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Packy McCormick - Founder of Not Boring Ep #49 Oct 12, 2021

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Packy McCormick is the author of the tech/web3 newsletter Not Boring and runs Not Boring Capital.00:09 - Intro01:34 - What are people building in the world of crypto / What does ‘Not Boring’ invest in09:36 - Ownership in Crypto16:00 - Conversation around Play-to-earn19:06 - The regulatory aspect22:14- How does Anatoly balance his time23:54 - Thoughts on DAOs29:33 - Network Effect and defensibility in Crypto32:18 - Centralizing in Crypto35:20 - Solana in relation to DeFi, the cultural and the metaverse side of things.39:13 - The internet is Silicon Valley41:12 - NFTsDISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.Anatoly (00:09):Hey, folks. This is Anatoly and you're listening to The Solana Podcast, and today, I have with me, Packy McCormick, author of Not Boring. Hey, man. Good to have you.Packy McCormick (17:27):Good to be here. Thanks for having me on.Anatoly (00:21):So, You're an author and you're also an investor. How did you get into crypto?Packy McCormick (00:26):Yeah. So, I got into crypto back in 2013. I read Fred Wilson's blog post on investing in Coinbase, bought a bunch of Bitcoin, I think 38 Bitcoin, and then I went on a trip to Oktoberfest, and I felt bad about it, I had just quit my job, so I was like, "You know what, instead of spending money when I'm unemployed, let me just sell this stupid Bitcoin and I will pay for the trip."So, because of that, because of the pain of selling then, I avoided it until earlier this year, later last year, and really, really got back into it as I was talking to a couple companies that I was thinking about investing in and thinking about the intersection of crypto and the metaverse and how an open economy just fits so much better with that vision, since then, I've just gotten deeper, and deeper, and deeper down the rabbit hole.Anatoly (01:18):So, you held Bitcoin because you can sell it? That's just too big of a pain in the ass.Packy McCormick (01:24):I felt so bad about selling it and missing out. I think at the peak, it was like a two million dollar plus mistake, and so I was like, "You know what? I'm out of this for a little while."Anatoly (01:34):That's funny. What do you guys invest in?Packy McCormick (01:39):Yeah. So, I run a small 10 million dollar fund called Not Boring Capital, and we really invest across stages, across geographies, across verticals. For the first, I'd say, half of the fund, it was really traditional investments, I'd say for the second five million in the fund, it's been pushing up against the 20% non qualifying limit. I'm actually investing in my first Solana based project this week, which is yet to be announced, so can't talk about it, but something in the real estate space and something I'm super excited about. But doing as much crypto as I can in there, but I still think some use cases are perfectly well suited to crypto and some are really not. There's plenty of things in Web 2.0 that I'm super excited about as well, so really trying to balance investing across both.Anatoly (02:27):So, by traditional businesses, you mean like software internet based ones?Packy McCormick (02:32):Exactly.Anatoly (02:33):Cool. I mean, I've been in crypto for like the last... I can't remember... it feels like a decade, and I can't imagine what the world is like. So, what are people building?Packy McCormick (02:48):It's a good question. So, today, I talked to a company, for example, that is making it a lot easier for a restaurant to order the food that they need. So, right now, if you're a restaurant and you're ordering food, you're getting a bunch of PDFs from suppliers every week that aren't even searchable, and then you're going through the 6,000 items on there and picking something. So, there are still a bunch of these huge unsexy categories that are completely ripe.There's some security stuff that bridges into crypto, but there's one, again, stealth right now, but is also dealing with some Solana projects on the security side that I'm really, really excited in, but they're also securing Web 2.0 projects. There's some FinTech stuff I wrote about a company called Uni, yesterday. There's definitely a little bit of mental gymnastics that I have to do to be super bullish on FinTech and super bullish on crypto, but I really think adoption cycles are going to be super long and there are some really huge opportunities on that side too. I think everybody is trying to make the existing system that doesn't work, make it work better for people, and so I'm all for things, on either the Web 2.0 Side or in crypto, that make finance better for people.Anatoly (04:01):The mental gymnastics are curious about. I always thought that crypto is just part of this general story of software eating the world. Is that your take on it too?Packy McCormick (04:12):Totally. I mean, I wrote about Solana and I wrote this in the piece, but then I'm a maximalist-minimalist, and that's cross chain, but that's also I don't think crypto is going to eat everything yet or maybe ever. Just like on the internet, Web 3.0 is really about the dynamic interfaces where you could interact with each other. While there are companies like Facebook and Twitter and all of this social media companies that were more interactive, there were a ton of huge companies built during the Web 2.0 Era that weren't social media, that weren't real-time interactive at all, and I think the same thing will play out. I think you need to pick the best stack for whatever you're building at the time. And so I think we'll see a world where a lot of stuff moves to Web 3.0, And hopefully, even things that don't incorporate crypto become a little bit more liquid, a little bit more decentralized, a little bit better for people, but I don't think that crypto is the answer to every problem that the world has.Anatoly (05:05):So, when you look at a company that is building out the basic, "Let's convert PDFs to a searchable interface," that feels like something that should have happened 10 years ago, right, in your mind, at least?Packy McCormick (05:23):Totally. I mean, I think there have been attempts in that space actually, and some of them haven't worked. There have been different approaches. People have tried to do marketplaces and different things like that. I think what changed in that particular case is that over the past year, one, restaurants are super cognizant of cutting costs and getting profitability to the best possible spot, and so they're more willing to try new things. These people are taking an interesting approach without actually changing the interface that the restaurants interact with at all, they're just making everything behind it more powerful. So, things have been tried... there's people that are trying new approaches every day. I mean, I'd say 80%, because that is the literal max that I'm allowed to do is 20% crypto out of my fund, so 80% of my investments are non-crypto, and there's a bunch of stuff that's growing fast and is really exciting.I think the other interesting thing is that there are a bunch of companies that aren't going fully decentralized but are incorporating maybe a DAO in one aspect, where they have members who might be running something and want to vote on what that thing is coming up, or will