How To Achieve Real Revenue, PMF, and Distribution - Kenny Li

Transcript

We've tried many, many times as an industry to force feed blockchain and wallet adoption and memorizing your seed phrases down people's throats. We know that doesn't work. I just feel like we're going to get the winners and the losers separated in a big way in the next one to two years. You didn't see any of those projects pivot, right? They just basically died on the hill that they wanted to stand on. Welcome back to the Rowup. We are your hosts. I'm Andy. I'm Robbie. And this is your home to learn from the biggest guests, the brightest minds at the tip of innovation. Our goal is to help spread the collective knowledge of everyone in our community. We are breaking crypto out of its echo chamber and taking it to the real world. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a quick word from

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Learn more at Magic Newton onx. Kenny, we're in New York. I think the last time we did a podcast was in um IstAnul. Yeah, in uh 2023. Yeah, that was the that was the most professional podcast I've ever been on at the time. Yeah, that was a fun one. That was a good conference. Yeah, that was like a very good builder or oriented builders only type vibes. Yeah, I think there's What What do you think about ECC? I feel like a lot of people are saying that they're not going, but I think there's going to be a lot of last minute like I'm going to be honest. I feel like I might be one of them cuz I've been telling people no, but now I'm kind of thinking like maybe market's looking good. Like it's the summer. It's the beach. Yeah. Vibes. But then also like I

don't know. Bitcoin summit's coming up too and Bitcoin's looking good too. So yeah, I keep saying no to that, but it's coming in a few weeks. So you just got back from Dubai as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what was the what was the vibe there? Um what was the takeaways? Yeah. Yeah. What was kind of like the core sectors ideas? You know, every conference kind of has like a couple like metas, right? Like people are like buzzing about, you know, you said like revenue, right? Yeah. Um stuff like that. So, yeah. I mean, like I think like the the the unsurprising topics are pretty sort of uh consistent over the past few months, right? Like AI, memecoins. Um but I do think like one of the really emerging topics right now is revenue generation, right? And I think like it's a good step for the industry,

right? Otherwise, you know, the question is how sustainable are projects in the long term? This is something that we're trying to figure out at Manta, too, right? Cuz like, you know, just facing the music. Yeah. Yeah. Like you you you got to become a sustainable project. You got to have, you know, a strong team um here 5 years from now, 10 years from now, and revenue is the answer. Yeah. Yeah. So, that was one like ma major throughine. anything else in Dubai that was particularly compelling for those who weren't able to make it? Um, you know, a lot of the conversations I had and I might have been personally biased because I'm also I'm trying to figure out how to break that mold into the revenue generation side. So, that's

that's really what I was focused on a lot combo. All right. Well, let's break that down then. What is the So, obviously, Manta is a is a layer two. it effectively. I think of blockchains as selling block space in some capacity, but there's like a there's a different I think we're starting to see different business models be created around blockchains. Yeah. Um I'm curious what your mental model is for the business model of blockchain broadly. Uh you know, is it sandbox based? Is it like like what is the valuable like what is the business model of a blockchain?

That's a really good question. Like I feel like you know when I guess when Ethereum first came out right like everyone was talking about eliminating the middleman and the whole vision was supposed to be like you know we have decentralized Uber and there's no centralized entity behind it and so all the money goes to the Uber driver and then somewhere along the way we had significantly increasing gas fees course to the point where you know Ethereum became the middleman and then we scaled out to L2s and you know like these gas fees they're great on the revenue revenue generation side. Um, and now we're in a world where, you know, applications are taking transaction fees. And so, you know, we've we've shifted away from avoiding the middleman

to figuring out how to become the middleman. And I think that's the sort of stage that we're in right now. Ultimately, you know, how does this play out 5 10 years from now? I think the blockchain technology-wise will still remain on the infrastructure level, but we're at a point now where um we need to prove out product market fit for the infrastructure, right? And so without killer apps, without these new ideas coming out and without users, the question is, you know, is this technology even useful? Is it even viable, right? Or should we all just revert back to Bitcoin? And so uh during this experimental phase I think a lot of the business model is going to shift towards thinking about these product market fit applications that can

