FAIR TOKEN LAUNCHES with Simon Chadwick of Eclipse

Transcript

welcome to the interrupt today my guest is Simon Chadwick he's the CEO at Eclipse FY it's a fair decentralized and compliant token launch platform in today's conversation we'll discuss different ways that projects can launch and issues with existing token launch platforms we'll talk about Eclipse FY and how it's doing things differently and what projects gain from using Eclipse FY things like access to K's and marketing and a community of verified users with reputation scores we'll talk about their liquidity Hub their really interesting ZK kyc implementation and why they decided to build on Neutron I'm also dying to find out why he thinks airdrops are not always in the best interest of projects and users so

I'm traveling this week and I'm away from my home studio so please accept my apologies for the bad audio quality but before we get started make sure to subscribe and hit the like button to get notified when new episodes drop every week remember none of what we discussed here on the en investment advice and if you enjoy this content consider sticking with us we're validating on OS Quicksilver and osmosis just look for interop and the active set my guest Simon Chadwick is coming up next right here on the [Music] interop I'm here with Simon Chadwick CEO

at Eclipse fi they a token launch pad platform that is innovating on all fronts and so today we're going to be diving into token launch pads understanding how they work and how eclipse is innovating in this space hey Simon thanks for joining hey good thanks for having me so you know how long have you been in crypto and how did you decide to you know Focus your time and attention on building Eclipse F I'll give you the short cuz I could probably BL on around getting in crypto but I've been in the space uh since 2016 I I was exposed to bitcoin on early days I remember actually uh mining uh being in a mining pool for Bitcoin on on my computer like way way way back but then

I uh back then didn't really make enough money at the time for me to kind of really uh kind of stay interested and then you know obviously everything happened came back in 2016 went through 2017 2018 run um I have a funny story I like to say uh where my portfolio was you know way up and then um it started to come down and so I booked a monthong trip to the Himalayas where I did touch by phod for enti month just to hope that my bags would be back up by the time I finished the trip to find that the market had tanked even further so fun stories went through you know um 2019 2020 then into defi summer um you know got got quite involved in def5 summer I got quite interested in education um I

really love to break down complicated topics ICS and I was always always had a bit of a knack for like taking maybe something that uh others couldn't explain super simply and breaking it down into its like core why or its core um workings to be able to explain it to people so I got really interested in that um actually ended up building the education for the ter ecosystem so tfl I was working with a with a team in the cosmos ecosystem and uh terraform Labs uh essentially funded a large amount of money to an ed to a um animation company and I was working with that animation company to build out videos for the ecosystem and the projects so that was kind of uh my thing on on terror I was involved with a with a decentralized exchange and things and that didn't

really go as uh to plan as I anticipated um you know was supporting what whever I could but uh it didn't quite quite make it when uh you know the terror collapse happened I got personally took a pretty big hit financially I was very Overexposed to Terror ecosystem and anchor and everything going on there um but I was very keen to kind of sink my teeth into something new and uh not you know you know I I wanted to to keep building and keep kind of being in the def5 space and innovating um and wasn't really keen on um you know kind of just taking the taking the hit and then running away with you know running with the hit um so I I actually there was a there was a protocol that was building on terror um that was a Launchpad and I was actually helping advise uh for this

for this Launchpad and when the terror collapse happened the the kind of guy running it just sort of vanished um and so I kind of organized to take over and it wasn't the best time to be building a lach P I'll be honest but there was at that point it wasn't quite a bare market yet we just taken the hit and I was talking to a lot of projects in the cosmos ecosystem and we were on the back of this aird drop fatigue thing that had happened like back then there was actually a lot of air drops and we noticed how what happened on in Tera similar thing happened where projects were airdropping and there was a bit of airdrop fatigue that had happened where every airdrop was getting damped and it kind of went from Air drops are great to like air drops are not so great and that

had kind of become the the I guess the cycle and I was talking to like the IC Builders program they're like there's a lot of projects are interested in launch pad I talked to projects so there was kind of interest and there was no launch pads in Cosmos so like okay stream swap wasn't around there was kind of just osmoses lbps and that was it and so like okay C's an opportunity here so started to kind of really dig into like uh how we'd build a launch pad for Cosmos um Market got worse realized that you know as the market gets worse people stop launching and so became very difficult to build a launch pad in that market but it was a great learning opportunity around okay while there's no launches happening how do we build how do we learn more about the industry how do we

build the foundations and how do we prepare for the next run and build something in the cosmos or or build a product that uh is you know actually helping to innovate on to token launchers and not not just innovate but improve that industry so that when the market comes and launch a start again we're you know well positioned so that was really the goal and was kind of suffering through that bare Market to really position and do that um and uh yeah it just really learned so much about token launchers did did a lot of BD talked to you know hundreds of hundreds of VCS talked to a lot of projects and really uh I guess started to build our community and sort of build our positioning and solidified our positioning through through that bare Market to what eclipse is now so that's how I kind of got into that and I got

driven a lot like there was so many opportunities in the bare Market to actually throw in the towel to change products or to kind of put on pors or do this sort of stuff but there was kind of this driving factor of there's still issues in the industry around token launchers and everybody I'm talking to so many projects who say the same thing talking to so many people that saying the same thing but no one's solving it properly so that was a big drive to just go if no one if I don't solve it who else is going to so that really kind of pushed through a lot of those difficult times yeah that's an interesting story and uh yeah I think anytime someone tells their their Tera collapse story you know it always uh brings me back to to the moments when when Terror

collapsed and everybody I think remembers you know where they were when they heard about it and you know what was going through their minds and and actually there's sort of a bali connection for me there as well cuz you live in Bali on the day before Tera collapsed we were like packing our bag I'm sorry on the day Terra collapsed we were packing our bags to to go to Bali and uh and and it collapsed and you know the price of US was unpegged and I was sort of wondering like okay what do I do so so I got on the plane and I thought all right like I'll I'll deal with this when we get to Bali and by the time got the Bali like most of it was gone so that was my that was my uh my my uh my sort of airplane ride to Bali it's like