incorporate NFTs in a particular part of the business where it makes sense. So, I think we'll see that blur a little bit more, but even within companies, they'll be doing some Web 2.0 Stuff and some Web 3.0 Stuff.Anatoly (06:32):So, I guess, in a way, you're bullish on non-crypto on the rest of the world as an investor?Packy McCormick (06:41):Yeah, my worldview is bullish tech and innovation, and I think if you're talking on the... I have a medical device company in the portfolio and a machine learning company that helps make sense of medical documents, and all that kind of stuff, I don't see a need yet for crypto, and maybe there's better decentralized storage of that information in the future, so it's not a centralized entity. And so over time, I think more, and more, and more of it will potentially become decentralized as the tools catch up, but for right now, that's just stuff that needs to improve.There's a company called NexHealth that I invested in that has really complex long term plan to first, sell SAAS into doctor's offices, use that to connect the EHRs, use that to build out APIs, use that to build out a platform, to ultimately try to make it easier for people to just hack on medical products, because right now it's such a pain in the ass to do anything in the medical space. I am super bullish on that kind of innovation because if you ask me what doctor I went to two years ago, I'd have no idea, if you asked me what my stats were, I'd have no idea. So, anybody fixing any of those kinds of things, I'm super bullish on.Anatoly (07:52):Man, I mean, the internet is basically 30 years old, right, at this point, and it's wild to think that we're still connecting just data...Packy McCormick (08:00):Totally.Anatoly (08:02):... data to format.Packy McCormick (08:03):It's why I'm going to be bullish on all of this. The internet is still early in terms of penetration, and then crypto is a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of that, so there's just a lot of room for all of this to run.Anatoly (08:13):It feels then like everything is happening at the same time, we're still onboarding the world to the internet or now, part of the internet is being on boarded to crypto. Is that something that you first saw? What do you think about that?Packy McCormick (08:29):Yeah. I mean, I think most of the world... I think well over 50% nowadays is internet connected. I think it's just more and more things that were not internet connected are being tackled. I think a lot of the big obvious opportunities get taken and then people realize like, "Oh, shoot." I think I've seen, in the past week, a couple of companies that are making it easier for truckers to pay for gas and track those expenses. There's just all these big things that touch the physical world, where primitives needed to be built first, you needed banking as a service type things to make it really easy for companies to issue cards, to build it for specific use cases, so I think it's all just a matter of what primitives have been built and then what you can do on top of that. That's one of the reasons I'm so excited about crypto is because you and other folks in the space are building such interesting things for other people to build on top of.Anatoly (09:15):Since you have, I think, a more maybe practical or realistic view, since you're dealing with non-crypto projects that are trying to get revenue, right? That's generally the pitch to an investor.Packy McCormick (09:33):Yes. Over a long enough time horizon, some of them need to get revenue.Anatoly (09:36):What do you see in crypto itself as promising to use crypto in a way that actually increases revenue for that business? What are those things?Packy McCormick (09:48):Yeah. I don't know. One of the fun things about exploring both sides is that I really try, when I look at any crypto project, to understand what business physics laws it's enhancing. Businesses are businesses because people buy things the same way all over the place or people like to make money. People are the same, and I think all of this comes down to people, obviously. Solana comes down to how many developers build on top of it and how many people use that. And so obviously, I think one of the big important things is the ability to build network effects by giving people ownership. And I think the idea of using ownership in crypto to even have negative customer acquisition costs, to be able to essentially make the price of something negative to be able to get adoption, to use crypto tools for retention and network effects I think is one of the big things that excites me.I think it's also just moving way, way, way faster. I mean, look at Ethereum and Solana, right? Ethereum, strong network effects, people building on top of it, and then Solana comes in and looks like the same chart but faster. And so you can get these network effects, but then somebody else will come in with network effects that are even faster, and I think it's going to be interesting to see how those types of things play out.Anatoly (11:05):Negative acquisition cost is a really interesting topic because that's basically yield farming, right, like DeFi? The foundation of DeFi, how I get users is, a lot of these projects give away their coin. Do you think those patterns is something that you're going to start seeing in traditional businesses, like AMC popcorn, if you buy AMC stock is some form of liquidity mining, right?Packy McCormick (11:39):I think the challenging part, right, is that people want either money pretty immediately or they want ownership in something, and it's really hard for Web 2.0 Companies to give away ownership, there's a ton of paperwork involved. There are platforms that are trying to make that a little bit easier, but it's still really hard for them to give away ownership the way that, if you're a DeFi protocol, you can give away your token to attract users in the beginning.So, maybe there will be some things that Web 2.0 Companies steal and bring over from crypto, but I do think that's one of the uniquely beautiful things about it, is that it's this... I mean, we'll see. It's still so early, right? But that it's this beautiful thing where because you're early, you're able to earn more, and then because you were there, you actually support the network and make the network more secure and all that. So, there's actual justification for it, but it's just that shift in who gets the ownership of things, which I think is kind of beautiful.Anatoly (12:35):Do you think that the Web 2.0 properties, or like Facebook, Twitter, that those are at risk for being disintermediated by crypto?Packy McCormick (12:44):Yes. On a long enough time horizon, absolutely. I don't know what it looks like, and I think the early attempts to do it have been a bit skeuomorphic, and that's one of the things that interest me here is that BitClout was, I guess, interesting, but it was Twitter with coins, and I don't think that the next social network will look like Twitter with coins, I think it will look like something that is maybe wallet first, or maybe in the 3D world, or something that looks different but then achieves a very similar end. And so I think, yes, 100% they're at risk, but I don't think that they're at risk from something that looks like a clone but adds a token.Anatoly (13:23):Man, I love that word, skeuomorphic, because that's how I started thin…

