Fantasy Top & FriendTech: SocialFi or Speculation? | Analyst Round Table

Transcript

the issue here is this that a normal users use Merkley obviously but apart from that the people who do use Merkley to farm they're very obviously following these certain Twitter personalities who are promoting these projects and writing out like lists they're like do this this this to make money on this airdrop the issue here is that industrial bot far like industrial civil Farmers don't use this kind of stuff they write their own code and they do that randomization like they random miniz their actions their times the decision on how to eliminate those is it's a tough one before we get into today's episode just a quick disclaimer the views

expressed on this podcast by either myself or any guests are their personal views and do not represent the views of any Associated organization nothing in this episode should be construed or relied upon as Financial technical tax legal or other advice all right let's jump into the episode what's up guys welcome back to another episode of ZX research today I am joined by Mark Ryan and Hayden to talk about what's happening in the markets it is Monday the 6th of May you'll see this on Wednesday the 8th of May um yeah let's get to it this week's biggest happening was definitely frch um they launched the token finally racer decided to bless us um it was kind of a fumble but not really initially you could only claim

10% and then but you had to follow 10 people and join a club to collect the remaining 90% but they had some backend issues so you couldn't do that very easily I remember I think I created like 30 clubs in the morning because I just kept being like Oh I want to create a club create a club it was also like 6: am. where I am when it launched um and then eventually you could claim it I think it peaked at I mean there's a wick at 180 for a friend but then like it peaked at I would say naturally like 18 to 20 or something um and there's lots happening on that like front I feel like it's one of those like really hated coins when it first launched I think it's like the only actual hated rally

that I've seen I feel like everybody tries to claim something a hated rally and it's not and this one's kind of like I think a hated rally racer really um he has a tweet I should have pulled it up before but I will pull it up while you guys are giving your take but um yeah what do you guys think have you did you end up managing the claim uh I did not try to claim uh I didn't participate in friend Tech that much and when I got to the website it was like super buggy so I didn't get much past that um I don't know like what is what's the functionality of the friend Tech token like why does it exist I'm unclear on

that so A it's a speculation piece and like I guess it's like a utility token only in the sense that you can create clubs with it and you can join clubs with it I think Hayden you might I know you might have some more thoughts on this one but that's as far as I know that's the only utility that it actually has right now yeah um right now what you do with friend is you uh can either LP uh in you know the friend eth pool um and earn liquidity mining rewards I think there's like about 12 million that's going to get distributed to LP across this whole year and then uh the second thing you can do with it which is uh you know more

interesting in my opinion is you could buy Club keys with friend um so you know if you wanted to you know you have there are two two types of keys there's there's there's the uh the Creator keys and then there are uh friend keys or uh Club keys and so if you wanted to start a club it could be about you know Ryan's deep in you know lecture club or something I don't know I'm just like thinking off things off the top of my head um people could buy people can gain access to that club by you know spending some amount of friend um to get the key and that the price of that of the key to that club is on this

bonding curve so I also did claim but what I thought was pretty neat was when you claimed you had a choice to give 10% or 50% or any custom number to people who owned your keys and you know I was greedy so and I didn't really have much followers so I just um took all but a couple of the keys that I owned they decided to distribute all of their keys to Holders so I actually got more air drop friend Air Tech from that and so I think that's kind of in the spirit of the name a technology buil for friends and the ability to share this air drop so that was cool but I mean that frch was one of the apps that I kind of use

the most when it came out because I thought I kind of had this idea when Uber launched you know Uber's you know dem Dem democratizing car usage right chair and I thought this was kind of like a good way to democratize knowledge transfer so I didn't necessarily buy the keys to try and like sell them you know Buy Low sell High any kind of alpha like that I was trying to get into you know chats with people who I thought were very knowledgeable on the space and then I bought those keys when frch just came out and I've stayed in those same chat groups ever since probably owning like one of each key and it's great because I don't know if I I think it's

because the the people whose Keys you own they know that you paid to buy these keys so it almost feel I think that they have an obligation they feel like they have an obligation to answer your questions so anytime you know I want to ask something in any of these um chats you know they're relatively quick to response and give pretty detailed aners so I've been pretty you know you know pleasantly you know happy with with with frch the app long you know even during all of the hates and pre the airdrop I I've already gotten my um let's just say money's worth from it it's funny that you say that because when I rebooted friendtech uh not too long ago to sort of get more involved again uh I went to John chp's chat and you were the last

person who talked with John charb in the chat and that's how I discovered you on frch and it also turns out that uh uh John charb was one of the people who you know distributed all of his friend to his keyh holders and I think the amount was like 60 friend um you know which is which is like you know I don't know it's a decent amount um if you think about sharing that sharing that amount so um I I also distributed you know like 10% of my of my friend to my two holders um and then 5% of the rest after I did all the after I jump through the hoops of you know setting up a club and following other people but I 100% agree with you Mark I did not distribute at all um I

was very greedy but I like Mark to what you just said I think that's the ultimate um that's the desired like aim of friendch is to have like access to talking to people I think it would have been like for example I was too late for these but I would have definitely like been happy to buy like a Kobe key or like aaka key and just ask them about what they think of the market I never did that and I I was like way too cheap to actually buy it eventually um but I I mean eventually it turned out to just speculation which makes sense um since everything in crypto eventually ends up becoming speculation but then

the clubs I feel like these are a bit more on the I mean it from people have said that it's like extra specul specul but I feel like it's more just like about creating those chats more often so I think this is kind of like taking a step back and I mean i' I'm only part of like two clubs that I didn't create I'm part of 32 clubs um overall because I created 30 of them but um I feel like this like goes back to the desired purpose of frch which is to like create these small Niche onchain communities um I don't think that I will be using friend a lot to be honest with you like FR a lot just because I think it's it's

a bit difficult to use it's the ux isn't great I mean it's fun it's definitely fun but it's not going to be like Twitter or like an actual social app that I use but it's I think like for what its purpose wants for what it wants its purpose to be like the club Edition is I think fantastic dude Bach how how desperate are you to claim your to claim your friend and dump them if you had if you created 30 30 clubs I mean you wouldn't believe it it was like I woke up no coffee nothing just clicking it the thing is that when I saw it it was like 89 I was like yeah you know that's about what I wanted so I would have tried to get out but I couldn't and then we'll see how it goes now I feel

like now I'm just like yeah the thing is also like when it first launched it was very very bad like I don't know if you guys tried to claim it as well um but it was like a the app was very very buggy um to the point that you couldn't claim and B there was no information out about the token like it was very like hearsay like rumors I I still like I think until two days ago people were like oh is it 90 mil or is it 120 mil total friend tokens and then like we found out about like you kind of had to do your own snooping around go on Bas scan and stuff to figure out or like on par to figure out what the token were part of the reason why I think it part of the reason why I think it was is

