Crypto, Fashion, and the Future of DeFi with Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams

Transcript

I think people may be wondering like why do we have a protocol designer and a fashion designer on stage together. >> I'll say something to him and he'll be like dude what the [ __ ] is a protocol? No one knows what that word means. >> You guys use so much jargon and so many abbreviations. >> Something that we always think about at Uniswap is how do we make what we do understandable to people. The mission of DeFi to me is about like making finance more accessible. >> I was the outsider going into Paris Fashion Week. I thought there's no way they're going to let me in. I'm going to be like a bull in a china shop. I'm going to be a sore thumb. People in crypto, maybe people in the world love an underdog narrative. The bigger you get, like you're just not going to

please everyone. We didn't get here by just doing the thing that made everyone happy the entire entire way. For crypto, part of what we're pioneering is like a meaningful distribution of value. >> That was beautifully said, though. [laughter] >> Did any jargon in there? >> Don't really know what it meant, but I'm I'm invested. [music] >> [music] >> Welcome to web 3 with A6 andZ. I'm Sonel and we have Hayden Adams, founder and CEO of Uniswap Labs and inventor of the Uniswap protocol and Colum Dylan, the multimedia [music] artist behind fashion darling and CFD award winner Kid Super.

This conversation was based on our founder summit event in October, but is more relevant than ever as the crypto industry focuses on mainstream applications and [music] users. As a reminder, none of the following should be taken as business, investment, legal, or tax advice. Please see azy.com/disclosures for more important information. [applause] Thanks for being here, guys. So excited to do this session. I think people may be wondering like, wait a minute, why do we have a protocol designer and a fashion designer on stage together? So, just off the bat, you guys did a collab together in celebrating pink. I don't actually want to know like how you guys met or any of that. I actually want to know what you guys learned from each other, like you know, coming from

different vantage points in doing that. Like what kind of brought you guys together, drew you together, like why do you love jamming with each other so much? >> For for me, um, one thing, and by the way, thanks for having me here. Great to be here. Uh, super fun. Um, you know, one thing for me that's been really interesting hanging out with Colum and the Kids Super team, uh, is they kind of like keep me in check on the things that I say that sound insane to people that don't work in crypto. uh where like I think that you know we spend so much of our time at these conferences and talking to each other um and then you I'll say something to him and he'll be like dude what the [ __ ] is a protocol like what do you mean a protocol? No one

knows what that word means. Um or just backstage two minutes ago he was like wait what is an L2? Um and I don't you know and it's and it's really good because I think that they're like such a creative team and they're like and column is like so creative and in um has this like really interesting way of thinking about things but it also helps like me realize when I'm you know it like in order to you know something that we always think about at Uniswap is how do we make what we do understandable to people? How do we make you know what we do like how do we have to like connect crypto it's been this like parallel economy this like siloed thing. How do we make that a thing that like more people use? And I think that like, you know, hanging out with, you know, going

beyond our like local industry is really important to that. And so I like, you know, something that I think that they that we have in common is that they also like to like really push out beyond their industry. Um, and do things that are like, you know, less uh, you know, you know, go kind of like beyond the fashion world, like dig into the tech world and other kind of interesting things. >> Yeah. Uh, one other like super last quick thing. I think that like we both kind of uh do this thing where uh we think like you know like a lot of the best ideas don't come from like this like planned out strategy.

It's I think something that we both do and they they do a lot is like wouldn't it be funny if we did you know like if we did acts were like you know for us you know it's like if we sold socks for them it's like you know uh if we put a soccer field on a rooftop in Brooklyn. >> Totally. Totally. I think also just on a sheer like we're similar ages, you're an entrepreneur. There was like this energy that I loved when we were collaborating and as he mentioned, I don't necessarily understand the most about crypto and you guys use so much jargon and so many abbreviations like everyone would know the abbreviations. But I think it was cool cuz one of the people that work at Kids Super is very into crypto. And I was like, if I could have a sitdown

conversation with Hayden on camera, maybe it could bridge the gap a little bit. But unfortunately, Hayden rambled for about 25 minutes and no one understood what he was saying. But we're still working on that. Um, but yeah, I think I think it's a a huge thing is like we're both trying things in different fields. We both started from kind of a college room dorm and I think to see where we've gotten is pretty exciting. And also we hang out kind of normally outside of this stuff and that's been cool as well. That's amazing. Well, you're holding back, Colum, because you were telling me, "Hey, I've been hanging out at this conference picking up on what Hayden was saying." And there are acronyms for things that don't need to be acronyms.