okay what's going on like what should I be doing now and like when we when we got off in Singapore like everything was up it was so stressful I remember that like week was was rough I actually kind of had a hangover from it because I didn't stop through that period because it was just like you know saw so many people kind of in shambles and everything and and I was working within a a Dap as well and the team was kind of distressed and everything and so it was just so much like damage control but also supporting everyone else around that didn't really ever I don't think I've really taken a break since the Terra collapse I never had kind of the time to actually ever stop since then so since then it's just been this just giant Sprint that's never gone there was

never ever time to process it properly to go oh I just lost a load of money and sorry about the language I know if I could say that on the podcast I be it out uh but yeah like there was never that time and so uh I think it was very interesting it was very interesting as well just thinking back like even even when we're in the terco system like I was working within a within a a project called Loop and you know it was it was very interesting to be exposed to the the being in a team within the Euphoria of a bull market because you had kind of a team who had potential but was maybe making not the right decisions um but had a ton of funding because that market was just euphoric and any team could get funding and it was interesting

that any team that kind of came sort of sort of started around the end of the ball Market didn't necessarily need to have the right things in place to succeed so you saw a lot of teams that were like building a lot of things they didn't maybe have proper marketing they didn't have proper uh project managers they didn't have proper like structures devs were really expensive so maybe they didn't have like top tier devs and it was really interesting to kind of see that you you could kind of throw spaghetti at a wall and it would stick for a while but when the music stopped you really found out who was like who were builders that had the procedures and the operation and everything in place to succeed and real companies verus guys that had managed to raise a ton of money um in a market and were

kind of running off funds and running off kind of this euphoric was very interesting to see that well it was very interesed to see it was interesting to be a part of a team and and and kind of see the downfall of that um towards like coming into a bear and having to build and bootstrap to a bar Market when you didn't have tens of millions of dollars to build you pretty much had nothing to do it and you have to kind of go through and build up and grind with very little and realized like okay this is how we build up the marketing this is how we build up BD this is how we do things and properly structuring it and those Builders become the really good Builders when you go into the ball because you know they've gone through the they've gone through the mud they've realized

like how you build a team hiring the right people putting together the right Partnerships how to deal with centralized exchanges everything and when they go into the bull they're such they're so battle hardened by that but I think I think it's super powerful so the the last bow was you mentioned like it was characterized by just an abundance of air drops I think there's a lot of air drops now as well you know we're coming into a cycle now where you know there's tons of aird drops on uh I mean there's there's been a few air drops on on Celestia um Adams holders are being air dropped and I think there's this uh there's this expectation that there will be a lot more air drops especially with Celestia Dimension and all these new

projects that that are you know gaining Blue Chip status um what what do you think will characterize the next cycle in terms of how tokens are launched and distributed in communities so I mean I'm mixed on airdrops right I I do see their merits and they've obviously been successful ways to launch but also I think there's a trap sometimes comparing a Celestial or a dimension of first movers to something that happens in a month's time and we're already seeing that fatigue and transition where now we're getting points and we're getting like farmers and we don't really yet have retail back in the market it's still the same it's the same people in the market like there's maybe a bit more that have come in but it's for the most part it's it's just kind of this cycling

happening um so I think like I think air drops will be a thing for you know the next couple months and then we'll go into like maybe fatigue where people like let's say you've got 20 projects or 30 projects launching people stop like caring about the airdrops anymore they'll hold one two three of the strongest Air drops and then start selling the rest or forgetting about the rest cuz just too much it's it's an over kind of an overload I think we'll start seeing idos in some capacity come back but I think it will change um I'm hoping like I want it to change and this is kind of what we're working on we're seeing more of a Resurgence of Ico mentality coming back in some capacity so you'll notice this with u a couple players popping up like coinless is

ramping up their launchers you're seeing adelphie um has talked a lot about like iOS we're seeing a couple other projects in eth to pop up um lbps will will do their research but they're having a bit of pain right now so liquidy bootstrapping pools are having a little bit of pain as we go into theoric phase they suck up a lot of liquidity and when there's not enough retail to um to essentially uh push the price after the the the LBP then what ends up happening it sucks in a ton of demand during the LBP and then afterwards the price just tanks and so it's been causing a lot of well I'll get into this a little bit later on in the call but we're seeing a bit of this happen at the moment um I like air drops for a purpose um one of

the projects that we're current ly sort of uh working closely with incubating is called bonus block and their whole focus is on actually um Quality user marketplaces so creating algorithms for how to kind of create a user Persona um so essentially like how do you from taking all this onchain data how do you figure out who a user is an ideal user is and how do you target them so I'd love to see air drops go in that direction which are kind of very much about like um like a Facebook ad not not so much but like your you're kind of okay these are users that we want um but there there's a few issues that I still see one of them is very much on the metric farming a lot of projects are very much using this to kind of using farming and sibles on purpose to build

up their numbers so they can raise from VCS or inflate the numbers but that doesn't necessarily translate into kind of real value added at the end of the day it's all vanity metrics so yeah it's interesting but I think it'll run for a little bit and then I think we'll see kind of the next kind of phase of how things are launched so let's get into it like you know you've already described some of the different Lin methods let's let's perhaps uh stick on that for a bit and you know can you go into detail as to what have traditionally been the ways tokens have launched and what are the benefits and sort of fallbacks of these you know different methodologies for launching tokens yeah look I think there's advantages and use cases for each of the different mechanisms and

they typically either cycle or they they uh are good for someone specific right right that every project does have different needs so I mean there was obviously the early days we had icos which were icos essentially like an early token sale um where you have uh you're selling directly to the community prev VCS um raising an amount of funds and then you know building the project or not building the project uh and then you know launching your token which was kind of actually how some of the big boys were kind of run like the Adam and eth and uh but there was they also came with a lot of there was not much framework for assessing this and there was a lot of scams and so probably out of the huge number of iOS only a couple kind of got ahead um those can be great