an interesting uh it's like an interesting narrative going on in crypto right now it's because it's on the back of all the drama that we've been seeing with you know tges with respect to igen and so on one hand you know you have all of these airdrop Farmers complaining about you know the way that these teams are Distributing coin and then frch is kind of just like taking this very sort of I don't know if it's laical is the right word but you know uh there's not much information about it and on the other end it's 100% Community airdrop dropped um and so it's just interesting to see like this the timing of this sort of speculative airdrop coin um you know come on the back of you know all this

negative SE sentiment about uh you know token air drops in general and it's also notable the rewards on the friend eth pool is ridiculously high uh there was a tweet by zerox Bread Guy who I think it was over the weekend it might have been at the end of last week I don't know but at the time of the Tweet according to according to to to that account uh the apy on the pool was about 2,800 apy um and so I don't know how that's going to play out I mean that's that's incredibly high but it seems like that that yield is going to get diluted by more LPS coming into the pool and if more LPS are coming to the pool more people are going to be buying friend um so it just seems

like a fairly like easy funnel to just kind of like speculate yeah it's also in it's also interesting because it's like as you said it's on the back of IG and stuff it's like a more fair launch but plus it's also like the first instance of pool two that I can remember that has been doing relatively well since I'd say like 2021 um across 2022 2023 I think pool Tools in general like just native token farming was absolutely destroyed it was very very like uh detrimental if you wanted to do that apart from like a few instances but in general people just kept farming and dumping farming and dumping which is what is usually done but I think in 2022

202 there's no bid on the farm token so it was like very difficult so we'll see if this one works out but at least it's like kind of like a return to the original or not original but less of what has been happening recently What's um what's path forward for this project in like valuation today I saw that it was trading at 100 million I know it seems it seen some price apprec appreciation I am not sure what it's at right now actually let me check um it is at 250 mil FTV right now market cap which is pretty intense um especially since myppo called it on the timeline I

was like oh like under this um I don't know I mean social f is such an interesting narrative though it's like the perfect VC bait it's oh we're like empowering creators and giving like democratizing access to whatever like creative revenues Etc and X also did Twitter also did this where they started giving out money to creators I think this is like an easy easy narrative for people to latch onto and it's a lot easier to latch onto than a lot of Define narratives like it's difficult to explain somebody like why IG layer is necessary but it's not difficult to explain frch at all it seems um from like a relative value and like totally

from like a narrative trading perspective that yeah this thing should see a higher valuation in the near term assuming the bull market continues I think like from a longterm fundamental perspective like text based social platforms have like an very obvious weakness and that they're like the least engaged with and they command the lowest market caps so like I think Discord uh saw a $15 billion valuation Twitter like it's private now but it's likely around 20 billion like every social media platform has moved to images and then videos and video is like the core content now uh twitch is even like video first and $5 billion valuation YouTube's

a juggernaut um again all the social media platforms have moved away from text only so like my thinking is if this platform is going to move Beyond Alpha chats like there needs to be a new kind of um um they need to move Beyond text there's tokens to there's tokens uh that's what that's what kind of so if you're going to draw a comparison there's like I think right now the the the comparison that people are drawing currently is frch is kind of like you know nft gated access to telegram plus pump. fun yeah in the sense that you could these these

Club keys are effectively uh meme coins you could launch anyone could launch a mem coin or these Club keys on friendch and instantly um it's unrug un ruggable pools so you don't have to worry about you know like getting rugged if you're buying any of these Club Keys unless of course there's like underlying sort of like Tech issues with the front Tech platform um but everyone's using the same sort of like you know standard to launch these pools and it kind of like makes you think that you know it's it's they're kind of just like making they're kind of like creating these products into like a funnel um like frch only so I feel like yeah in the short term um you know there's probably some upside I'm not going to like give price

targets uh like I don't I don't really I for me it's just like something that's fun to it's fun to like part partipate in these systems um I think it's like very like Crypt native and it's the exact type of stuff that I like getting involved with um but it'll be interesting to see like yeah right over you know if once we do get past this like speculative phase like where things sit it's kind of unclear at the moment but if you just look at the mem coin attention that's been you know obviously generated over the past few months plus like how there aren't really many platforms that like have this much of a funnel um um you know I feel like there's you know some room for some upside and when you um buy a key or a

club is 100% of the value does 100% of the value go towards the Creator does it go to the key one or does some of the some of the fees transferred somewhere else that's a good question I don't know if you as a club key holder you earn any sort of like additional fee from that bonding curve I I don't think so um but there are some like interesting functionalities within the club key feature which is this concept of you could like uh like hostile takeovers which is a situation in which someone not even in the club can be voted as the president of the club and then the president of the club could sort of you

know they have the ability to make other people mods and silence and you know mute people um but I don't know of any additional sort of like things that you can do with these clubs other than that plus uh you know chat with other people have there been hostile takeovers yeah they hostile take took over me out of like five clubs um expens was like a dollar to do it since I didn't own any keys but um yeah keys but going back to what Hayden was saying about like how this is kind of fun at this point I agree this is like really just fun at this point because it's still a beta product like you can't really use it for anything else and with

the like Tech Val Tech social media valuations um I don't even think frch could fit into that because it's too Niche it's still way too Niche initial in the initial wave I don't know if you guys remember but there was like a only there was an only fans wave at the very very like first time and I feel like that was the only non crypto adoption even though I from what I've understood like based on that that was also like a mix like a V diagram of like only fans people mixed with crypto people as well so it was still like very crypto native people um there's obviously like very clear places where this could work um that is one of

them there's also I would say like in more traditional markets uh Finance people I think it could also work mostly As far as I understand Traders even in like non- crypto markets they do have small groups on telegram Etc where they talk about what they're seeing in the markets how their trades are performing and this isn't like paid groups I mean like actual just regular Traders they do have like places where because people want to share so I think those types of people can join it I'm not sure how like beneficial it would be for like I guess patreon users can also use this kind of platform it's just like it's it's very steep adoption curve like you can only do it through friend Tech and it's the

app itself is hard to use so you're asking people to learn how to use onchain stuff and then you're like oh but also do it like through something that's not particularly great at this point racer don't cancel me for this I like the app man but it's like it's not very very great at this point but we'll see I mean I don't think anybody's expecting this to become the next like multi-billion dollar actual social media platform but it is it definitely has like a great narrative at this point I think it's definitely served a great proof of concept like you could there's there's a there's something in the arena of um connecting communicating with others uh via tokens I mean you know nft is already doing this with TG um so