Yeah. Like tell us more. >> It sounds like really high-te stuff and then you just you like what's that mean? And it's quite simple and you're like, why did you put so many abbreviations? But yeah, I can also after watching the politicians on stage, I've been answering quite politically just [laughter] just tandem on a story about my life. Uh >> he threatened to do that to me and I was like don't do that. So a theme I'm hearing from you guys is that you guys are constantly evolving. You're scared of stagnating. You know, too many people are afraid of evolving and trying new things. Like this is a big important protocol. You're building a very strong brand. What do you tell people when they say well you don't need that like how do you measure that like is that really

necessary like what do you have a justification to like the business people or even to yourself >> yeah so I think that like the entire UNISO brand initially was actually inspired by a single photo of Italic uh where he's wearing this a few people in this audience will probably recogn he's like wearing this like full pink and purple jumpsuit with like a blue cat bag um in this like gorgeous backdrop of like the Greek you know island or whatever he's on and um I think that like part of you So like the mission of DeFi to me is about like making finance more accessible and I think that like the culture of finance is part of what makes it kind of exclusive and uh inaccessible.

>> Yeah. >> Um and so like a lot of like I think to you know for DeFi to make finance accessible we can't just make the like technology more broadly available. You have to make it like culturally and socially um more understood. And people have to feel like it's something that they can't just like know like they can't just technically participate. They have to feel like they can and they have to feel welcomed in. And so I think that like the kind of like the fun and the pink is part of that. I think that like uh you know to to some of what Colin was saying like just like the way that you talk about and the way that you frame things, right? That's where like the UNISOX project came from like when we you know the first thing that I did after raising venture capital and

forming a company was not build like the second version of the protocol that came after. Then we spent the first three months of our runway um making like tokenizing socks. And the idea of tokenizing stocks is that you know when people asked to me what you like what do you do with unis swap I kept having to be like well there's this like token called MKR and you can't buy it on Coinbase but you can buy it kind of made sense but like I kind of wanted to be able to go like oh actually you can just you can just buy socks on it and so we like spent three months making that happen and then you know for a while the way I would describe unis swap to people is like oh it's like a site where you can go to buy socks. So, it's just like

there's sort of just like how do you connect, you know, how do you make it feel more tangible? That's even the cloud. Not don't think we need to go into the details of it right now, but the cloud we're doing right now is like a coffee shop where you can go and you can buy coffee with crypto uh in Brooklyn and neither of us drink coffee, but it's like pushing the boundaries of of how people access and think about our products in a way that just like is like understandable, >> making it mainstream. That's so interesting. >> I think it's a super smart way to look at it. And I remember yesterday the question they were like how do you they asked the politicians like what's a blank page to describe? Yes. And he's thinking of good ways to tangibly describe crypto.

>> Yes. Like you don't have to just tell a story but you can actually show build something have something concrete. So I want to get a little specific and ask some very concrete questions. So one is on the theme of brand and marketing on the power of naming. So you named UniSocks and you have Ununice swap and I think I don't know if people know the backstory. You told me once that the backstory for the unicorn was, I think, based on an art tapestry. You should tell more about this. Like, do people know the story about the origins? This, >> by the way, the original name of Unisocks was going to be the New York Stock Exchange. [laughter] Um, and they wouldn't the lawyers wouldn't let me, so we called it Unisock.

[laughter] But, uh, yeah, the the uh the early imagery and branding of Uniswap was based on this um these tapestries that sit in the cloysters in >> upper west side of New York. >> Yeah, exactly. And uh it was like it was actually like a castle that that I think Rockefeller transported from Europe to New York and then moved these unicorn tapestries. Uh but um you know they're in the public domain and so we were able they're technically owned by the Met but they're in the public domain so we just kind of took them and we uh they have this it's an art style called meal flur which has these like which means thousands of flowers and it has like these unicorn tapestries with all these floral imagery. So we still use that today. Um >> yeah.

>> Yeah. Actually, the first time I met you, you were wearing the MA floor with like the floral tie with the unicorn, which is actually almost verbatim the unicorn tapestry, which I love. >> That was I think that was 5 years ago, and I have only worn a tie twice since then. >> That's only the unicorn tapestry tie. >> Well, Colum, in your case, so your show names, I don't know if people know this, are super thematic. So, here's some examples. I'm going to read them out loud. Bull in China. Everything's fake until it's real. It's still up in the air. Then you also had Running as Fast as You Can. Like, that's just some of the show names. Tell us about how you think about naming and why do you do these things like name them that way?

