a crypto browser wallet like that. Just how can a crypto browser wallet ever be a business, right? It's not possible. So we gave up on that, even though it was really, really cool.Brian (02:42):How far we've come on that.Syd (02:43):How far we've come, right, since then. And then also back then, I really started thinking about NFT at the time. It wasn't called NFT at the time. It was basically like Bitcoin had this bite code called OP_RETURN that allows you to put 80 bytes of data in there.Syd (03:02):It's going to be copyright, so let's hash the image and put the bites into those 80 bites. Obviously, nobody used it, but I thought it was cool to put image on the chain. We created this thing called LoveBlock. And the slogan was like, "Roses are red. Violets are purple. Diamonds are bullshit, but the blockchain is forever."Syd (03:27):And so people put love letters in there because the blockchain is forever, so your love would be forever. That obviously also didn't get traction. It was big for a day on Valentine's Day, and then it died the next day.Brian (03:37):Big on Valentine's day. Yeah.Syd (03:39):So we built a lot of things-Brian (03:40):Oh, that's amazing.Syd (03:41):... that... That got a lot of attention on Hacker News. That was big for a day, and then it will just inevitably die a few days later. Yeah. And then eventually, I was like, "Wow, it's really hard to do consumer on crypto unless you run an exchange.Syd (03:58):So I was like, "You know what? I am going to build a developer API because there are so many developers and they will come up with a consumer product." And because I was a co-organizer of the Bitcoin Developer Meetup Group, it was really natural for me to do that.Syd (04:12):So I did that, raised a little bit of money, obviously spent all the money. And as it turns out, the fact that I wasn't able to build a consumer product, nobody else could either. So we ended with all this developer using our API that also couldn't make money and couldn't pay us.Syd (04:31):So eventually, the Bitcoin developer API also was not successful. I ran out of money. I had to borrow money from my girlfriend, who is my wife now. So luckily, that worked out.Brian (04:43):Nice.Syd (04:43):I actually never pay her back because we forgot. Brian (04:52):Your gift is probably on the blockchain for her though to still see.Syd (04:52):And I ended up living on a boat for a little bit because I was so poor. It's funny, the owner of the boat, Nate, actually works at Magic Eden now.Brian (05:02):Wow.Syd (05:03):Anyway, it's a long, long place-Brian (05:05):What a story.Syd (05:05):Yeah. So I was on the boat for a bit in the Alameda Marina. And then eventually, I was like, "Wow, man." I was just bitter about crypto. I was like, "Fuck, crypto sucks."Syd (05:16):I was like, "I need a break from crypto," and it was like during the deep bear market at that time.Brian (05:20):What year was this?Syd (05:21):I think by the time, I think it was 2015 that I left crypto. I joined Uber.Brian (05:27):It's one of the earlier bear markets before.Syd (05:28):Yeah, that's right.Brian (05:28):Yeah. Everyone knows the 2015 one.Syd (05:31):Yeah, yeah. I started in 2013. No, I actually started in 2012. Because buying marijuana in Australia where I'm from, I'm from Australia, buying marijuana in Australia was very illegal. And so the best way to buy marijuana as a college student was using Bitcoin.Syd (05:46):And so that's how I go into the space. But at the same time, I was very... I had a lot of libertarian kind of leaning. And so the idea of a non-inflationary currency really appealed to me. Anyway, so then 2015, I joined Uber Eats as one of the first engineers there before Uber Eats was a thing. We built Uber Eats.Brian (06:10):Yeah.Syd (06:10):Uber Eats obviously grew from nothing to like $50 billion GMV or something ridiculous. Right?Brian (06:18):I heard you were in the room at the time when it was just a Figma file essentially.Syd (06:22):Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. I don't know if it was Figma actually. I think at that time, people didn't use Figma. I think it was-Syd (06:27):Yeah. I think they probably used something else, and I can't remember what it was, so yeah. So I would stay with Uber Eats for a few years. I learned a lot there. I was primarily working on all the machine learning initiatives.Brian (06:39):Okay.Syd (06:40):Ranking, recommendation, search, discovery, little bit pricing, all those things. And then after that, I transitioned. I transferred to ATG, which stands for Advanced Technologies Group, was like the self-driving research lab in... The lab was based out of Toronto.Syd (06:59):And so there, I was a research manager. I focused on computer vision. I focused on prediction towards them with a little bit simulation as well. Then after that, I went to Facebook. I was at Facebook AI. And at that time... The whole time, I was just watching crypto, buying tokens, trying to make sense of the madness, but also really exciting at the time.Syd (07:21):And then when NFT... But I always really wanted to do something in crypto consumer because that was like what really appealed to me. And I was like, "Hey, I'm not going to go back into crypto until there's a consumer opportunity." And that was something that I really care about.Syd (07:36):And then NFT started to take off. And I remember when NFT took off, it was almost like... At one time, I was like, "Fuck, I like all these things." I thought about this in 2013. And then at the same time, how it's happening is nothing like what I thought would happen in 2013.Brian (07:56):Right.Syd (07:56):I thought about crypto gaming in 2013, but I would never have thought like Game Fire, Symphony. All these things are never... just out of this world. And I was like, "This is just fascinating." And at that point, I was just really sold.Syd (08:10):Even though I was at Facebook, honestly, I was like, "Oh, this is amazing." I was just obsessed over it. And then soon afterwards, I left Facebook and then we started Magic Eden and the rest is history.Brian (08:21):The rest is history.Syd (08:21):Yeah.Brian (08:22):That's great. So somewhere along that journey from the 2015 bear market, you being an early Uber Eats employee and then joined the