it'll yeah I agree and I don't know if this is completely like Off the Mark and uh but do you guys know anything about ton and how this is sort of similar to that I don't know I don't know much about ton but I know there's a there's a there's Telegram and there's tokens involved so seems like maybe that could be a potentially like interesting comparison to make I don't it it's definitely like an in I would definitely put ton in like social five in a sense but I think it's too big to compare it to frch because the ton like telegram on its own is one of the biggest social media like presences I think like us we use it and like in regular Finance

people use it but also there are entire countries that only use ton the same way that that only use telegram so I think it's difficult to compare I would say like FR Tech is a bit more comparable to other Niche crypto stuff as opposed to like something like Telegram and ton but um one thing that I actually wanted to talk about today is fantasy. toop and I think it's like it's kind of I don't know if you guys are all familiar with it but I'll give like a quick rundown for our listeners as well it's basically like f football but you have cards and the cards are influencers or like crypto Twitter personalities and you basically like trade them based on what you and they you basically trade them based on

your own valuations your speculation let's say I buy Ryan's card and I'm like oh like I know Ryan's gonna send out some great tweets this week so I think his price will increase so I buy his card and then I sell it next week and the you you participate in tournaments and I think they're going to do like leagues now but basically cards earn points based on engagements on Twitter and it's I feel like it's this is like friend Tech but you cut out the um conversation aspect at all this is pure speculation where you're like speculating on CT people and influencers and I think it's like it's quite fun to be honest with you I um I'm not sure how reliable the application is so like I

didn't do any I didn't look into their audits ETA at all so be careful to our listeners but it is like previously I always thought that these Niche CT games or projects even like nft projects they didn't tend to do very well um but I think like after FR Tech it's kind of given me this confidence boost that it might it might be okay and it's pretty fun to try out so if anybody hasn't tried it out I'd recommend checking it out at least well wait so it sounds like a way for creators it sounds like a way for creators to monetize Twitter engagement

via Tok like these sort of like cards that you can buy off Twitter it's more like I'm speculating on um creators rather than creators are monetizing it so it's in that sense I think it's less valuable than frch because that gave creators the direct chance to earn more but this is more of like specifically a game and yeah that's it you just earn based on what you think a Twitter personality will do and it's just like kind of like a fun I feel like this is one thing that people always like because at the end of the day when you bet on some tokens let's say you buy X token off the market you are to an extent betting on the

founder and this is especially in crypto and defi like smaller term defi project projects you really are betting on certain Founders and like certain individuals and they're like how they are for example Doan I would say like Luna a lot of Luna was Doon and this is kind of like really separating that token aspect from it and just tokenizing the individual and saying oh like I'm I believe in this guy's engagements and like Twitter personality and him being an influencer so I'm gonna buy it's not I it's probably not even like a particularly longlasting project but I did think it was interesting because it's like the very very like Niche CT influencer and I feel like a lot of

people we think about this a lot because this like small microcosm we really know about it and not a lot of other people do like it's very like there's certain people and how they act I think it I thought it was just fun that somebody made a whole game about this I think it's super interesting that there's a lot of shots on goal with social tokens and social fi I think like it makes a ton of sense like if you create these permissionless asset issuance platforms like people will make tokens of their image and likeness and try to monetize those things fch super interesting fantasy top also interesting but I think there's a big problem like how do you are they

Outsourcing like how how do you stop like Bots from determining who wins and who loses in these games like there's a there is a major bot problem on Twitter and like friend Tech to me seems inherently civil resistant right like you're it's an alpha chat like the person has to say interesting things and keep you there and want you to buy the token whereas like we see projects farming engagement all the time with with these bot Farms um not an expert on the project but that seems to be a um a potential gap for them yeah I think that's a big issue and I honestly like don't know how they're going to fix it especially since Twitter itself hasn't been able to fix it so I don't think

they could and Twitter's API is very restrictive it's very expensive so I'm not sure how fantasy. toop would even approach doing that I'm sure they have ways that they're thinking about it like I doubt they haven't thought about it but I haven't seen any like set ways that they were like oh this how we're solving the bot issue on Twitter it'll be interesting to see though I mean they they effectively have Elon Musk trying to solve their bot problem like that's not a bad um that's not a bad position to be in but the problem does exist Bach how are you sort of like thinking about or approaching projects on blast because I just looked up I I was curious you know to your point about like you're sort of like buying when it's early on you're sort of like investing or sort of

like kind of speculating on the founders and you know what they're able to do with any sort of protocol so I'm I I was curious and I looked up fantasy top and I see they're on blast like do we know who the founders like how are you how are you evaluating projects on blast in general I have a lot of friends that like are you know farming gold and you know doing all that stuff um but I'm pretty far removed I think blast is probably the most like PVP chain out right now um I think bar chain will be more PVP um I am just trying out stuff that I find interesting I always just do that on whatever chain and I'm usually relatively like Risk on and I will take like pretty I I would say like not great

at it um with evaluating smart contract risk so I usually only do like small um Expeditions let's say but I with term in terms of blast I think um I mean I kind of wish brick was here because he's the big blast guy but I've just been trying out whatever I find is interesting I usually don't find um defi I just want to see like new def primitive so I was like there was initially there was like I don't want to name it now because it hasn't done so well but there was a couple of games five projects that I tried out they didn't do particularly well there was a couple of there was a new like lending borrowing primitive once again everybody was like oh this is going to be the new oh was not the new

oh was not the new Olympus but in general yeah that's just all I've been doing much like on every other chain I just try out something new if it works out it works out if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out I just cut risk when you're like ah this is probably not good um but yeah I don't know if you guys have been active on blast but I feel like there's a lot of TV on that chain and I'm surprised they're still doing it the points program but based on what I've seen Pac-Man do in the past I think he'll do probably like another season of it I'll see though it's it's been going okay so far I think they have a lot more activity than a lot of other chains so I had to support my my my ambient the ambient team over there um so that's how

I'm that's how I'm engaging with blast yeah that's for ambient has done a fantastic job of launching on new chains I think that's a great way to like approach it a fe especially like a new amm project and because there's like a big dog that you always have to compete with which is unis Swap and they can be a bit bureaucratic and slow to launch on new chains and I think ambient's in a fantastic job just launching on these new chains um where Unis swap can't maybe launch an official project yeah um moving on we also had some SU economics controversy over the weekend I don't know if you guys saw this but basically I mean this controversy wasn't a huge controversy it

was just like I think sui had something like this in after they initially launched as well and basically people didn't know when the unlock happened so they had a huge unlock um investor unlock the after the first year Cliff I think it was like a 33% unlock and it moved like up the circulating Supply above 60% so it was pretty big and there's like four sources on this it's like token unlocks crypto ranks sui vision and then I guess General Twitter and all of them show something different and token unlocks was showing that it's supposed to happen at the end of the month and but it apparently happened on the 2nd of May but according to sui Vision it happened like end of April which I guess is like only a day off but