>> All of those are yeah they became well when you're doing a fashion show you have these very specific themes but for a lot of those I was the outsider going into Paris fashion week. I was a kid from Brooklyn who was screen printing in high school and so I thought there's no way um they're going to let me in but I'm going to be like a bull in a china shop. I'm going to break something. I'm going to be a sore thumb. And a lot of those fashion shows ended up getting kind of great reviews based on those concepts. Like the Bull in the China shop, they called it the breakout show of Paris Fashion Week.

>> Um, running as fast as you can was a hilarious one because a lot of the models ended up slipping. >> Mhm. >> And I at the end was like, you know, sometimes you slip and fall, but you got to remember to get up and run as fast as you can. And they thought the slipping was intentional. And so there's the names have helped a lot push the brand forward. So on the slipping, I have to ask, I have to probe. So there is this theme. It's actually pretty common in crypto too where spectacle is sometimes what kind of gets people's attention. It comes up in meme coins, comes up in other memes, other ways. It's great to grab attention. That is part of branding and marketing, but you also sponsor culture essentially like with what you're doing with your factory space.

Can you talk more about that and why you do that? And I guess I want to kind of get to this understanding. Well, we'll get here in a minute, but I want to hear your thoughts on sponsoring culture. So, I always had these physical locations since I turned my dorm room into a store. I always had all these people from college come to my dorm and buy from my dorm room. And then I got kicked out of my dorm. But I had this idea of, okay, if I can convert a dorm into a store, I can convert a store into a dorm. And so, I had this store that I lived in the back of in Brooklyn. And then I would let anyone sleep there. And so, I had a little recording studio in the basement and all this stuff. And it became this hub for creativity. And it

wasn't so much like, oh, this is going to end up being this success, but it ultimately led to a lot of the artists from the basement became superstars and they ended up wearing kids super and then it be it helped the brand. But for me, it was the same reason I'm here. I like meeting interesting people. I like working on cool projects and having a physical location kind of exponentially made that happen. >> That's great. I can attest to like I've been to their their studio and every time I go there I meet something like someone like really interesting or there's like some weird cool thing happening or >> Yeah.

>> But I have to ask like do you still let strangers like off and come in and hang out? >> I try to not. >> Yes. [laughter] >> But you know depending on how much crypto they have a little bit. >> So you know the reason I asked that question is whether you still let strangers do this and whether the model is the same is because there's this other theme that happens that I think will resonate for a lot of people in this room where you have a core community. This is very true of unis swap like the OG dgens and whatnot. Not that they're a homogeneous group but you know dgens and then you try to evolve your product and go beyond and some might argue you're quote selling out like how do you guys wrestle with that one?

>> Yeah I think that for me um people in crypto people in crypto maybe people in the world more broadly like love an underdog narrative. Um, and I remember in the earliest days, right, it was just like Uniswap versus Bankor was actually like the, you know, we were, you know, they had raised $150 million in a two-minute ICO and then we had raised, you know, $50,000 grant, um, from the Sing Foundation or 60K. And, uh, so people were like rooting for us. We were this underdog. the bigger that we just had to compare ourselves against different it was like almost like a wartime like we were like always fighting with the other decentralized exchange projects and people were rooting for us and and there was like everyone was like kind of championing it and then we like there was this like inflection point during DeFi summer where Unisw went from 10

million a day to a billion a day in trading volume and there was all these tokens launching and then Sushi Swap came out and the entire narrative from Sushi was actually like they're actually backed by these evil venture capitalist giants. Um you know and um you know no offense and um >> none taken >> you know and and they like kind of flipped the narrative and suddenly they were the underdog and they were like you know unis swap is is funded by venture capital. we are the community oriented project and and they were kind of their narrative and suddenly like but when we when I like kind of like fought back a bit or when I would argue with them um in the early days and I eventually learned not to but um you know when I would argue back with them you know people would get mad at me and people