Full show notes at the publisher

Jonathan Schemoul - Founder of Aleph.im Ep #48 Oct 05, 2021

Show notes

Jonathan "Moshe" Schemoul is the founder of aleph.im, a cross-chain p2p storage, computing network and first decentralized indexing provider for Solana.00:36 – Intro & how did Jonathan Schemoul got in crypto02:09 – What is Aleph and how does it work?06:48 – Is Aleph database a blockchain?09:20 – Understanding core nodes and Aleph’s economics11:22 – How does Aleph interact with DNS?15:29 – How does Aleph get verification of certificates? 21:44 – How does Aleph check integrity of computation?25:06 – What is Aleph’s vision?30:32 – Will Aleph always be project facing or will it one day be user facing?32:28 – What load can Aleph currently handle?39:00 – How do the economics work for people providing hardware and bandwidth?DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.Anatoly Yakovenko (00:12):Hey folks, this is Anatoly, and you're listening to The Solana Podcast. And today I have Jonathan Schemoul with me, who's the founder of the Aleph.im project. Really awesome to have you.Jonathan Schemoul (00:22):Thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here today.Anatoly Yakovenko (00:25):Cool. We usually start these with a simple question, how did you get into crypto? What's your story? What's the origin story?Jonathan Schemoul (00:36):Well, into crypto it's a long story. I started way back in time, a bit on Bitcoin then I stopped because it was only money back then. And that wasn't the end game for me. Then I came back into crypto in 2015, 2016, and I started doing a bit of development because I saw that I really wanted to be part of Web 3, to do nice things with it. I started developing as an open-source developer for a few projects. One of these is the newest project which is Chinese blockchain layer one. I'm not really involved with it anymore.Jonathan Schemoul (01:16):But working with them as a community open source developer, I saw that there was some missing links somewhere that you couldn't decentralize all the stack with just layer one, it is not the one that they were building back then. So that's how the Aleph.im project is born. For me, besides that, I've been developing for a lot of companies before in the IOT space and also for big banks sometime ago. I've been a developer for a lot of years.Anatoly Yakovenko (01:48):That's great. I mean, that's a great background. The thing that you're focusing on with Aleph is this idea that Web 3 is just a small part of the piece, but you still need UI front-ends, business logic and things sitting on top of the blockchain. How does that work?Jonathan Schemoul (02:09):The idea is that, okay, now you can have smart contracts on Solana, that's great. You can even do way much more on like just money on smart contracts, that's great. Now, you need to have a front-end. So you need to have storage for that front-end. That's not all because a smart contract, a program doesn't have all the data that you need. So you will need some kind of indexing to get history. You will need a back-end for that.Jonathan Schemoul (02:37):Most of the DeFi application that we see have some centralized back-end behind them. They're running on AWS, sometimes on dedicated servers or stuff like that that is still centralized. If a government, and we just saw something about it today, wants to shut down the DeFi protocol that is organized like that, they can. With Aleph.im what we are trying to do is decentralize the last mile, because for that last mile most projects are using AWS, so we need to decentralize AWS.Jonathan Schemoul (03:11):So we provide storage, as in file storage for the front-end files, database storage, because most applications are just databases and also an equivalent to Amazon Lambda, where you start small functions that will be launched on a decentralized cloud, where there is place for them and will get you a return value, and these can be written in any language and connects the web and also a PC from blockchains here at Solana obviously.Anatoly Yakovenko (03:42):Got it. Super Cool. So this is a storage mechanism. Does it guarantee consistency? How's it decentralized? What happens if you nuke it? Yellowstone flows up, the current set of servers from Aleph get destroyed in the volcano. How do I move, switch, what state do I lose? Those are the hard distributed systems question.Jonathan Schemoul (04:08):Yeah. It's a really good question. Aleph.im is not a blockchain at all. We don't have a blockchain. There are enough already. We just accept messages from blockchains. All the supported blockchains are accepted on the network, that means that that message that is signed by a material address is accepted on network, a message that is signed by a certain address is accepted on the network. All our network, hence the name .im, dot instant messaging, the whole system works with messages on the network.Jonathan Schemoul (04:45):Those messages are organized by