I feel like this speaks to something larger which is that we don't have in the industry we don't have any data we have some information standardization but it's more social and and it should be in my like I don't want centralized authorities to come in and decide on how things can be done but I do feel like these some chains and some projects should be held more accountable on how they release information and the worst is when you open up an emission schedule and it's just like they do like three month blocks so I can't tell what date the unlock is and it's very difficult to find out especially some of these um block scanners they're hard to read as well another issue was that and this is

something that I just want to address is that people were claiming that 84% of SOI is held by the founders this I don't think is true as far as I understand and it's held by third- party custodians and this is kind of like a unique situation for sui because in other proof of stake networks for example Solana there's infinite Supply ethereum there's infinite Supply like the rewards are issued um but but with sui there's only 10 billion tokens and it's held by these the foundation I guess and that is what is emitted from so there's like a Max Supply and that was something that was happening over the weekend this is like as far as I understand it's like this

but I also don't necessarily trust the sui team that much anymore because this is like the second instance where people have been slightly burned over their tokenomics and emission schedule so is it is it that um the amount held is just being held in a wallet and not being staked or are they staking it as well so it shows that it's staked on their on sui vision and on the sui block like scanner but I truthfully I need to look into this a bit more because I always thought that sui had an infinite Supply and I learned that it doesn't so I'm not sure how that even really works because if it's staked it should be earning rewards but the

rewards earned by other tokens are paid through that so I need to a figure out how much is actually staked and how much is locked in these centralized custodians which is I don't condone as a way of doing it I think things should be done through smart contracts especially at like the network level and not through centralized custodians um so yeah I'm not sure I really need to look into this a bit more because I I think that differentiation is probably where more the controversy lies because if it's being Stak and they're earning remissions and they're claiming that it's actually locked away whereas you know the VCS and teams are still accumulating wealth and governance power because it's a proof of stake Network I think that would show that would

definitely um you know degrade my trust in the um so team a bit more yeah I uh I think that's kind of become common place now though like multiple projects have just given out staked locked tokens and like Celestia has this where they like VCS who invested in Celestia they earn um Celestia emissions rewards on their like locked non-vested tokens so it's pretty interesting that we've kind of let this happen and become like the new standard now okay that's it we don't like the stuff I I have a I have a meta take um that just about standards in general um

I think that this is like as like okay there's controversy around different projects using different standards crypto has had some instances in the past that has caused its participants to lose trust in the ecosystem broadly uh so that like compounds the problem like however there are plenty of standards that have just kind of like emerged on the market from participants picking like the best path forward and it was like a long process but it was like kind of like worth it like this is like going to this is going to be a dated example but like do you remember like when there were like two competing music files it was like MP3 and WMA and one of them ultimately went out because

like people created devices around that that favored the MP3 standard over the WMA standard um you can think of like like there was even like there was competitors to like uh USB ports there was there was like lightning devices I forget what they call them like but the big consequential like service providers in those ecosystems like they they they picked a standard it happens all the time in technology markets financial markets too like there are plenty of different industry classification standards but like gixs has one out there are competing ones and people rarely use them uh one tends to dominate it's just like this process of iteration and like big or organizations kind of like planting their flag so for example

like if a coin get e were to say like hey if you want to submit circulating Supply data it has to go by the standard like that would push I think that that would really push the industry um you know whether you're reporting stake or tokenomics like big organizations could plant that flag and like really make a difference yeah I agree I also think it's difficult because like different projects use different ways of emitting plus they have just different but I agree with you I mean coin gecko as well as like these I guess the other unlock websites like token unlock and so Vision I I feel like these guys should have checked with each other like and they should have I mean the issue is

that we have a lot of networks and protocols hold a lot more power I would say than data providers so it's going to be a bit difficult for it to move forward but I agree with you I feel like this would be something that like socially gets fixed eventually based on how people adopt and who decides on what yeah and I feel like you know I guess like kind of going back to this conversation about you know suie and the token stuff I feel like um there's just there's there's always drama about tokens um I feel like there was you know I remember similar a similar sentiment um early on in Solana's you know life life uh in Solana's life um so I'm not surprised

that these newer Protocols are also like going through these problems and I think that the 10 billion Supply cap is actually really interesting and uh a really interesting sort of like angle on tokenomics and you know suie and Aptos you know we'll see I mean their their dag based consensus Protocols are really interesting you know designs and you know they're still very underexplored um and show a lot of promise and um yeah I mean su's doing a lot of really cool stuff and you know move is starting to get gain more traction um I mean you could do things like sign in to you know create a wallet um or Sig into a wallet um you know with your Google account because of some sort of zero knowledge

proof technology they have um and so I think like no most of the time these these token sort of conversations um especially when they're negative aren't really thinking about the right aspects of the space um however you know obviously like no one wants to get dumped on but I feel like the team is you know on their way to really like you know make a difference in crypto so um I don't know I feel like it's kind of a nothing Burger yeah I I got to agree with you the tech is definitely good um my one worry with the new l1s is that they are not particularly I don't want to say native because I don't need my like founder to

be very very crypto native I just one worry that I sometimes have is that I don't want them to look down on crypto and just be like Oh I'm providing something for these people like they should be grateful and for them to approach it I think like the web 2 founder mentality is very different to the web free founder mentality at least like the classic ones um so that's my like only worry with the new L1 chains but you can never really like know who somebody really is like just based off some of their actions it's really like we're gonna have to see wait and see I'm I watched both Evans and co-founders interviews they seemed like they really cared about the space so we'll see how

everything goes on this is just the second instance that they've had which is why I was a bit worried have you seen uh the talk at token uh 2049 in Dubai when hasib uh Kesh at dragonfly had you know various L1 Founders on the stage um alt L1 Founders on the stage it's a pretty pretty cool it's a pretty cool panel I mean they're all they're all like kind of just like offering their opinion and sort of perspectives on you know the various chains and the future of the stuff so yeah I should check that out I saw like a snippet of Raj talking about imin um on it like about Avalanche and how em

is a very passionate founder but I should check that out that'll be interesting yeah the the interest the most interesting thing around Su today is uh I think on may3 it hit 800 TPS I'm not sure what was driving the activity I know that every once in a while like new game pops up and it like tests the limits but that is a that's an impressive metric I was actually supposed to talk about this it's in my notes but I forgot to mention it there was a project launched on SOI called spam SOI which is why their TPS went off the charts and it beat Solana's one um for I think a couple of days and this was where this controversy like all started out from because people were

like oh what is this and I think we're kind of used to at this point of like certain projects being launched and you don't know who launched it and they're like launched ahead of couple of different events sometimes unlock events sometimes other events and they they're just like they really boost the protocols metrics um positively so I think that's where the controversy was launched because they were like oh like why did why did this happen and then you look at the dates and they're like oh coincidentally an unlock also happened around this so I like obviously I don't know I don't think this was like a malicious thing but it is interesting and you really can't blame them because