would be like no they're the underdogs like you don't and that but then you but then you know if I was but at the time like know that I could compare myself against centralized exchanges >> yes and there you are still the underdog >> um but actually today obviously even like that level of like comparison people still you know because unis swap has gotten big enough, but like you know, we're we're the underdog again when we're fighting the US government, right? And so people, you know, some of our best comms day, like our best comm's day probably this year was when we had the SEC Wells notice. Um because people really do like love to root for an underdog. >> Well, that's actually the first time I've heard a very positive spin on a Wells notice. So, congratulations on that [laughter] >> and for sticking it out and rooting and

just sticking in there. Colum, in your case, is it selling out to take money? I think it's definitely a little bit of selling out, but even like me doing a crypto thing would be considered selling out. I would say >> I mean no offense again you guys are getting a lot of shots but I think it's what you for me the transparency of the brand has always I've always that's been what's been able like I did a Starbucks collab and that's like as selling out as you can get and especially since I don't drink coffee [laughter] >> and I had to be like ice spice latte my favorite. Um, [laughter] but that led to me like and they give you a

lot of money when you do that, but that allowed me um that allowed me to do a lot of creative things. >> And I've never gotten an investment from these evil investors that he's talking about. But um that allows me to not care so so much about >> certain financial decisions that I make and be truly um invested in like the creative pursuit. Starbucks, you know, these fashion shows that I described >> there's only one other Paris Fashion Week and they're invest there's I think I'm the only brand on Paris Fashion Week that has no investors.

>> That's amazing. I mean, the model that comes to mind for me is Phoebe Pho who went direct and went like she took a little money from LVMH's family office, but she's kind of doing her own thing, but in that case, it doesn't feel like selling out. So it felt like a positive thing in that case. >> Yeah. I mean also that Phoebe File has worked in such an institution for so long that she probably doesn't know how to bootstrap it either. That's another thing that's funny when you speak to these designers that have they're like, "Oh, you need 50 assistants and all this stuff." And so >> and you don't have that big a shop.

>> No. >> Yeah. >> Um but yeah, I think the selling out's a funny thing. I think you just have to be transparent about it. Like, yes, I got 300K, but I spent it on this fashion show. >> Yeah. Or you got to do what Hayden does. Fight back. >> Yeah. And I will say like, you know, you can't like you can't please everyone. Like, the bigger you get, like, you're just not going to please everyone. And so, um, I think for me, like, you know, people accuse us of selling out when we like do anything that involves change. And for me, like it's way scarier to stagnate um than it is to like, you know, to try to evolve. Um, and so, like, yeah, people don't like, you know, people people complained that we were announced that we're doing a chain like last week. Um but for us like you know

it would be you know way more selling out to like just like lock in and only do what we've done for the past you know like we didn't get here by just doing the thing that made everyone happy the entire entire way. So >> since you mentioned the chain unit chain I have to just ask this it's going to take a quick twist and a turn for a second. What is your vision like is it actually surprise some people in this room that you went with a more general purpose versus app specific. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like what was your decision and rationale and how you made that? I I think the funny thing with like general purpose and app specific is that like the fact that it's like a programmable EVM doesn't mean it can't be like a like you know when you

compare like I think blockchains are easiest to compare against servers. Okay. >> Right. And like you know you might have like a server that's mostly focused around running an app a single app or a specific set of apps but generally you still have these like they're like broadly programmable and right and like what is even like a unis swap focused you know chain even mean from like like you still need to have like you know for example unis swap v4 we're introducing all these like customizable ways you can create a market and you know to support all of that you actually needed to be a general purpose programmable thing. So I I think that the vision generally is like we need to scale blockchains. um we need to you know have chains that are focused around specific use cases and then we need to figure out how to

connect them to each other such that it feels like in the early days of Ethereum right we had this amazing user experience where it was less than 1 cent for every transaction and you could move in between applications like very seamlessly and the reason for that was because we were running every single thing on Ethereum on a single box and you can't do that that doesn't scale um and right and so you know good news is now we have more use cases and more applications and more transactions than you can run on a single box and so you need to scale and so what we're trying to do and one of the reasons I'm so excited for us to be stepping into this like arena or this space it kind of like we're going to be forced to grapple with the hard problems that hold us back and

you know so it's like uh you know how can you make it feel like it felt in the old days but in this new with this new new structure and I I think that like you know we're very focused on kind of being like a full stack team I think a lot of people in crypto like to choose this like very narrow sliver of a tech stack and say like we're going to focus all our efforts here we're like this specific infrastructure But sometimes I think where you have the friction points aren't within the layers but they're layers and I think that teams inp like go all the way from like a very designoriented consumer product all the way to low-level chain blockchain development and kind of every layer in between the APIs and the and the kind of all the different like standards for for