basically it's like send crypto here expect token maybe pretty much right which if you don't have any kind of uh box to to process like how that is um whether the Project's delivered or not then you end up with issues because the project could just run with the money and who's going to hold them accountable right like an angry Community maybe but um there wasn't necessarily a lot of vetting a lot of like due diligence done and even the best due diligence in the world like a VC knows that there's uh you might invest to cost 10 projects and maybe you know two of them will do well and then a couple of them may flop right so every VC as you know is structured differently but they'll have like a risk profile for this community aren't necessarily across this as much right

like they're not experienced with investing so that that can cause issues where you know maybe they invest in you know 20 projects they're not doing their own due diligence and then you know the you know 18 of their projects don't don't end up performing and that's a problem so yeah and then maybe they get rich off the too that that kind of happens so that was you know icos then you went into you know you had IOS as well um which were initial exchange offerings I would say that I coinless is kind of a was it IO mixo platform uh binance launch pad is like iOS uh which are beneficial but they can also those can be heavily predatory so you know obviously you have coin list and binance as those primary target but if you go to some of these alternative IO platforms they're going to take a pound of Flesh

and they'll typically have terms like you've got to U sustain 5x price or you've got to do X like there there's a lot of things that happen behind the scenes that people aren't privy to which are not necessarily good and sometimes they'll take a large amount of tokens they'll dump those tokens on the market so you know the advantages and there a lot of exposure that comes with these iOS to retail but they're not always the best because they don't always have the project um they they sometimes do you know what some of these centralized exchanges do behind the scenes some of these things can kind of happen behind closed doors which um isn't always the best so that can be an advantage but it also means that you're kind of got a tradeoff um then you had Ido platforms that came along and I mean there was

there's a couple there you had like the balance to lbps and idos but I'll cover idos um idos were kind of hot in the last bull market um and and they were kind of sometimes a good model but they also caused their own issues because lack of quality control um and it was this is where greed came in these audio platforms if you ran an Ido platform you had the ability to make so much money in a short space of time that it incentivized like this greed kind of behavior and these projects could launch with good Market an Ido platform could have good marketing and launch a project that was crap just Market it well would pump and they'd make a ton of money right so an AIO platform is like a token sale like an Ico or like an IO but it's done typically right before the project

is launched and it's a token sale from the community so um essentially it's like you know the platform um has you know 200k allocation in next project and then the community participates typically the focus on idos is less about Capital raising sometimes it it can be a mixture of you know raising funds sometimes there's also a marketing tool it's it's a place where where communities can come and go hey we want to participate in the launch of a project um and we know that these guys have done their due diligence in this project and I'm going to go purchase tokens so it's not quite an airdrop it's it's the focus isn't always really on Capital raising but it is really more of a marketing tool for kind of getting projects exposure and announcing them to the market um they have a lot of problems because sometimes the people

behind the Ido launch pads don't do their due diligence or they're selling projects as being better than they actually are um or they're orchestrating things like editing the tokenomics so that they low floats and so the token price goes up and there's a whole bunch of like I guess mechanisms and things that happen the last cycle we saw a lot of uh pads that would start a launch pad and then they would after two months they would kind of leave it and start a new one cuz there was like ways that they could cycle and they could actually make more money by just as soon as the reputation died they moved on to the next right and so the reputation for these pads have been quite scoured over time because it's been run by really good marketers so it's been like really strong marketers that are just kind of

like extracting value um and it's been hard for projects if you got a quality project going to one of these pads like you're like well we want we're legit Builders we don't want to have this kind of like clown show where we get dumped by market makers and stuff um and then you moved into to like a whole range of different mechanisms like lbps lbps were good for a while but they're not great for retail cuz retail don't understand them you know it's it's an imbalance pool that you know uh like kind of drop it's it's programmatically dropping over time and people can kind of buy as it goes down and and sometimes you know retail gets freaked buying into lbps as they see a just a chart go down and they can absorb a lot of uh sell you know they can absorb a lot of pressure

because you know they're not capped and so people can just buy as much as they want and that edits it and then you end up raising $10 million and then then add way too high of a valuation um other mechanisms I really love the lock drop in LBA that was devised by um uh by dely Labs on Terra and we're going to actually look to bring that back out in some capacity doesn't work in every cases but we really like that as a mechanism but I'll leave it over to you I'm sure you've got more questions I've kind of gone on ramp but there was millions of different ways to launch and they all Case by case depending on the project yeah thanks for that and and I think there's another sort of Dimension here which we haven't talked about which is you know they the the kind of

centralized platforms versus more like decentralized platforms for um for token launches you know T typically which which have been better for for users and for projects and where the uh you know what what can go wrong with each of these cases so centralized platforms are still a leader like if you look at the amount that an IO platform can raise like a coin list or a binance notch pad it's still significant significantly higher some of it's the Legacy element so they've been around since you know 2020 or earlier right and so they have built out these communities these well circles these networks but also like the access to get in is a lot easier the moment you we currently the infrastructure for for defi sorry has

still been quite CLI key and this is the reason why centralized exchanges still have more volume and more users than defi does in some capacity right so like a binance still is is commanding more volume and more um I guess more retail than than you know a deck on a specific chain um and so it enables it kind of they're still winning at that game because you know to make a coinless account and funded and everything is significantly easier and they can launch a variety of different um I guess chains on that platform and you know when you come to defi it's like okay cool you're going to do the raise on mainten eth and pay a ton of gas that's where the money is or you can go to these chains but then you're kind of fractured between different chains for for fundraising and

participation so that cross chain piece and the the entry barrier has definitely made that a lot harder uh I do like the thing that can go wrong with centralized exchange is you don't or centralized platforms you don't really know what's going under the hood for both the projects and the the and the participants like because it's lacking that onchain element which is a big part of what crypto is about how do you not know that someone is getting in at a cheaper price than you or that someone is kind of buying up bags or that this is specific behaviors happening as you launch like you you don't really have a way of verifying that so that's where think I I really love the idea of this moving on chain and moving towards more transparency where token launches especially such a space for people to extract value if done poorly that this