Facebook, you leveled up, you got out of the houseboat in Alameda, I assume.Syd (08:33):Not a houseboat. It was a 24-foot sailing boat that was really small.Brian (08:39):Yeah. Amazing. And so at this time, after the 2018 bear market, obviously, there was a lot of activity on Ethereum. What made you pull the trigger to actually start Magic Eden? And why did you pick Solana of all blockchains at the time?Syd (08:55):You know, first of all, I think there are a few things, like the stars need to align for you to start a company. And my co-founder, the CEO, Jack, was working at FTX at the time. He was at Google before. Joshen was a product manager at Coinbase. He was employee number two at dYdX.Syd (09:11):And then Rex, I've known Rex for very, very long time, always a big crypto degen since I met him at Uber. And so the four of us... And Jack and I, we've known each other since high school. We actually met each other in math tutoring.Brian (09:26):Oh, no way.Syd (09:26):Which is a very Asian way to meet someone.Brian (09:29):Well, you guys are both from Australia. Is that correct too?Syd (09:31):From Australia. That's right. Yeah. We're both from Melbourne, went to the same math tutor, Dr. Heath, math coaching.Brian (09:36):Wow.Syd (09:37):So we've just been talking about crypto for years. We're like, "We want to start something." Right? And so I feel like it's just like we've been paying attention for a long time. That's why the first thing, which is that opportunities come every once in a blue moon.Syd (09:56):But the people who are ready to go at that moment are the people that capture the opportunity. And we've just been looking at it for a very long time. We keep following it. So that's probably the first thing. And then there's a question on Solana.Syd (10:06):I think our thesis was very much that NFT is what's going to take crypto to mainstream even though, I think, crypto in general is now breaking the same barrier, right? What Coinbase is doing, which is amazing what Crypto.com's doing, what Binance is doing and, to some extent to... and what FTX is doing, crypto is breaking the sound barrier.Syd (10:31):But I think ultimately, NFT is going to be that thing that's going to take crypto to the mainstream.Brian (10:36):Yeah.Syd (10:37):That's when it's going to be like Phantom's going to have... Phantom Wallet's going to have a hundred million users, you know? And then I think a lot of them would be using it because of NFT. Right?Brian (10:46):Right.Syd (10:48):And I think that for a consumer experience to make sense, I think that the speed of the chain, the chain being designed not to be cheesy web scale, is really, really important. And I think that's what attracted us to Solana.Syd (11:06):Even though the ecosystem, the developer ecosystem was raw at the time, it's just a... I would say it's an ecosystem, was just full of energy and the foundation had been very, very warm to us and help us and so on. And I think all these have been very important reasons for why we chose Solana over any other chains.Brian (11:26):Yeah. I think that resonates very well with our founding story as well here at Phantom and why we chose a similar path as you guys for similar reasons. You touched on a little bit about how at the start, the developer ecosystem was very raw. And Solana is and still... or was and still is very different than EBM or what you were doing in the earlier days with Bitcoin.Brian (11:49):Can you talk a little bit about how that learning process was for you? Obviously, you had a ton of experience from way back in the day. But coming from a Web2 environment, Facebook, Uber, how was picking up ROSS and trying to build your first program on Solana? What did you use to get started?Syd (12:06):Oh, Rust isn't hard. Rust is an amazing language. It's probably like Solana smart contract self. They're just nuances. We used Anchor since the beginning, shout to Amani. Amazing. Amazing.Brian (12:18):Yeah, putting the industry on his back.Syd (12:19):Yeah, and just carrying the industry on his back. I think that when you run into issues, the error message didn't make sense.Brian (12:30):Yeah.Syd (12:32):Like, "Oh. Well, something broke, 0X75." You're like, "What?" And we just ran into stuff like that. But I think that's the power of open source, right? We just stuck into the core. And if you dig enough, you'll find what's going on.Syd (12:44):We're very lucky to have just great people with us along the way, like shout to Andrew from Zeta Market where he really help us a lot from the beginning. Without Andrew, I think there would be no Magic Eden.Syd (12:56):And yeah, we crunch really hard at the beginning and we shipped the first product after coding for 10 days.Brian (13:02):And when was this? Was this around the end of the summer in 2021?Syd (13:05):Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And we just crunched really hard for 10 days, and then we shipped. And that was how we got started.Brian (13:15):Wow.Syd (13:15):At that time, there was already very entrenched competition where Solana, DigitalEyes, they were doing... Collectively, they were doing over like a hundred-something million dollars a month-Brian (13:26):Yeah. I remember those days.Syd (13:28):... in GMV at that time. So they were really, really big. The network effects were very, very strong. Yeah. And it was in that environment that we started. Yeah.Brian (13:37):Yeah. I remember those days. You only had one or two mints a day, if that too. So the NFT space was very small. You felt like you could keep track of every project and who was what, and there was just a few…Syd (13:50):Not anymore.Brian (13:50):Yeah, not anymore. And there was just a few projects or a few marketplaces. But as you said, Solana and a few others just were dominant in market share. How do you guys think that you guys rose to where you are now? You guys basically were an underdog to start. You're an absolute behemoth today. What would you attribute to that success?Syd (14:16):I think just to show our company a little bit and talk about culture values, we have four culture values. And the first culture value that we have is customer obsession. The second culture value we have is Web 3.0 over Web 2.0.…
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