we had this like with the inscriptions meta on every single chain and like I know and I think a lot of people also know that there's chains that just send back and forth pieces of e like through a couple of different addresses to pop metrics so I don't think that's what happened in this case but yeah that's why it beat it um is what I wanted to say yeah the important thing like when you're when you're thinking about things like TPS and the legitimacy of those numbers the context really matters it like really matters like what question you're trying to answer I think the question that anyone who points out this measure today is answering is like oh can the system handle a certain load not do they have

this many real users or this much activity I don't think anyone's any Discerning investor their their head's not there right now for S um it's about proving that the system can handle a certain amount of load and um 800's pretty good they're probably simple transactions like it's probably not the complex transactions that you're seeing on on other networks that have been successful and have a have a ton of different things going on but but the the ability to handle that load is is important yeah I agree um we had another small controversy over the weekend where layer zero announced uh they released a statement counteract ciling of the protocol so they said that users can

self-report their civil addresses for 15% of their intended allocation um and if they don't report they potentially receive nothing if their address is flagged by their internal Cil reporter additionally they also said that bounty hunters will receive 10% of the civil's intended allocation this is the first approach that I've seen that's like this as far as I know usually hop protocol ended up hiring nanson and I think Arkham or like these data providers I know others have used gitcoin um to do like some human like to Cil out nonhumans I don't think getcoin passport is like a good

way to do it but that was what and this is the first time that I've seen kind of somebody kind of using like a game theoretical way of doing it where you're like you can report or not report um a lot of people were very upset especially since they decided to I think this was like their fault of it in an article they wrote that Merkley which is a very popular app on layer zero like uses layer zero they wrote that people who have used Merkley will be disqualified I don't think that's what they meant but I think they meant that like if you're using murkley this way you'll be disqualified but they wrote that and they also wrote if you've just been sending around nfts you might be disqualified which is a large base of like large

portion of their user base now this I feel like we talk about this at least whenever I like over the past few weeks because this is one of my favorite topics to think about how does this work is if layer zero benefited off of these cbls for the past year to raise and to pump their metrics and to have like increased volume and activity how does this like do how does this work work with the users I personally think that like this approach is quite interesting because it's cool and it's new and it's I think it'll be interesting to see at the worst case it's like a new way of doing it it doesn't trust getcoin passport and stuff um I want what do you

guys think I think even at 15% you know if you get 15% of your of the intended airdrop that's probably still worth all of the cble um the amount of fees that you probably spend transacting between the layer twos at least you're going to get something then at least outright banned and you know that's fair you like you said you helped pump devaluation and helped layer zero raise and then layer zero is at least willing to give you something for it if you're quote unquote honest with this game theoretical mechanism and then on top of that it's the um the 10% it's the 10% Bounty Hunter thing that I love so instead of like only out you know hiring these

specific companies you know Arkham and these things like you said now it's open for everybody to become a Cil Hunter and you know it's smart that it's less than 10% otherwise less than the 15 otherwise you just might identify yourself as one so I think I think it's really well thought out and I will not be surprised if other projects go down the similar route I I'm not I'm not really seeing any any real tradeoffs to the downside here so you know if you all have any please let me know and because if other projects start to copy then maybe sibling becomes less popular and then we can you know then you can eliminate some of that noise and get you know a more clearer picture of product Market fit is it um is it a fact so first

totally agree with both you guys is is it is it a fact that um VC's gave layer zero money based on these measures because I would think that if you're a VC and you understand the crypto space well enough that a pro like a kind of like a base layer or low-level project or yeah like a Bas layer project like this will experience those Cil attacks and like any VC worth their assault should be adjusting those metrics to determine their valuation or the or like kpis around the project um I would assume that they're doing the work but uh no inside information there I don't think that like that's obviously I don't know if layers zero

raised using that or what's but I think it's like this General perception first of all I don't think that a lot of VCS understand exactly how it works and this is just based on what I've seen from their takes on Twitter rather than what like they might as well and they might just be putting on a facade on the timeline but uh this wasn't like that part wasn't specific to layer zero but it's more so like in general I feel like some protocols benefit off this like clearly benefit off this because it it helps them Reach that like initial pmf and like that first couple of months that's really how you can attract a lot of tvl and a lot of like Capital into

your protocol is just through aird drops um not aird drops but airdrop teasing let's say um points programs Etc like because why else and I guess this is kind of a problem with crypto is that why that whole idea of like why else would people use it it's kind of sad but yeah so basically I feel like they have kind of like BCS don't really think about it potentially I I did see people calling out layer zero for like promoting these metrics and then um like I guess rugging the civils or however um I guess it is like true that you should if you're going to punish civils in your

airdrop you should also punish the metrics on your Explorer or or at least release adjusted measures it's super hard though right for the project because civils like change their behavior over time in response to like you detecting them right so it's like you'll have to they like a project if if a project like layer zero were to be like 100% honest in the or tried to be 100% honest in the metrics that they're putting on their Explorer from day one they have to constantly adjust those metrics and it's that's super challenging I think to their to their credit they didn't sh their token they didn't have a points program like many of the others so they weren't teasing

the airdrop as much as other projects were and and then to your point to you know to to try and put those adjusted metrics might end up doing more harm than good in the longer term because as you said it's pretty it's a cutand mouse game yeah I you know just hopping like I'm not a huge Dune user but every time I'd go on there like top dashboards were like layer zero airdrop token potential for months like I feel like crypto was way more concerned with the token than the layer zero team was yeah I think that's the case of a lot of these infrastructure projects where unless like they actively need a token I don't think they actually want to launch a token but they just get kind of like adopted by communities following

an aird Drop Like if a a bridge air drops a token or like let's say like a interoperability is a better word protocol drops an air drop then everybody's like oh layer zero should also have a token and I think lot of the worst example of this was with Arkham Arkham dropped a token a data product why does it need a token we don't know and then for months it was I actually was talking to like the parac team was quite upset about this and I know the Dune team was also really upset about it because they were like oh why am I being like harassed by these airdrop Farmers masks creating Dune dashboards and parseek dashboards trying to take a get an airdrop when they were like oh we're

never going to have a token yeah the airdrop stuff I mean this is like uh I think the greater meta here is I mean it's a really interesting way to sort of like self- police cybl effectively is sort of like now the cyol could PVP each other right like I'm a cyal you're a cyal I know that you're a cyal I could you know report your Cy and potentially get 15% and you know it creates this like extra Dimension to to cble in a sense um But ultimately reduce it and I think though in my head and I I might be like a hawkish sort of I might have a hawkish perspective on token air drops but I feel like a lot of these

problems should be solved on the front end which is like if it can be if the metric that you're using to you know sort of like distribute coin can be celed is it a good metric um and I think you know those those are the kinds of things that I would like to see you know sort of you know addressed yeah it's difficult because I feel like every metric can be simple though like every metric is gameable um but I agree with you if it's like something very very easily gameable then the main issue with things like this is that okay like for example taking layer zero and their recent announcement they said that if you used Merkley they didn't mean this but people assumed that they said if you used