should all be done transparently on on chain and I think with the you know the infrastructure moving the way it is we should be getting to the point where that can all be the similar things can be recreated on offchain on chain sorry so so I guess it's also with with centralized exchanges there's some amount of you know maybe legitimacy or or regulatory um uh regulatory wrapping right where you can perform have like users perform kyc and that's probably more difficult or perhaps even impossible up until now I know we'll talk about that because you've built something around this but U much more difficult to do sort of kyc or at least anonymously with a decentralized platform you know typically H how does

this play out for projects like is it you know has it been a significant part of like a Project's um you know uh when projects are choosing platforms you is kyc and having the ability to operate in somewhat somewhat compliant manner uh a big part of decision making yeah it is and this is where it also gets interesting there's multiple layers of this right and it makes a lot easier now that we have like mic and and specific Frameworks for regulation which make it a lot easier to actually for teams to read into that regulation have lawyers that are I mean as you probably know in the space you talk to three lawyers you get different adsets right so having these Frameworks make a lot easier on issuing tokens and and

distributing tokens uh kyc is an important part and I know there's a lot of crypto people that are very against it and there's reasons why like I I see how kyc is laid out in the space and I and I totally agree why people are hesitant to give out their data I mean people don't know that even on centralized exchanges when you do kyc there's there's often times like room for them to sell that data to other exchanges and the chance of you end up with your passport on the black market or something is pretty high like even we used you know many kyc providers in the past and if you log into the back offices of everyone that did the kyc you can actually see all the passports it's terrible like know like someone who's got no clearance to have that data of all these people has got access to like

everybody's private information right it's it's terrible right so um that that's one um you know there the traditional kyc and there's been kyc providers in crypto but it hasn't really been I I I don't I understand the hesitation why so many people are not wanting to give out their data and that's a hesitation for users as well as projects like that have the issue of of you know potentially selling their tokens to us investors which some projects just kind of go ah we don't care but the the ramifications of that can be quite high if you don't if you if you're not following the right rules so um I think for us so we this came about through conversations with dely Labs we actually went into the hackathon um and built out a prototype we we won um uh we W open price pool in the hackathon the

cosmos hackathon that they did working with the hypersign team on on this we kind of delve out the model for a onchain you know zik kyc um I guess Launchpad afterwards we ended up connecting through Delphia with a team called ZK me um which is a is a team that's been building these solutions for multiple chains for some time and they're kind of getting a lot of like growth and traction essentially they've built out uh the they've built up ZK uh kyc which enables for um Anonymous kyc Solutions so whenever you go and do the kyc through this solution you're never actually giving out your passport to a third party um no one it's never touching hands with a third party ever um and so people can do kyc without

knowing while knowing that their passport isn't going to some you know someone that they don't know or third party that may um kind of mess with that mess with that data or sell it so that's been powerful um there's still kind of limitations still to this even with the kyc because we could do KC AML for example is slightly different like AML is still very hard to do in a fully Anonymous way like you limit the Privacy as much as possible but there is some level of like exposure of checking that has to happen um so I believe ZK has got privacy preserving AML and that one's not full Anonymous so whenever you bring in the AML component it's pretty much impossible to do with full ZK proofs but the kyc can be full done with ZK proof which checks for um you know the users

that the user is a real user so it's great for for CBL and it checks jurisdictions as well so it's able to check like is this person in the US is this person in X so I think that at least the kyc tool can be useful for jurisdiction control and it can be useful for things like um sibles like is is or cyol like is this person in the US or is this person in Europe or wherever interesting yeah i' love to dive into that a little bit later in the show um so yeah how is how is Eclipse doing things differently and you know what is the the kind of vision for Eclipse yeah so we got a couple things that we're doing differently and there's a bit of experimentation that's happening which I love to do um but the the core concept and the core um I guess Focus for us is

to if you like is to take that coin list and how do we build a coin list that's on chain right how do we build a large platform that can facilitate uh quality token launchers and be a place where Pro where you know when the community comes to there they know that the projects coming through are going to be High Caliber well backed um you know uh good teams and you know when they want to kind of participate in launchers they know that the the due diligence has been done but we want to bring that and kind of bring that on chain so it's it's a decentralized platform that facilitates high quality token lachers now the the big vision of the driver behind eclipse is around the trust and transparency piece which is huge because we've been in the space for a long time and we've

seen the levels of support offered to projects the um the I guess the the predatory nature of what happens in some of these launch pads and I can I unveil the curtain a bit I don't want to completely crap on the industry but I could go on about that but like the number of like back door deals and Market maker deals sex deals um Fe structures like things that are super anti- projects um they're not good for Builders and they're not good for the community that goes on is is rampid and projects some projects suck it up because they're like weighing up okay we get this marketing you know this marketing buildup effect uh from or Community acquisition effect from being on this platform but I have to pay these high fees so kind of what is the you know the trade-off and some go with it

and end up getting absolutely screwed right and the communities get screwed without knowing it um so we've seen this happen a lot and a lot of platforms that are not necessarily um they're kind of Lawless right they you know they they don't follow the rules that the way they Market is not great um and we really want to kind of build a bit of a Bastion that doesn't do that a Bastion for a projects to come that we like actually supporting the projects that we're listing we're doing out proper due diligence on the projects coming through and ensuring that it's not just uh metrics or you know tokenomics but we're looking into you know things like you know product Market fit competitors products like Risk engines for money markets like we have our head of DD is incredible on that front like really digging into like the meat of those

protocols and ensuring that it isn't just a mark a marketing and hype play um but then also like creating a structure where we're able to build a long-term sustainable community that we're not you know extracting value from and actually having more reasonable um I guess like fees and structures for the projects coming through so that we're not just trying to kind of flip and create I guess cash grabs for for these things so I guess it's the vision I mean there's a lot to it and you talked to a lot of projects and and it becomes like very clear as far as differentiators there's a couple cool things that we're doing so uh one of them is really we we're working on pushing the boundaries around like the cross chain element as well um we've we're working closely with hyperlane at the moment for uh cross

chain deployment we want to simplify this cross chain ux as much as possible so that uh you know participation becomes a bit more sexlike so you know trying to deal with some of the issues of like fractured you know having a launch pad that's on five different chains and having to make ass users Bridge we've been working with a team as well on the early stages of account abstraction so how in the future can we make this look as much as possible like a web to experience for users so that we can actually onboard users from Sexes and you know the coinless types of platforms um you know the next element that we're going down the direction of is also around bringing out a couple different launch mechanisms so uh lock drops and lbas we want to kind of bring in a couple different options for