channels, just like you would go on telegram channels and get the history of them. The network keeps track of those messages and when you start a new node, you get the history of messages, not directly from the other nodes, you will connect two blockchains to specific smart contracts on blockchain. Look at past events, for example, on the Ethereum or on Solana. You look at past events for the synchronization of the network and you look, okay, there has been all these events, okay, let me ask the whole network what those messages were. Then you resync, when there are missing parts you leave them apart and then you get a view on the channels on the messages.Anatoly Yakovenko (05:31):So you write your software, your Lambda hook as if it's a re-entrant, right? So you're kind of recording your progress potentially on Solana as you're processing it.Jonathan Schemoul (05:43):For the Lambda it's a bit different. Here I was explaining how the network works for the messaging on the global state. For the state of pure application, you could either get your state from a blockchain here at Solana. For example, all the indexing effort that we are doing is using Solana as a source of synchronization for these Lambda. But then you can have multiple kind of volumes because since it's Linux Micro VM machine, everything is a volume.Jonathan Schemoul (06:18):So we have local storage volume that is local to the running host. And then the Lambda kind of issue messages on a decentralized database of data and project or under storage, and then raising to the local file system and then issue messaging, et cetera. And we are also working on another kind of phase system that is distributed, where any of them that can write in it on the overall receive the changes, which is kind of tricky.Anatoly Yakovenko (06:48):Is the database, the Aleph database, distributed database? Is that a Byzantine fault-tolerant database? Is it designed with that in mind?Jonathan Schemoul (06:58):Yeah. The idea is that when you send a message on the network, it gets stored by all the over nodes that are interested in your channel. And then there are synchronization node that go and write hashes of the data and signatures inside messages that they push on blockchains. So that when overcome, they can synchronize it and replicate all the data. So that even if one part of the network gets totally disconnected, you can have one part that gets reconnected to the other therefore the peer to peer network for blockchain, for APFS. We have multiple kind of different connectivity solutions so that they can reconnect on resync.Anatoly Yakovenko (07:42):So the Aleph database, if it's Byzantine fault tolerant, I mean, doesn't that make it a blockchain? Is there a token? Is crypto economically like fault tolerant?Jonathan Schemoul (07:56):Yeah. So we have a token, but the token is living on multiple blockchain, Ethereum, Solana, and a few others, but those are the most used today. We have a token, you need a token for your data to stay there. If you don't have any more your data gets garbage collected. But we don't have a blockchain because we go and write on over layer ones. We are technically a layer two database which is computing pre storage.Anatoly Yakovenko (08:23):But the data storage, like the Aleph distributed database, what is that backed by? Or can I pick my own blockchain to use it as a common interface or something like that?Jonathan Schemoul (08:34):Well, currently it writes on Ethereum, we're working on making it write on Solana. For this we need our indexer to be super powerful. So we'll get it writing on Solana very soon. Basically you can write on multiple blockchains and use it as a source of proof.Anatoly Yakovenko (08:53):Got it. That's pretty interesting. So it really doesn't have its own blockchain and you're just using the fault tolerance of the chains you're connected to.Jonathan Schemoul (09:04):Exactly.Anatoly Yakovenko (09:06):Awesome. Yeah, that's really cool. So the other challenge I think is like how do you deal with domains and the web? Where do you run these executed nodes? How do you connect all those pieces?Jonathan Schemoul (09:20):It's a really good question. To connect all the pieces together, we didn't develop some really fancy stuff like proof of space and time and things like that to verify that the data is really stored. We are using something much more low-tech, which is just a quality control. We have core channel nodes, which are the controllers of the network, which needs to keep some Aleph have stakers on such economics. They are verifying that other core channel nodes are behaving well. And that also the resource nodes are behaving well. Then the resource nodes are really doing the work of storing data, providing computing, et cetera. And they're continuously controlled by the core channel nodes.Anatoly Yakovenko (10:09):That's great. So they're basically like a tokenized health check, right?Jonathan Schemoul (10:14):Yeah.Anatoly Yakovenko (10:14):I can spin this up and they can continuously monitor whether this computation is making progress, right?Jonathan Schemoul (10:21):Exactly.Anatoly Yakovenko (10:21):Is that verification, is that programmable? Can me as an app developer, can I kind of code up my own apps, specific health checks or an interface or something like that?Jonathan Schemoul (10:35):It's a really good question. That's what we are working on exactly right now.Anatoly Yakovenko (10:40):I'm leaking all the features. My imagination is going.Jonathan Schemoul (10:44):No, no worry. Well, it's really interesting because to understand if an application behaves well on one host, you need to understand what the application is doing. So yes, we will give some kind of health check, which is kind of a unit test of how the app should work. So you will be able to provide unit tests for your app basically.Anatoly Yakovenko (11:11):That's really Cool. What about domains? Like actual DNS?Jonathan Schemoul (11:17):Yeah.Anatoly Yakovenko (11:20):I'm asking all the hard questions.Jonathan Schemoul (11:22):Yeah. These questions will be answered if I explain how we handle access to this virtual machine. Because for DNS, for just IPFS, there is already quite a few solution, that's not an issue. But then if you want to make a domain point to one micro VM, you want your micro VM to be able to serve your data. How we do first the load balancing because that's the important question. For load balancing we have two ways, one, which is a regular cloud load balancing, which could be blocked by government, could be censored, because that's what can happen when you have centralized point of control.Jonathan Schemoul (12:07):We will run it ourselves and a few of our partners might run some of the cloud load balancers that basically you can just point your domain to the cloud load balancer. And then the cloud load balancer will create certificates and stuff like that. It will work. We will run one instance. Ubisoft will likely run another. And like many of our partners. Well, for Ubisoft it's not sure, just some talks about it. But perhaps over partners could run cloud load balancers that we'd go on point on specific micro VM host to see where your app is running and point it to them, that might work.Jonathan Schemoul (12:48):Now What happens if a government says, "This app shouldn't work, this domain shouldn't work." Then you have two solutions, you either put the front-end inside IPFS, use some IPFS gateways, et cetera. And then the back-end is on the VM network. But then what happens if a government blocks the specific DNS inside the micro VM global.aleph.sh .aleph.cloud Whatever. Then we have a decentralized load balancing that comes into play.Jonathan Schemoul (13:24):The idea of the decentralized load balancing is that your browser will connect to the IPFS network using leap peer to peer, just leap peer to peer, find Pi Aleph nodes running, contact them directly then ask Pi Aleph node, "What micro VM host are running this software?" And then you can contact them directly. We are working on the JavaScript library that will do all this work on the client side so that you can have your front-end in IPFS that will then go and find all the back-end hosts that could answer your request.Anatoly Yakovenko (13:58):That's super cool. You guys are working on some really hard problems. I think it should be fairly easy to kind of have basically a resolver that points to ENS in the system, right. That's fairly straightforward. And basically you should be able to use any kind of like name, system, command any blockchain.Jonathan Schemoul (14:25):Yeah, clearly.Anatoly Yakovenko (14:26):Do you think that this is something that browsers are starting to recognize as standardizable? Is there a future where you think this technology could start percolating to the UI level where the end user can pick like blockchain based DNS resolver that kind of like connects all the pieces, right? From the human to this decentralized one.Jonathan Schemoul (14:51):I think that something that could come, I think that those that could really help in this is Mozilla foundation, I think that they would be the one to talk with. We aren't in talk with them because we don't really take that step right now. We have a lot on our plate. But in the future I'm pretty sure it's the way to go. We will connect to any effort in that area and we will recognize it. I know that for IPFS for example, IPFS, IPNS, there are some efforts on some browser extension that you can install to have it, et cetera.Anatoly Yakovenko (15:29):How does like certificate chaining play with us? What happens if I need to have a cert on my service and things like that.Jonathan Schemoul (15:38):A certificate on your service? Yeah.Anatoly Yakovenko (15:41):Like their sign or whatever.Jonathan Schemoul (15:43):Well, we use the one that everyone uses, which is-Anatoly Yakovenko (15:48):Let's Encrypt. The EFF one.Jonathan Schemoul (15:49…