Merkley then you're going to be like sibl out like you're gonna they we're going to call you out as a sible and we're not going to give you any tokens the issue here is this that a normal users use merley obviously but apart from that the people who do use Merkley to farm they're very obviously following these certain Twitter personalities who are promoting these projects and writing out like lists they're like do this this this to make money on this air drop and the issue here is that industrial bot far like industrial civil Farmers don't don't use this kind of stuff they have they write their own code and they do that randomization like

they randomize their actions their times Etc and they specifically only interact with the chain like through apis and through code they they're not using any front ends Etc as far as I understand so you're not particularly punishing like these Mass operations but you're punishing like I'd say like let's say like the lower end of civils where it's like somebody has four wallets and they're just like clicking on Merkley and they're like oh I'm gonna send $15 from arbitrum to ethereum and back and that's going to be my transaction for the week so it's it's a I never want to be in the spot because before I think I was very harsh on protocols but I've been

thinking more and more about it and it's like one of the toughest spots to be is right before you do your airdrop because it's like it's just so much stress because you know you're you have sibles you're everybody they everybody knows you have sibles like you said Ryan it's like VCS any VC worter so they know they have sibles but the decision on how to eliminate those is it's a tough one and I think this system is actually like at least relatively interesting because you're trying out something new and you're not just like trying to randomly take out people but we'll see how it works so I know for a fact that people are going to be upset anyway because they've built up this dream about layer zero the layer zero aird drop the same way that people built

up a dream about the IG layer airdrop I was expecting people were expecting six figures from a protocol which had $18 billion dollar in tvl like what are you expecting bud it's not g to happen this is like so I don't know we'll see speaking of layer zero now's a good time to get a quick word in from gas. zip thanks to our fantastic sponsor layer zero all right guys for this week's layer zero segment we have Tom co-founder of guest Z a onstop gas refuel Bridge thank you for joining us Tom thanks for having me before we get started what is the problem that gas. zip is trying to solve yeah so you know uh we call gas dotzip a One-Stop uh gas reload service right so

um if you go to gas. zip it is a uh fast cheap and easy Bridge uh to currently today over about 175 different uh evm uh supported blockchains um so you know when people are exploring these new chains and every day there's new l2s and new l3s and Etc coming out um figuring out actually not only how to get over there but what is the fee currency they're using for gas um how to acquire that fee currency um is a difficult process uh particularly for you know some of these chains on the further end of the more exotic Spectrum um so just getting over there to even Explore the chain you know mint an nft do one of these onboarding

um you know participation quests that all these new projects and chains are doing um can be quite difficult to even just get a couple bucks over there sometimes right um so you know we built um a couple different gas reloader Services one using our own stuff and one using layer zero um that more or less allows users to uh Bridge small amounts of money to all these new and upcoming kind of exotic chains um very quickly very cheaply um and in a way where uh all these chains are in one place for you uh you don't have to go out and explore you don't have to find Bridges you don't have to be clicking random URLs um trying to get people you know a trusted source to go and explore kind of all these new chains that are coming out on a daily basis perfect yeah I feel like as every

week there's two new chains launching how does layer zero fit into the protocol yeah so um we built a we built a gas reloader service um using layer zero as well um which so all the transactions uh you know are unique uh layer zero contract actions and um it's a bulk gas reloader service so you can essentially bridge to um as many destination chains as you would like to on layer zero with one inbound transaction so instead of having to go from base to scroll and then polygon to scroll and then you know ZK sync back and forth um you could essentially say I have $100 on uh ZK sync I want $10 on arbitrum I want $10 on base I want $10

on polygon um and it will conduct that trans facilitate that transaction for you uh but the the gas reloader is built um you know entirely on the layer zero Network um it allows us to you know communicate between these chains um they have a native gas drop uh reload service you know internally into the protocol um it's very quick um it allows people to it's probably the lowest barrier to entry to using the layer zero protocol um you know you don't have to get WRA stable coins or you know you don't have to bridge like significant value with Stargate or something like that so for people that are looking to just play around with the protocol or and or also actually use it to you know top off gas and all these chains um it's kind of a very low barrier to entry to the layer

zero ecosystem I think for a lot of users perfect and uh I'd love to hear more about what what's on the road map for gas doip over the next six to 12 months yeah absolutely yeah you know um well so lay zero V2 just came out as you know many people are have seen um so I one I think there's um a hand very interesting products that can be built uh on layer zero um particularly the next you know six to 12 months um kind of with V2 rolling out and the expansion to uh chains at the rate in which they're going um so you know I think there's going to be a lot of interesting stuff to build on layer zero whether that's still you know a gas reload service or it's a uh you know something

more of a a swapping or a bridge um you know I think the layer zero protocol itself is a you know I think they're so very interesting things that could be built on that and I think we're just seeing the kind of tip of that um you know with stuff like clusters as well too these kind of cross chain you know shap State sharing apps um so you know we're going to be working on building some further layer zero stuff um we're going to be you know continuously expanding chains for the normal gas. zip um you know working on hardening that protocol behind there and um just you know continuing to add Every Chain hopefully the day it comes out and um you know continue to uh build on and support you know other good protocols out there perfect thank you so much of course man thanks for having me all

right we're back um let's talk a bit about I guess more institutional stuff black Rock's Biddle I know Mark has a take on what's been happening yeah so last week I was on the train and I noticed that um bidd which is black Rock's um you know tokenized treasury fund overtook Franklin Templeton Zone and you know so black ridle right now is at $380 million us and Frankl Franklin templeton's fob bxx I don't know how to pronounce that is at 367 million and the thing is it only took two weeks or maybe a little bit over two weeks after Black Rock launched um their tokenized treasuries to

overtake um to overtake Franklin Templeton I mean that's interesting but not necessarily super surprising given the size difference between these two and you know L frank the CEO of um of Black Rock has been going on about how he believes in the future of tokenization you know it offers advantages that I'm sure all crypto native people know like faster settlements and you know greater efficiency and you know potentially you know it's more transparent because it's on chain and all of these things are great but I think on their side I think the reason why the these institutions are doing it in their side is really because they reduce costs because you know these are let's just say let's for lack of a better term let's call them programmable

databases and you know these blockchains help you know streamline the ISU on they streamline settlement they they make record keeping a lot easier and they basically reduce a lot of the um administrative costs and you know I think that's that's the future um the future of it because right now that's not necessarily the case because while it does that they're still going to be keeping record of these things in traditional systems you still have to abide by the regul regulations and have like a a transfer agent whose job it is to actually keep record of who owns Which assets and stuff but in you know they're they're running I guess like these two parallel systems side by side um to eventually I you know the eventual plan is they're going to drop the old