Builders and different like not trying to pigeon hole everyone into one box of like you have to launch this way but but instead offer opportunities and the last piece that we really uh and we can kind of touch on this later in the show is focusing more on being uh like a liquidity Hub than just the launch platform so this this comes into monetization but it also comes into how do we attract and drive liquidity into the ecosystem so for this launch P to happen it needs users it needs high quality projects and it needs like liquidity right so um you know kind of coming up with we've got governance aggregator on top of asort and the goal is like how do we actually funnel liquidity and kind of concentrate a volume liquidity users and projects into kind of that Hub so yeah there's there's

a couple things happening for sure so what do projects that launch on Eclipse by end up gaining from using the platform I mean and you know maybe this is a good time also to talk about the uh process for listing um a token launch on Eclipse fire for sure I mean there's a couple things and it depends on the stage of the project like some projects come in you know they're they're ready to launch they've got the community they're they at a good state and they're looking to kind of maybe diversify that community so they they want to they want to go launch on a couple launch pads because there's a couple different pockets of communities and they're wanting to maximize their exposure so that's typically going to be a lot less uh Hands-On in terms of support we provide and um essentially what they're looking

for is is a as a new community to tap into right they're looking for more exposure they look to raise you know a small amount of funds which will be to kind of usually bootstrap liquidity or maybe extend Runway sometimes they've got like big backers and so the the fundraising element is secondary um but the the main bid is marketing they're getting exposure to a whole new community which is the community of eclipse f um besides from that like the projects that we're currently bringing through like we're providing a lot of Hands-On support and we've provided support to a lot of projects across the cosmos um I've been working closely with with a couple these projects on a whole variety of different verticals from you know tokenomics to like fundraising and VCS um you know Cal navigating centralized exchanges and market makers like there's so many different types of

market makers out there um some are like they all they all got their tradeoffs there's a lot of them that they're kind of shady and most of them to be honest with you and like navigating that's not easy and if you sign the wrong deal you could end up hurting yourself so just like helping them navigate that centralize exchanges which ones to go for listing strategy like um you know like how do you kind of pick which sex to go on how do you even get into that centralized exchange do you go on four centralized exchanges or do you go on one like and how do you get the connections into them right or the process for going through it so supporting on that front supporting on like VCS uh C Wells as well like um like how do we structure like so you can

onboard kws without paying out of your teeth or without ending ending up with too much sell pressure so just kind of structuring that uh how to get kwells that aren't boded like how to get the right guys that going to help build your community uh and and a whole variety of different like I guess like verticals are things that we've been supporting projects with but the biggest piece is obviously community and marketing and exposure which is really like how do we take the project from you know build a really good product um and then they want to kind of build up their socials build up the the community and and the user base so that's really the that's really the main advantage as far as like what the process looks like um DD is the big first process so we'll we'll typically uh depends on how the project

comes in like whe they go through an application form or they get an introduction we'll go into like collecting a very like light first touch thing which will go through kind of tokenomics when they plan to launch a bit about the product a bit about the team just kind of light touch um then we go in in the team and we look at the deck we look at the the white paper we do kind of our first stage of DD um sometimes a second stage and then you know if that passes through our stages we'll you know we'll go on we'll jump on a call we ask more questions and then we've got like a kind of a final DD stage where we've got um you know a head analyst who's got like insane amount of experience across every a lot of different vertical and we'll kind of dig

really deep into it and if everything kind of checks out like sometimes is you know some things that need a bit of work we'll kind of you know work with the project on kind of resolving some of that um but it dep if the Project's way out of our scope like if it's you know um we don't think they they're competitive enough in the niche that they're in um will likely like pass on that or recommend to someone else um but we're typically like yeah quite chicy with the projects that we ring through and then you know depending on where the projects at there's different support that we can kind of help um in terms of uh connections or or supporting in different areas cool and so from the uh from the project perspective what does that what the what does the actual um sort of launch look like and what are

the different launch mechanisms that you support currently we have currently we have Ido and we also have an LBP but we haven't rolled out the LBP just yet as we don't think the LBP is a good right now don't think it's the best mechanism just due to uh just the Dynamics of the market um but uh you know the goal for q1 Q2 is to bring out the lock drops and lbas as well as an alternative mechanism which will be suited won't be suited to every team but there's a few teams that we're talking to that is suited to it's uh lock drop is where um essentially you for example you've got a money market or you've got a uh sometimes a pers it enables you to kind of do an airdrop but based on Val future value add to the protocol so let's say you go hey we want

to distribute our token to everyone that locks you know uh this asset in our protocol which enables you to kind of tie users towards like token distribution which is a great mechanism and then the LBA is an auction mechanism for determining U value uh like determining the uh I guess the price um price discovery of the token that's it's quite it's quite intricate it's quite cool I really like that mechanism I think it needs a bit of tweaking um I I there was a paper somewhere in the in the like if be working on on a 2.0 version but that's kind of be pushed to the back burner for a little bit of like how do we kind of ensure that in periods of over Euphoria it doesn't end up out of control um but the main mechanism right now is the is