Full show notes at the publisher

Jeff "Jiho" Zirlin - Co-Founder of Axie Infinity Ep #47 Jul 29, 2021

Show notes

Jeff "Jiho" Zirlin is the Co-Founder of Axie Infinity, an NFT-based play-to-earn online video game.

00:23 – How it started through CryptoKitties?

02:41 – What is Axie Infinity?

04:13 – Game design and constant iteration

05:52 – What is a blockchain game? A mix of social network, gaming and the start of a new economy

13:15 – Why is crypto important to Axie?

17:24 – Building and relying on your community

20:47 – Is the future of gaming the metaverse and user-owned assets?

22:22 – The feasibility of crossover between games with NFT ownership

27:35 – Where are Axies user from and what kind of players are they?

30:45 – What's Axie's endgame?

37:16 – Thoughts on competitors

41:18 – Generative art and creating an Axie

DISCLAIMER

The information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.

The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Yutaro Mori & Grace Kwan - Co-Founders of Orca Ep #46 Jun 25, 2021

Show notes

Yutaro Mori & Grace Kwan are the Co-Founders of Orca, a user-friendly cryptocurrency exchange built on Solana.

01:15 – About Orca and its vision

09:48 – What’s the future of DeFi?

20:48 – A little bit about Orca’s roadmap

25:50 – What does Orca’s team look like?

32:11 – The internet hasn’t changed much, people grew into it. How will crypto grow more present in our life?

36:22 – Solana and zero knowledge proof

40:02 – Orca’s next features planned for Q2 and Q3

43:46 – How does Orca plan on growing their worldwide community?