kind of connecting these pieces. And I think that like that will allow us to find the patterns that other people can adopt and then we can have like a more scalable >> That is so interesting. So I have a probe for both of you guys on this. >> That was beautifully said though. [laughter] >> Did any jargon in there? >> Don't really know what it meant but I'm I'm invested. >> So on this note of full stack design and this is a question for you too column because you have the Warhol factory like space. You don't have a collective kid super is you. But at the same time, can a collective and in the case of tech so in fashion >> painters >> Yeah. [laughter] can a collective design in fashion and in the case of tech open source is essentially a collective. How can you really go full stack and really

kind of control the design interface the stack? Like what do you really think like is that really can a collective design? >> It's a tough one. I think you do need like one kind of vision to follow so no one fights. >> Yep. >> Because I've done a lot of stuff where it was like we're all gonna get it and then no nothing gets done because there's no captain. >> So you need a captain of a ship. I think it's I think in the creative field it's almost even if the idea is bad not the best committing to an idea is more important than like talking so much about ideas.

>> Yeah. >> Um I don't know if that answered the question. >> It does answer the question. And you're saying there needs to be a captain at the helm and a collective can't design by itself. >> Yeah, you do any cuz I I mean I've done a lot of different worlds where I was creative director of different projects and just having someone where the yes or no and the the the focus to commit to something is super important. >> Yeah. What do you think? >> Um yeah, I I I think it's interesting. Um, I think in some ways they can, but I think that like it, you know, I I think that people in crypto to like do the crypto side of it like are a little bit too quick to try to like, you know, there's like these like values of decentralization.

>> Yes. >> Um, and they're important. They're real and they're especially important at the technology layer, but I think that they are a little bit less important at the like, you know, like vision product kind of thinking layer. And I think that like people in crypto are so quick to like want to, you know, like even like Ethereum Foundation has this like addition by subtraction philosophy which is real and there's like value to it but like sometimes it's like a little too subtracted. I think that like the more Vitalic like for example shares his opinion about where a theorem should go. I think the less people fight and argue and like you know like it came up with these like you know uh uh not to use some jargon but like a counter distraction proposal then everyone was fighting about what to do and then

Vitalik kind of came in and it was just like okay like he like came up with a new proposal. He had been in favor of one proposal and then other people were complaining about it. Um, and then you know there was a whole tension in the industry for like months or years on this like what to do and then Metallic just wrote this new proposal in like an afternoon put it out there and like everyone's pretty much on board with it. >> Yes. Great. That's super interesting. So I'm going to ask a specific question that's another point of commonality between the two of you which is the power of drops. So in crypto, you guys pioneered the airdrop and it's now become synonymous with crypto token launches and then the industry has seen a lot of extreme professionalization, airdrop farming, making it challenging for new tokens, new products to get

tokens into the hands of real people. Do you have thoughts on like what people should do when it comes to airdrops? And then Colum, I have a question for you about drops in fashion. >> Yeah. And uh by the way, I think that even our like kind of drop philosophy extends beyond air drops. like when we launch a product, we do try to go the extra mile to make it feel special. >> Um, >> airdrops in particular are really interesting. I actually love them. I think that uh but they're often done very poorly. When we did the unis swap airdrop, right, what we you know we did is we took there had it was two and a half years into the development of unis swap. It had been public and there were at that point over like a few hundred thousand people had interacted with the

protocol and we uh by head like what's a protocol? No. [laughter] >> There's no other word for a protocol. >> No other word. It's a protocol. Um but uh we had this moment where we sent every single person who'd ever interacted with the protocol uh with 400 uh tokens right and I think for me like a lot of crypto right it's about you know a fair distribution of ownership and value and I think that like the traditional world of of you know venture capital and tech like while I think that like like >> there's an investment of money and then people build something valuable um but the distribution of ownership and value is not proportional to the value created you know like like uh investors deserve you know a huge amount of credit for taking risk and for putting in But like you know when YouTube become is