the main Ido which is a whit list it's a s that involves like a whit list phase and then and currently a first come first serve but we're also working on an overflow model uh and this these are ways that the project can kind of come in um users uh you know users can stake tokens get access to the white list uh and you know the Whit list phase will be you know gated to the Whit list participants and then afterwards the public sale opens and then there's typically between one and three weeks from token generation events so they'll they'll go through the Ido they'll you know do the public sale and then afterwards this tge which is when they'll launch on a centralized exchange or Deb and the token will actually be live and so yeah that's the kind of flow um but typically it will be like um

depending on where they're at as I mentioned before of the support they need we'll be supporting the project near early stages we'll start the marketing campaigns we'll announce them we'll do maybe a k round um and then you know kind of then go into public and and then launch TG um what is the reputational aspect here and how important is reputation I mean on the user side right for um for projects like how do you rate uh reputation of an address and you know are you using this this kyc mechanism to prevent against sible uh in cases where you know you might have a user with multiple different addresses or accounts trying to farm this this airdrop or this uh or this

launch so there's a couple elements to reputation I thought you mentioning reputation of a launch pad I was like that's really important I mean you know you only get like if you're screwing people over and they find out about funny enough something happened recently I'm not going to name names and they absolutely trash their reputation and bounc back from it and I was like I mean they I was like wow I don't know how you came back from that but uh I mean how you do how you treat people around you does pay that does happen in the end right so reputation who you're line with is really going to be your ability to track top tier projects right so that reputation element uh kyc is um very important for cber resistance and actually one of the key besides from compliance one of the key reasons why

when you've got like a whit list kind of sale it's important because you you want to ensure that people aren't trying to gain the system it's not completely foolproof any kyc there's always been kyc farms around the world which make it more challenging to fight uh you know there's always a like a a Russian or Chinese or any other countries have you know I guess Farms of kycs where they're purchasing kycs of people in third world countries that makes it very hard like it's almost it's very hard to combat I mean certain protocols have had measures in place to to fight it adding the reputational layer on top of it does help as well because for example bonus block is able to tell how wellet it's been seeded right so you can actually track with either using AI or using kind of regular analytics can kind of tell uh

with a seating of a wallet whether it's likely to be a cyal or not and so if you combine these elements it it does help to kind of at least put measures in place against this happening um so that's definitely something uh We've currently been putting together behind the scenes reputation for us we want to find this B fine line between we don't want to be a you know this crazy spy kind of uh you know dodgy company that's like your credit score uh Black Mirror style thing but at the same time we understand that projects are trying to Target users that are aligned with what they're trying to do like it it it adds limited value if you attract you know 100,000 of the wrong users compared to maybe a thousand of users that are very aligned with the product that you're creating so we really want to build out

that we're working with bonus block on this on how to build out like categories I guess of of wallet types and we can look at onchain Behavior as a whole and see okay you know participants are like consistently dumping air drops or consistently dumping kind of the idos every time and it's like you know it's very flipper mercenary Behavior maybe that user isn't as high quality as aligned to the project as you know someone who is participating in in the product and you know participating a lot of launches and staking and farming and doing things and how do we not penalize poor Behavior but how do we incentivize good behavior and so that's something that we really uh I think is going to be a big Telltale sign of the next run I think di as D IDs are developed and things I think rep onchain reputation is

going to become huge in terms of how to actually Market towards these communities that are users versus extractors yeah I think like on reputation is such a huge um it's such a hugely important aspect of building strong communities that are aligned and I mean the challenge has been you know civil and you know if we have um solutions that allow some some sort of ID verification but without revealing that person's um true identity or having like documents sitting on a database like you mentioned I think that could be like a a good um you know like a a good um alternative to

you know the current situation which is I I think the issue is basically trust addresses I think the issue isn't necessarily that CBL are a problem but the issue right now is that sibles are a problem but people don't care well people do care but there's been in with this airdrop farming mechanism there has been I I guess a blind eye turned to it of like that sibles have been good because they pumped the metrics right and pumping the metrics have led to like bigger raises and all sorts of stuff so I've seen it happen many times where projects should you know be filtering out sibles but they're letting it slide because it's good for business right um so I think that's a whole different separate issue for from I think that's a

whole separate issue from you know the the actual reputation but I think the combination of uh Anonymous verification and uh reputation of of wallets is very key to solving that civil issue and I think further from that reputation can then Arch go into a marketing piece of hey you know I've I've been someone who's participated in 20 projects or 30 projects I'm an active user I'm an lper I'm someone who's quite great how can a project Target me and actually reward me for that behavior and actually adopt me as a user because they know that I'm going to be loyal or I'm going to be like a good quality user versus someone who's like constantly flipping and selling every kind of opportunity is going to be a very different boat yeah

no so how does this how does this kyc actually work I'm still like to be honest some parts of it I still don't fully understand from a tech front uh because because I'm a I'm the tech guy but I do know um that essentially the user goes into an app that's on the phone that never is never connected to kind of third parties uh goes through the steps of like verifying with uh the the passport and the face which generate ZK proofs and the ZK proofs then verify they they're generating the ZK proof and a soulbound token which verifies that that data is within the kind of bounds um and that's what is then verified so they're never having to actually go with the typical kyc which is you send your

passport to someone else who verifies manually um and uh you know then that's stored on a database and your passport stored this uses the ZK proofs to verify now it does also I think itre how do how does the sorry but how how say if I'm sending like I'm taking a picture of my passport that that that picture is going somewhere it's going to a server uh is the Assumption just here that they're not holding on to that data or is there kind of actually prevents the company this is the part that I and so this is this is for ziki man this is part that I don't fully understand but I do know it's it's something to do with the MP the NPC on the phone and so it's actually doesn't ever get sent to a third party server but it it deals with