DISCLAIMER

The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

George Harrap - Co-founder of Step Finance Ep #45 Jun 07, 2021

Show notes

George Harrap is the co-founder of Step Finance, a platform for Solana DeFi users to track their portfolio performance. Before Step, George was the CEO of Bitspark.

00:29 About George Harrap and mining

05:03 From Bitcoin to DeFi, how can crypto solve currency issues in the world

18:27 STEP Finance’s vision for the next five years

21:20 Censorship resistance and layer 1s

27:11 Hackathon: what would you like to see created?

30:30 Thoughts on Rust and why it was the better choice for Solana

38:08 Why you can’t innovate in the traditional financial system

DISCLAIMER

The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kevin Rose - Partner at True Ventures Ep #44 May 10, 2021

Show notes

Kevin Rose is a partner at True and a serial entrepreneur best known for founding Digg and Revision3. Most recently, he founded Oak, a guided meditation app, and Zero, an app for tracking intermittent fasting.

00:08 – Introduction of Kevin Rose, Modern Finance and the story of Reddit vs. DIGG

06:04 – From DOS to Windows, where are we in the evolution of crypto

07:50 – Crypto is here to stay. Could we see countries getting into it in the future?

14:47 – The NFT craze

19:58 – NFT: dynamic art and encrypting mystery over time

23:08 – Blockchain is persistent and permanent; how will this impact NFTs in art and games?

32:49 – From investing into educating people on crypto

39:35 – Discussing the repercussion of Christie’s endorsement of NFTs

43:22 – Kevin Rose’s investing philosophy

49:34 – Kevin’s advice: test features

DISCLAIMER

The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jason Choi - General Partner at Spartan Capital Ep #43 May 03, 2021

Show notes

Jason Choi is a General Partner at Spartan Capital, one of Asia’s first crypto funds. As Spartan Capital’s first employee, Jason helped scale the fund from $9M to $200M within 3 years, and supported the launch of Spartan’s $50M DeFi-only venture fund to back world-class teams shaping the future of finance.

00:23 – Getting into crypto and about Spartan Capital

04:33 – How does Spartan Capital invests?

11:47 – Next wave: building for current users vs future adopters?

19:47 – DeFi and the yield farming phenomenon

30:36 – From CeFi to DeFi for the mainstream adopters

43:33 – The NFT craze and where it could lead us

51:37 – Thoughts on the next wave? DAOs? Social Networking?

DISCLAIMER

The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dan Gunsberg - Co-Founder of Hxro Ep #41 Apr 19, 2021

Show notes

We are excited to have Dan Gunsberg, Co-Founder of Hxro, sitting down with us for Episode 41. During this discussion, Dan talks about his history in traditional finance, how this experience guided him to building out Hxro, the importance of community, and the powerful disruptions he believes are going to happen over the next few years.

00:25 – Dan’s crypto story and what’s Hxro?

05:38 – Centralized crypto exchanges vs legacy exchanges

15:07 – Community capitalism

24:11 – Community building around projects

35:23 – Closing thoughts and what’s next for Hxro

DISCLAIMER

The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AlphaRay - Founder of Raydium Ep #40 Apr 12, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, AlphaRay discusses the origin of Raydium, working with Solana and FTX, fusion Pools, the importance of communities, and the future of decentralized governance.

00:25 - The story behind Alpha and Raydium

10:26 - What are Fusion Pools?

15:07 - Teaming up with FTX/Serum and being among the first to build on the Solana blockchain

19:29 - Solana communities

25:52 - Thoughts on future governance features

29:57 - Closing thoughts, what’s next?

DISCLAIMER

The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Santiago Santos - Partner at ParaFi Capital Ep #39 Apr 05, 2021

Show notes

Anatoly and Santiago sit down to cover the stages of crypto, the major benefits of decentralized finance, on-chain transparency, the future of decentralized collaboration, and plenty more. ☀️

00:31: Who is Santiago Santos, and why crypto?

09:07: At what stage are we in crypto? Are finance applications the equivalent of the internet in the 90s?

14:32: DeFi benefits: crypto lending, automatic investor profiles, transparency, and more

31:43: Is decentralization the future of collaboration?

38:45: Closing thoughts: porting vs. innovating. Stay open-minded

DISCLAIMER

The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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