generate revenue in the short term and the long term. Um but I think you know 5 10 years from now you know once we have that proven out and people are saying oh you know blockchain technology is the way to go then we'll see this proliferation on the supply side of applications and then we can shift back more towards the infrastructure model. Yeah. So, I put out a tweet saying that I think Hyperlid is basically um pushing the the needle for the entire industry where if you're not going to create revenue from some sort of product, obviously that's kind of like an anomaly case, right? Being like one of the biggest perexes um and then driving that back to token holders in some meaningful way. Yeah. in the next one to two years, you're

probably not going to be able to like compete because I think, you know, there's things in in time, right, where like path dependencies happen where it's like, okay, you know, so, you know, something happens and then it changes the course of, you know, the space. Ethereum, right? Good example. Yeah. Stable coins, right? And so I don't know if Hyperl is that, but I I I think this idea has has now been deeply entrenched in the space that it's like what it's what you know I had some VCs on. They're looking for this now that they want to hear about this now. There's no more like oh I go around and find out like you know what I mean? It's not like oh yeah we're going to figure it out like we're going to have a token. It's like no no like what are you doing? And

so so yeah, I mean I just see that that the space in one or two years will be like more dominated by uh this type of thinking. And as you said, I think it's like a maturation and and probably highly highly beneficial. Um I just I just feel like we're going to get the winners and the losers separated in a big way in the next one to two years. Yeah. And you know what's funny about this is like I think it's it's maturity uh for the industry not just in the sense of like going towards like a more sustainable model for revenue generation but also the mindset of the builders in the space. Yes. And like it's like if you go back to the Bitcoin days and you see all of these projects emerging as

forks of Bitcoin, right? As soon as the trend became, you know, virtual machines on the blockchain with Ethereum, you didn't see any of those projects pivot, right? They just basically died on the hill that they wanted to stand on. Um, and then same with like the Ethereum forks, right? Like they all basically died on the hill they stood on. Um, but now, right, we were just having this conversation earlier before this recording is, you know, like all the L2s are looking at how do I generate revenue, right? How do I adapt? And so I think like this this mindset shift for projects, for teams, for founders, not just about like, okay, this is the philosophy I'm going to, you know, dig my grave with, but rather how do I keep this project alive? How do I make it

thrive? How do I make it successful? I think that's the sort of mindset we even need in this space, right? Uh cuz cuz we have to I think I think sometimes we get too philosophical. Uh we get too theoretical and that gets in the way of broader adoption. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so with that mindset shift then that you speak of like more concretely what does that look like from your perspective with the way that you're approaching Manta then? Um you know be it a year ago, 6 months ago even to to today like like concretely what is that you know in in your strategy or kind of like ideas what is that kind of like materializing to be now? Yeah I mean at the at the high level right like

you can say product market fit. It's obviously easier said than done. Um, wait, hold on. Let's just establish what is the product market fit of blockchain today? Because to me, it's like this like like like the cop out is like stable coins and payments and like DeFi and gambling 24/7 kind of like barbell, but like there's a lot more in there, but that's like kind of like the agreed upon consensus product market fit for blockchains. Yeah. Do you agree with that? I totally agree. Okay. I think everything is DeFi. Okay. Like and and sometimes, you know, I I lay in my bed at night wondering like were the Bitcoin maxis right? Because like, you know, despite all of the innovation, all the sandboxing, and all the things that we've tried out, at the end of the day, all people want to do is finance. All

they want to do is transact. All they want to do is build more wealth. And like those are all available with Bitcoin. So maybe Bitcoin maxis are right. And like when you know we see these experiments in social fi and gamefi and all that stuff but like you know my argument is it's it's like lipstick on a pig in the sense that you know at the end of the day these social experiments are also DeFi products right like I I would say that a majority of cases for these experiments people aren't coming because they're like oh my god I I love this platform. They're coming because they're like, "Oh, I'm financially incentivized and if I post more and if I refer more, then I'm going to get bigger airdrops, which ultimately is a financial incentive." Which goes back to DeFi. Yeah. Right. So, I I I

think right now we're still very much in a realm of DeFi as a core product market fit. And I think there's a lot of opportunity to explore intersections of traditional finance and where the traditional financial value proposition breaks down for democratization and reapply those into crypto. And I think like for projects that are working on that, there's there's probably way more opportunity in the space than we can imagine right now. Yeah. and and I think a big part of this product market fit conversation is around institutional capital as well and the institutions coming on onchain. Um just curious your thoughts as to kind of h how that ties into your broader DeFi

thesis. Yeah, I I really like the idea of, you know, institutions coming on chain, even just exposure to Bitcoin, right? Because like, you know, a decade ago, I would go to these Bitcoin meetups and honestly, it was all just sketchy people. Maybe including myself. Maybe I was one of the sketchy people, but I looked around the room and I'm surrounded by sketchy people. Um, and and you didn't really see a clear future there. Whereas now like people entering this space, they have this fresh view.