mult worth tens of billions of dollars or or hundreds of billions of dollars like that value is like a huge amount of is created by the community and the the early adopters and the YouTubers and and they don't get a cut. >> That's right. And so to me like you know the thing that one of the things that makes crypto different and there's all these like legal challenges that other people talked about we don't need to get into now but like ignoring the legal challenges like I actually think it's like a better model to just have a more direct relationship with your users and more directly distribute value proportional to where it's created. Uh and so when you know when Sushi Swap happened um the narrative from Sushi Swap was like we're the more community oriented project uh we kind of you know and so you know this is a better

distribution of value but who was the distribution of value too it was actually SPF yield farming with customer funds and um you know a new people that were pouring in money but not and for me it was like well actually there's been like hundreds of thousands of people that have made this thing successful and so like the airdrop was a way to kind of give back to everyone that had helped make it successful along the way and actually have a better distribution of ownership. Um I you know we were talking actually with the uh the the AXI people who are here today and you know I think that uh there was like a community of um you know there was like thous you know many thousands of users in the Philippines and at the time of the airdrop it was like 1,200 USD I think

and it peaked out at a much higher number and every single you know one of them you know got uh got that value and for a lot of people it was like life-changing money and so all these stories came out about people that had like been involved in swap in the early days uh done various things and then they like received almost like a a meaningful not you A lot of the time you have like these like almost meaningless like when a company goes public they'll like do something you get a 50% discount on $200 or like you know you have these like very small things and I think that like for crypto part of what we're pioneering is like a meaningful you know uh distribution of value.

>> That's amazing. That's the best explanation and rationale I've heard for airdrops ever. That's so great. >> And then that's not always what you see in practice. Um >> in execution it doesn't What would you give if you had one piece of quick advice for people on how to do airdrops right like lightning round? What would you say? like just like think about what you're doing. Like like [laughter] when when uh when you know when when we did the Unisoft airdrop, we actually were worried that no one would ever be able to do anything like it again >> because uh no one could gain the Unisoft air drop because no one was expecting it. Because when we did it, it was like the first it wasn't truly the first of its kind.

>> Uh but it was, you know, there was like OMIO did a small air drop way back in the day, but it was ended up being a meaningless number. Uh and uh so we thought like well no one can replicate this uh and then everyone replicated the exact same structure but but what we said was also true which is like and it was because and everyone was gaming it right and so like >> you know like you just have to think about you know like >> yes we had the advantage of being able to do it with no one expected but like okay now people are expecting it you know think about things that you can't be gamed think about things that are meaningful versus today I think people kind of are a little bit lazy and they're like okay it's going to be gamed

but it gets it I think it's really fashion. Thoughts on the Supreme model? Netflix did drops of seasons of TV shows. Like do you think this works? I asked this, by the way, cuz it's actually relevant to a lot of people in the room from a branding and marketing perspective too. >> It's crazy that the street wear drop became like this world like everyone was copying it. The reason it was it happened was just because of like the cultural moments in Soho where everyone would line up.

>> Oh, I remember the lines. Yeah. >> So, they decided like, oh, we'll just do drops on Friday instead and it'll be more less chaos. And that just became this thing. But now, I mean, it's it's overdone and the hype around drops has died down and you see it across all brands. So, now there has to be something new. What is the next drop model because everyone started doing it. >> Do you have thoughts on that by any chance? I think the the next thing you have to do is just more, right? Like instead of it's a just a drop of clothes on Friday, you're having a class, you're having a performance, you're having a thing. Like as you were saying with the the big building that I have, like just getting people want more and expect more. I think now just dropping a t-shirt on a Friday isn't going to get

the >> the love that it once did. I went to their New York Fashion Week uh show and as an example. Yeah. And uh they did a it was like instead of you know like a runway they just had like standup comics come up and like you know do a comedy bit wearing their clothing. And to me that's like way more interesting than just watching a you know someone walk. Yeah. Totally. So in the last five minutes I just want to ask you guys some kind of rapid fire lightning round style questions. Um so another thing in common in the industry both fashion and tech and open source particular in open source it's a feature not a bug is copying thoughts good bad ugly >> fashion's actually hilarious where you can almost copy exactly and you can't and you can't

>> so no we get and when you were talking about the underdog stuff I used to always call out the big brands for copying me and then I was in the room with them and I'm like [ __ ] what do I say [laughter] I had a huge war with Jeremy Scott and then we were sitting next to each other and I was like, "Oh, this is so awkward." But yeah, I think you just have to constantly be like fashion is one of those things that never like you can't take a day off. You have to constantly be innovating and changing and transforming and also >> trends change. So that that gives you ch time to move and stuff like that. But yeah, copying is huge.