Financial system and there you know as the regulations change I think the the new transfer agent will become the public blockchain itself and so you know the fact that within you know I think Black Rock launched in March we in may now you know the fact that in a couple of months you know we we in a couple of months we might hit half a billion dollars sorry of um in tokenized treasuries uh is actually insane and it it makes me wonder you know has you know has Black Rock been the Catalyst for crypto for 20124 between the ETFs and now the tokenized treasuries like has that been like crypto's number one Catalyst this year I I do this is a great like uh I think something to this is a great flag

for you know cryp Don natives that are you know more occupied with things like frte because I agree with you 100% like the institution slowly moving on board is you know in my opinion um sort of like the beginnings of bigger Tailwinds if you know things continue to progress as you know the institutions want um because these guys move so slowly and even just like you know being around like you know at some events and whatnot there's this bubbling you know like uh it feels like there's this bubbling sort of like attention that these institutions are really trying to like you know capture um so yeah I don't know

at what point it like this bidle fund moves the needle like I don't know if 380 million is you know a lot in the grand scheme of things like I don't know what the expectation was at this point um but it is like really awesome to see these you know initiative start to take shape and in my opinion it just like I mean they're taking on a lot of reputational risk um you know to a degree when they decide to you know deploy something on ethereum so even though they're not like outright buying eth um they're you know effectively taking along along on the ethereum ecosystem if they're going to you know decide on deploying on Main net so I think it just like furthers you know

sort of like where we can expect the space to go and I think that you know the more like US dollars that are more available to you know these onchain ecosystems it's just all bullish it's just really positive I don't see any like negative sort of like things that can happen other than you know the blowups I I will take the other side of this one um uh just for laughs um I would guess that a very small percentage of allocators to this fund are traditional Financial companies who are not already like a crypt native like a van or something I'm not saying that I

know that they're in it I don't but I would I would imagine that there are very few Financial traditional Market Financial participants in in this fund uh I don't think that it's that big of a risk for Black Rock to deploy things on chain because at the end of or deploy this fund on chain because at the end of the day the treasur IES are custodi at bny melon or at you know um or at State Street there there's very little risk like if if the if the fund were to get hacked and these tokenized treasuries were to be in others hands like it actually doesn't matter that much um I think that what real world assets this narrative it it is obviously like

good right like net good for the B like no one's going to no one wants to go to a custodian where they can't manage an entire portfolio right like if you can only buy crypto assets at a with a certain custodian like it on a certain platform like it limits the utility so having more real world assets on chain like is obviously good for for for the institutions however I think that a much better selling point from the industry to traditional Market participants is uh new assets that have unique return streams that the that these institutions did not have access to before so you give an examp could you give an example

of one maybe yeah yeah so so one example would be gold so the launch of the gold ETF in the mid 2000s I believe was one of the most successful and it's something that a traditional Market participants had wanted for a long time an easy way to trade in and out of gold gold is useful to a tradition Market participant because all they think about are um the sharp ratios of their portfolio adding an asset should increase the expected return and minimize the expected risk of that portfolio that is very attractive to a traditional Market investor and you can like look look look at other classes like reinsurance for example reinsurance

has been taken those products because they're not tradition they're not correlated to traditional assets like equity and fixed income they've been packaged into m UT funds and sold to investors and they've been quite successful because they are a unique return stream crypto has a bunch of those things L1 assets are a quantitatively different and diversifying return stream meem coin meme coins are objectively a quantitative um and diversifying return stream Perpetual con contracts allow for different forms of Leverage for these funds um things like parcel on salana that allows you to bet on generalized real estate markets again it's a different return stream those things to me are going to be the

onboarding mechanisms to for traditional Market investors not giving them what they already have but in a different place that's very fair and I do agree with you but I think the main argument has been and will continue to be the fact that this isn't like t+1 or t plus2 settlement but it's like sub a minute um for certain chains sub a second for other chains um and that's what like has been the main goal for I mean if you like I don't want to quote these things because some of these like research papers aren't particularly well done but when I was like reading Up about real

world asset first time last year I think every single trafi like and this like is from like JP Morgan to Consulting like let's say like P WC and stuff they WR they wrote the exact same like free things it's this is like increased liquidity I don't really agree with that that much I don't think it works very well um but I think the main thing has just been like increased settlement like a decrease settlement time is the the main pushing the narrative that they're pushing with regard to onchain like tokenizing um government bonds debt security etc etc Securities Etc I I agree with you in that it's not like

particularly exciting for certain people but I do see the like just purely from a narrative perspective it's attractive it's it's an easy thing to latch on to and I I see like kind of M I guess not us entities but like non us SL like let's say developed World institutions they might be attracted to these types of things because just because it's like easy access for them on chain even though I know like custody risk is a big thing um yeah I would um I know everyone wants to chime in the last point that I'll make is that like if you take the Peter teal um kind of framework

on what it takes for someone to switch on a product typically it's not like a 50 like the product being 50% better isn't actually enough reason for someone to make the switch they actually need a 10x Improvement and like is going from t+1 or t plus2 to t+ 0 is that going to make traditional financial institutions like like jump off the deep end into crypto like probably not like the costs are already very very low and a lot of these custodial relationships are actually free what they do is they monetize Prime broker brokerage which which is like so does crypto right crypto monetizes Prime brokerage as well it's a it's the source of a lot of the

um the um the the strength in the recent coinbase print right so like I'm not denying that any of it is useful or that there will be a trend toward it over time but I think it's much less exciting than you know the narrative paints it to be I do agree again with that and I you know like I said all of the all of these improvements with tokenizing assets with you know the transparency the quicker settlement all of that stuff is nice but you know and maybe you're trying to convince investors on that end but I do think the biggest push is actually on the other side it's it's reducing the cost when when these large institutions can reduce the cost of issuing a bond by

millions of dollars every year that you know and the investor will get the same thing but the supplier has can get can increase their bottom line just by doing that and you know at the end of the day they might not care what you want they still have their websites you're going to click buy Bond and you don't know that it's running a blockchain on the back end you just know you're getting the same thing whereas my costs are reduced which is I which I think is in in like the black rocks and the Franklin templeton's mind the push to put to tokenize these things I'm trying to find some metrics on so we talked about the supply of bidle going up but I'm wondering if there's any metrics on the utilization of bidle I mean is that even a thing at this point like are there pools that you