the uh one of the elements inside the phone generates ZK proof and then that's verifi I know that it is stored on the phone in encrypted version so if there's a legal proceedings that requires things they can actually you could still be recovered through the phone but it's not ever recovered from a third party so that's the limit that's the limit of okay so I think I understand here what you're saying is that the the log Pro that verifies the passport is sitting on the phone the phone generates a proof that is then sent to the server but all of the sort of verification Logic the uh the model maybe like you know there could be like some sort of like basic AI model that even is verifying the legitimacy of this picture or like this video where you're kind of like doing

the what is what's it called this um hologram or whatever like that's all sitting on the phone yeah but it has limitations so this is where the tech is still not super mature is with regular kyc Solutions there's a level of escalation where it can be verified by third party one of the issues we did have with our launch when we went into our launch it went pretty crazy we had I think we had 177,000 attempts and I think 7,000 got through like actually verified through kyc and we had to bring in a second party kyc solutions for those that wanted to opt in because uh firstly it was our first time that we tested this under heavy load like it hadn't been tested under that kind of load before and uh on a new chain as well um and also because of the way that

K is like faces are different pictures are different and everything there is still a bit of ground to be covered around what happens in the case where someone can't actually V the kyc because it's just not picking up like the the mechanism isn't strong enough like maybe K maybe I will get better to the point that it becomes even more accurate but like lighting's a little bit different all this sort of stuff it it means you don't have an escalation ability um for someone else to then check it which is what's normal in nor KC Solutions so it's not without faults for sure okay cool and so you guys are partnered with with the CK me uh we were the first we were the first to deploy we were the first to we were were the first to deploy it uh in the DAP and one of the

first to test this under heavy load and I tell you it was it was amazing it was actually incredible but at the same time like we we learned a lot uh we gave them a lot of work to do from you know um testing this with with heavy strain because it was it it was an incredible amount of load that we put that under and it picked up a lot of different things that needed to be worked on um so I I feel like we accelerated the product deployment for for quite a quite a lot by by going through that experience but it it definitely I lost some hairs in the process I can tell you that I mean launch in general right like launching is pretty hectic yeah so you mentioned uh this liquidity Hub uh part of the project so I'd like you to describe um

what that is and how it benefits project using the platform and also I think it ties into this uh this governance aggregation idea so can you describe what that is and yeah broadly has it work yeah I'll give you a short on this but essentially um L launchpads play a really really strategic role inside ecosystems they uh across multiple different parties like they are great sources of deal flow which is and Builders which helps for chains VCS um and everyone that's really wanting to tap into kind of those those Builders and Deals um they're great for projects because it's a source where they can get funding VCS they can get access to support and get access to uh users volume and liquidity and they're great

for users because they get access to um to to launchers Traders because they have access to volatility right so there kind of like that very strategic uh point and when done well it can be really really a powerful Ally and a powerful entity um the one thing that supercharges launch pads is that uh liquidity and volume are really really important this right projects uh are really looking for users but they're also looking for volume and liquidity which is really really important um to their success um and also uh you know volume and liquidity like like they kind of feed off each other and create a bit of a flywheel um so it's very important when we looking to build a successful launch pad to how do we drive and how do we concentrate as much volume liquidity

users and everything into one place which helps to attract better Builders and better projects which then leads into kind of uh greater benefit for liquidity um so this actually came up uh we we decided not just to build a Launchpad but we've been deploying what's called a governance aggregator it's no different to like a convex or a vector or a magpie um which essentially uh concentrates and and collects uh voting power for Dex liquidity incentives in this case it's starting with astrop Port um and helps to funel a portion of these liquidy incentives towards the project we're launching um but also feeds liquid into the ecosystem I'll give just maybe a very high level back backstory of how this plays out back in Tera ecosystem um

astroport de which was the largest deck of the ecosystem was the Hub and the home of of so many of the listings and the liquidity happening on the ecosystem um they had they were about to release a token called VX Astro which was a vote escro token for astroport Dex and essentially what this enabled projects to do this would govern govern the liquidity incentives that asort would distribute towards the farms and pools on his protocol and projects could or people entities could accumulate Astro and stake it for a period of time the longer they stake it the more ability they would have towards voting towards sending Astro liquid incentives to maybe their pools or to Allied Pools what ended up happening is we ended up with this crazy game theory thing going on called the Astro Wars similar to The Curve Wars where projects were fighting

to accumulate large amounts of Astro to to either send these liquid incentives towards their own pools or to actually act as aggregators or governance aggregators where other parties could that maybe didn't have as much capital or money to have an impact on the voting could come and collect you know bribe or or or participate and actually get a concentrated uh voting power now the game the that's powerful is that kind of the more people are wanting these accumulating this token to get liquid incentives the more the value of this liquidity is goes higher so it ends up with this positive I guess like flywheel so that's you know that's kind of a backstory on Astro and why that kind of played this multi protocol ecosystem wide uh liquidity uh competition now

fast forward Terra collapsed astroport kind of um you know also tanked and then you know moved over to Cosmos and then slowly has been rebuilding and has become a powerhouse on multiple chains including injective and Terra Neutron and say and they're current they're about to start bringing out thex asro again which brought out the Astro Wars but now it's getting played on a multi-chain dimensional route where teror is accumulating Astro incentives to send it towards the PO you know the the projects on their chain Neutron also playing the game and sending Astro incentives towards Celestia pools and dimension pools and playing this this this kind of multi-dimensional incentives game being played and um as a Launchpad we believe in the the

relationship with both the centralized exchange but decentralized exchanges being really important we want to either align with with the places that have the most liquidity and volume for the listings of our of our projects but it's also important to have that relationship so it started off uh you know we've had a good relationship with dely labs and asort for some time we started with uh helping to Pioneer a proposal called r75 which would allow uh launchpads it had to be neutral um but allow launch pads to share in the trading fees of the pools that they list on on astroport Deck so 10% of trading fees could be shared with the the launch pads or parties that enabled that would launch pools this would incentivize us to to to launch pools on astroport to actually share in the value that is brought to