>> Yeah, I know. It's sad to see like the next day, literally the next day from a runway, if you go to Vogue runway, literally the next day you will see copies. It's so fast. It's so crazy how fast it can be. How about an open source? Like where's the >> I think that at this point there are probably literally tens of thousands of unis swap forks. Not [laughter] even like you know you you only hear about a few of them, but there's like there's been like many thousands if not tens of thousands of times that the unis swap uh code has been copied. um both the protocol but even like the uh you know our interfaces have also been copied thousands of times and uh for me I think that it's actually really interesting um you know when we created this like swap interface it like it was you know back

then they're actually that interface didn't really exist and it's kind of now the interface to most DeFi applications um I think for us it's like we learn a lot from the people that copy us because sometimes they copy but then add a little bit of a twist um right they they sometimes they don't sometimes they copy and it's just boring u me and and Cal who's our head of design are always on the hunt for for like unis swap forks that have done something interesting. >> That's so cool. >> And occasionally it happens and you know people like do like a slightly nuanced take and we learn from it and then we like integrate it back into our own product. Um so I think that that's useful. I think that like it's generally like it's you know forking and copying is is a very good thing. Um

>> I think that um you know you can't like that's kind of the point I think is that like you know people can build on top of what you've done. If someone can do it better great. I I think to for me the way that you fend off, you know, like if someone is copying you, you know, then they're like behind you, right? So you have to you can't you can't get complacent. Oh, people are copying me, so like I get to just chill and you know, I'm clearly the best and everyone's copying me. You almost have to be like, oh, people are copying me. That means I have to have a chance to run ahead, right? And that's kind of what happened with like unis swap v3 is like everyone had forked us v2 and while they were all forking unisoft v2 and trying to go their v2 forks, we shipped

unis swap v3. That's amazing. Um and then like you saw V3 we did have this like code license thing for a period of time and you know we thought that like people would figure it out before then but 2 years to the date after the you know the day the BSO license expired on V3 um you know all the people who copied us on V2 started copying V3 and then you guys and now we're working on V4. You just you can't get complacent just because people are copying you. But it's like it's but you should learn from it and you know use it as a time to >> I love that answer. So last question.

Both fashion and tech there's cycles of innovation. There's cycles in fashion. One day you're in, one day you're out. Like there's constantly cycles. How do you guys either plan for the future, stay optimistic? Any parting words? >> I I have a friend I was always saying he's a musician and he was like, "I'm going to get 10 Grammys." And we're like, "No, you're not." [laughter] >> Okay. >> And and he's like, "But for me to get 10 Grammys from where I am right now is actually easier than where I started to where I am right now." And I think the optimistic thing is like >> look how far we've gotten. And yeah, there'll be downs and ups and downs, but like if we can get here from where we started, we can go to wherever we want to go. So >> that's that's so amazing.

>> Yeah. I think it's I think that's actually kind of a a similar like people are often like oh my god like I don't know it's it's like crypto markets like crypto has this thing where the markets are like this and then like the and then the tech is like this and and you know there's like a steady constant drum beat of progress and improvement. We even saw that in like the state of crypto, right? You know, there's this like steady drum beat of progress and then people are like, "Oh my god, everything's amazing. Oh my god, everything's terrible. Oh my god." And you just like have this like crazy like volatility and you like you just have to kind of like ignore that. Um I think and for me I'm like usually happier during the like the bare markets than the bull markets personally. Why?

>> Um why? because like you know you get some peace and quiet and you get to like focus on building cuz cuz the actual thing that progresses the drum beat of progress is really hard work and focus and it's harder to do that when everything everyone is going crazy and everything's pumping. And so for me like you know it's it's partially about just like having long-term conviction in the value of what we're doing and then just focusing on that and and kind of the noise sort of drowns out a little bit. And I I I have started to appreciate bull markets a bit just because it's like it you know does bring in funding and it brings in various things. Um but for me there's like so much to do that like I'll you know if we have another three-year bare market and that gives me

three more years then like great like you know we'll we'll we'll make a lot of tech progress in that point. >> Both of you guys it sounds like it's not just like cycles but like steps upward. Both your answers like that's the common theme and I think that's a very great note to end on. Let's thank Colum and Hayden. Thank you everyone. >> Thank you. [music] [music] >> [music]