could sort of you know um are there any pools that you could you know LP bid and I don't think I don't think so and like I've seen these tokenized funds before and like sometimes like in the documentation it's like you can't trade this thing like I I've I've heard pitches for l2s that like are putting LP shares on on chain like limited partnership shares on chain they're like you can't do anything with this like it's going to just like lower the cost to issuance and like that's it's not a it's not a huge unlock right like I I don't know the ins and outs of of of this fund but I wouldn't be surprised if the LPS are pro prohibited from trading it yeah that's

right permissioned in order to transfer it you need to kyc it's there's there's no interoperability access to defi that is not why people are doing this yeah yeah it was the same with Ono's first few products where it was just fully kyc like you could only send it to whitelisted entities could only receive it from you could only send it receive it if you were whitelisted yeah we can move on to the coinbase earnings um Ryan do you want to chat a bit about these totally totally so coinbase reported earnings not going to go into too much detail on the numbers just like from a high level across a number of Dimensions uh

non-transaction based Revenue new all-time highs for the company total volume re is is at cycle highs and back to uh back to 2022 or 2021 highs monthly transacting users cycle highs assets held um new all-time highs total volume reaching 2021 levels uh volume across customer segment um both at cycle Highs but also reaching 2021 levels uh they beat earnings but the stock was down um you know not by a ton so you know coinbase is definitely um kind of solidifying themselves as like one like just like a go-to beta trade for trafi

participants but also like since the downfall of binance and FTX they've like they've they've really seized the moment uh thoughts has the street been wrong on coinbase for the past few weeks or like let's say the past few months yeah the it's it's complicated the street yeah I think like the average like the median estimate has been off but like the stocks reaction has been muted relative to the median estimate but like all that kind of means to me is that like the analyst in charge on the buy side of covering coinbase have like really deprioritized it relative to the other things that they're responsible for like obviously some people on the sell side are modeling it way better would be my

take was this the um I saw a transaction line I can't remember called other transactions I can't remember what they call it but it was basically the revenue from the base sequence and I think this was was this the first time that they included that in in in their earnings call so they they haven't this so I only took a look at the 10 Q they they barely mentioned base at all actually and it's not broken out on a separate line item so there's still some opacity around what exactly like how how it's contributing to their business I think that's probably on purpose and I feel like they'll continue to do that to separate it out as much as as possible and to not get in trouble

right that's what I understand is that is the reason why they've been doing it but um do you have any other idea why they might not be why they might be so opaque about it yeah I'm looking at it right now um look I think that the big selling point for coinbase is not the crypto related trans transaction Revenue but it's really you know the onboarding of Institutions uh consumer net transaction revenue is up uh 3x but the institutional volume is up 4X uh the institutional volume I I believe is kind

of near New time all-time highs whereas consumers weigh off and if you think about kind of the regulatory landscape and just the the the sex uh landscape in general uh it was binance and FTX were like really eating their lunch as far as like sophisticated institutional volumes and leverage and and in Prime brokerage and I think that's kind of what you want to show off here uh because those are really high value clients like they're lower margin but um it's it's much stickier I think whereas consumer like it's you know consumer you you get wrecked and you leave the platform you want High you want those high volume like institutions like on your platform like you you want to be the place to

trade for them and and I don't think that I don't think that that's what base is for for for coinbase today it's G to be interesting to see how they continue playing that as if they decide to launch a token and how that's going to work out as well how they're going to try and separate that between because I like I will be honest I am semi ignorant I say compared to you guys in terms of like Equity um crypto Equity especially it's just something that's never really interested in me that much I think it's because I'm not us so I never like had access to it so I never really cared for it that much but I am wondering how it's going to end up working out when if let's say a base

token launched how that would work with the coin stock and how coinbase would take a step on that like how they would present that how they're going to end up presenting is it going to be like under coinbase or is it going to be something completely decentralized semi- related to coinbase same way that I'd say Solana was semi- related to FTX back in the day because just because FTX was so involved with the ecosystem obviously we found out that Solana survived even after FDX died out and that I would actually argue that well I think a lot of people would argue this it's a very lukewarm take but that FTX was net negative for Solana and that's since then it's actually gotten like a I'd say like a really good

Community a lot of better adaps that are not very very extracting like and like ruining of retail so I think it'll be and I also know a couple of other exchanges are also now looking into launching and they've already launched l2s so I'm excited to see how they're going to separate these products out personally I would love if they never launch a token I would just like crypto to see that not everything needs a token you know maybe they can do some crypto economic or cryptographic principles around the sequencer to kind of like per make it permissionless as possible without without introducing that token to quote unquote decentralize it but it would be great if people could re like launch useful products that are

profitable that don't need a speculative token I feel like Ryan would also take this same path because I saw a couple of his messages last week in the work chat but I'm always like as many tokens as possible I think the whole point of crypto is token and so I'm happy with more tokens but I like with base and coinbase you actually probably don't need token um just because of the way that it works so I agree I mean I guess it'd be interesting to see how it would work out especially since it would I think be better for optimism since I feel like optimism is not

particularly benefiting off these op stack chains so we'll see how that whole thing works out as well that could be a topic that we should talk about next next week maybe but I'm gonna add something to the whole point of crypto is tokens uh the whole point of crypto is tokens and coordination so when these projects could figure out a way to have a token where everyone involved has you know aligned incentives then okay yeah that'd be you know every every every project with a token out there is trying to solve this problem so that's the one thing I'll add to that yeah I I I agree I agree mostly with these takes but like surprise surprised I do think that bay should have a token I think they will

have a token one day like you're just fting all of it you're just fting all of our all of our uh thoughts on on what you think no yeah so they if if coinbase is interested in maximizing their value capture and for for themselves and their investors like the token is the obvious way to go right because then you get the upside of the profits from the chain and then you get some capital appreciation there I think that they will over time when the regulatory landscape um improves and um because it just it's what make makes economic sense and very rarely do things like make like cease to make economic sense for for too long like eventually those things correct themselves um so you know barring any

like regulatory craziness it would keep going the direction that we're going in which is like um an improving regulatory environment for coinbase to operate in like there's going to be a base token like there has to be and I I feel like with public comments like they've been very qualified in their answers they're like no we won't have a token in 2024 which you know doesn't answer 25 and 26 right so yeah I think one's coming um it's just gonna it's just going to take time I I do agree I do think one is coming I don't want one to come and but then for that for that economic um that equation is is the is the upside of that base token going to way keeping 100% of the sequence of

profits right how how much is that due towards your DCF versus whatever potential capital gains on on on on the base token which is good now because of the um accounting change rules on on on realized crypto assets so could could benefit them on there as well a base token would be wild that would be wild all I think we're good I think we had a great conversation this was probably my favorite analyst Round Table in a while so I um thank you guys for hopping on and for giving your takes um thank you to our listeners for listening have a good day [Music]