the the to the decks um then we had a conversation we had this conversation with dely which is like it be you know they said oh it' be really cool if you know Eclipse had a you know a large amount of Astro Holdings and could send a portion of this towards projects it would not just be a sell incentive it would be an incentive to projects listing on Eclipse to tap into some of that liquidity it would also be an advantage to astroport because it would mean that they would become a preferential place for the listing of of pools because there's such a a powerful value ad between the two entities so we deed a bit deeper that' be really cool as a value ad not just to be able to send a portion of that towards projects but what if you know we actually became the

place that projects came came to to acquire voting power and liquidity and so fast forward we um we we started thinking through different staking models different models that we could acquire large amounts of uh astort voting incentives without having to just buy it off the market and we uh we essentially ended up acquiring Aqua hiring a protocol that built the infrastructure that we needed for a governance aggregator which would essentially enable us to buy or rent uh voting power off Astro holders with yield so essentially uh users and it's some mechanism behind us how we actually increase the yield to users as well but it essentially enables users to deposit their Astro earn higher yield and essentially sell their voting power

towards the eclipse D portion of that goes towards the projects listing through the platform and the other portion is then used and controlled through the eclipse token so it essentially we're we're merging and governance aggregated with a launch pad and helping to kind of funnel that liquidity into kind of the one environment um and helping to I guess Kickstart that flywheel where projects can you know come through Clips get some of that voting power deepen the liquidity incentives and tying two together so I know that was a long answer but it kind of uh explains how these two kind of relate so I also want to I was also curious why you guys chose to build on new Neutron and you know on your website it talks about Eclipse as being this multi-chain launch platform

and so does eclipse by also work uh across different ecosystems so like can uh an evm project also come and build on eclipse or is it only sort of Cosmos or cosm or you know IBC related projects so uh the you know the starting point for us um uh so the starting point for us is actually uh with you know Cosmos has been having a cosm base strong Believers in Cosmos around having IBC and app chains for that cross uh launch perspective like having the different tools like I IBC icq ICA uh makes this cross train experience is a great first Proving Ground I guess for this cross chain experience where you

can have a lot of your smart contracts on one chain like Neutron but still be able to launch projects across IBC right um which is you know I guess phase one U launching a maybe a chain that's that's a new chain or launching a project on injective when actually the launch is happening on on on Neutron U Neutron for us was also key because there was alignment with dely but then there was also uh we believe that it's going to be the home of e defi on Cosmos and in some capacity outside of evm compatible chains um and also that you know the the code base for kosm is great and it's a big part of their proposition is setting up as a hub for cross chain projects right so for us made sense to deploy

neutrons you know backed by atom security um we are working currently with hyperlane um on you know the first the first instance was obviously you know our token is a interchain uh hyper interchain asset um it was one of the first I think uh maybe Manta was one of Celestia then Manta and then as is one of the key ones if you go to use Nexus uh the eclipse token is there as one of the few first few assets um the the goal for us in this cross change deployment is to have uh the ability to have user participation for multiple chains but we'll also be able to have project participation where we will be able to launch an evm chain the launch will actually occur on Neutron but to the end

us of the goal is to abstract that as much as possible so that um they don't they're not really it's not like you're launching an Arbitron project on U you know on Neutron um and then the user has to come to Neutron and Pate there and then go back it will be kind of a seamless experience but we want to ensure that we don't have like ured out posts everywhere and you know when we do an arbitrum launch it all happens in arbitrum and all the users have to go to arbitrum to participate we wanted to make that as uh I guess compacted as possible so we're not like redeploying there's certain elements that have to be deployed on hyperlane Smart contract router like think anything like a lock drop for example the Locking mechanisms have to be deployed on hyperlane as opposed to Neutron because if it's a

arbitrum project that that lock drop needs to be able to be locked on arbitrum so there's a couple complexities and intricacies there's still a little bit of the architecture that we're we're we're moving through but the goal is to to really be that interchain application but still have that home base on Neutron cool so what's uh what's on the road map for eclip FY and like where can people find you or you know how should projects reach out if they're looking to do a token launch and considering you know the different options out there yeah so um what's on the road map there's a few cool things happening so at the moment we optimizing and we've got some staking contracts we're optimizing uh to enable for uh liquidity uh LP token staking so some some cool stuff happening with that uh

Equinox uh there's obviously Equinox is the governance aggregator that we're deploying smart contracts are done for that currently we're in testing I'm going to connect up the front end just waiting on VX Astro essentially to be released but we're going to release this with a lock drop and go hard into that we're already beating and talking to a lot of projects that are very interested in in um I guess creating Alliance and participating in that because it it gives them kind of more bang for their Buck um then we have uh both the hyperlane cross chain deployment which we're working on at the moment and the first stages of like account obstruction so essentially bringing in tools to make onboarding and using participating and integrating them into the front end uh project Launches on the road map so

we've got a couple coming up in like March April uh that's when the I guess the bulk of the launches start we've got something like 60 to 80 projects coming through the the DD pipeline so there's a lot of stuff happening um and then from that the the next phases are uh reput rolling out the reputation scoring and new launch mechanisms so that's kind of from a tech road map I guess is is really the direction we're going in um as for finding us uh we are about to we are just working on redoing our site so um things like the the application we've got a new application process which is better telegram is probably the best way of reaching out to to any of the mods on telegram coming through through an introduction um if your project uh in the cosmos we're quite connected in with

um you know the ICA Builders program or different parties or you can reach out um directly on Twitter on Telegram and get in touch with one our team and we'll kind of reach out and talk so yeah I stay in touch on Twitter telegram I think is the place to where you know tokens on Neutron um that's where most of our dap is so yeah well Simon thanks for coming on and uh and sharing all this really useful information and uh about eclip SP but also just probably about the token launch uh ecosystem and different ways that projects can launch tokens uh it's been really fascinating yeah thanks for having me I'm sure different to the the type of project you normally get but I guess it's we're going into to Bull season again so we'll see a lot more of this stuff absolutely thank you thanks Legend