They have a new perspective, right? Like Bitcoin is no longer I mean like there's still that sort of taboo about Bitcoin being used for drugs and gambling and moneyaundering and stuff, but it's a fraction of its identity, you know, 3 years ago, 5 years ago. Uh and so I think like overall this trend of institutions coming in is great because it gives the whole space a good opportunity for a rebrand. Um, that being said, I think also institutions are definitely not the early adopters. They're not the innovators. They're the lagards. But as they come in, I think there's going to be way more opportunity for the experimenters, for the builders to come up with very clear value propositions, right? because now you're

no longer going after the same pool of users that are maybe like 90% bots, but now you're saying, "Okay, now there's a big chunk of money over here that Fidelity wants to bring in. How do we capture a piece of that pie?" Yeah. Right. And I think that's going to build a lot more sustainable and futureproof use cases. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think that's where a lot of of revenue will be driven from onchain as well. I I actually just don't think that uh we have the right idea of institutions. While I agree with your sentiment, I I tend to think that they're just sharks and that they just want to come and make money off DeFi. That they see inefficiencies in the market. They see ways to make money. They're just going to come in and try to make money. Sure.

Um which is like beneficial for all in a sense. Theoretically, as as you grow more liquidity, you grow the pie. Um, that being said though, uh, that that's going to bring it, as you said, a perception change, a liquidity improvement, um, and also just more proof, um, kind of like proof in the pudding type of vibe where it's like, okay, you know, if if these guys are doing this, the like the thesis is validated and, um, you know, we're, you know, you know, let's keep building this stuff out, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so that's kind of some of the pro product market fit on that side, but then you got like the all the way on the other side, right? So talk to us a bit about kind of how you're thinking about Manta L2s in general the the other side of the

of the product of of the product market fit or the revenue u or the products for that kind of like you know user consumer you know like app store Android user you know crypto curious like very like not in this space but you know kind of like kind of in this space you know a little adjacent yeah the centralized exchange changes, but they don't touch on chains. Yes, that's like the next big target group. I think like I think we're there. Like we thought we had it last cycle, but I think now it's like we're there. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. And I think like you know the first part of your question about you just general L2s, right? Like when when Manta first launched, we were probably like one of five L2s on the market and it was so clear our product

differentiation, right? Especially because we were using Celestia. So within the first month we already saved users millions of dollars in gas fees, right? The differentiation was clear. Then came prototank sharding. Then came 500 other L2s, right? And all of a sudden you're in this ocean of essentially a commoditized technology, right? It's in the world of Caleras, right? Like you can spin up a an L2 in a matter of seconds, right? And the management is a lot easier, a lot more streamlined. And so I think you know this has given a lot of opportunity for a lot of builders in the space to you know launch L2s and stuff which is great but at the same time right that means that from an infrastructure perspective

anyone that's building infrastructure especially in L2 what's your differentiation right and so like it's I I give this analogy of like being at a restaurant and you know you're in a restaurant where there's more waiters than customers right so like it's just weird you're sitting at the table and all these waiters are staring at you. You know, that's exactly what it feels like to be a a user in the in the crypto space right now. You got all these L2s and you don't know what the heck's the difference between them. They all have dexes, they all have lending protocols, but some like twisted parallel universe of them. Um, yes. And so from a from an L2 perspective, the question is, you know, what is your differentiator? I think if you asked that question six

months ago, right, or maybe nine months ago, people would say the technology, right? And then six months ago, people would say the community, right? And now I think L2s are struggling to find an answer. Um, and so many are pivoting towards thinking about what sort of apps are, you know, going to be that sort of next big play because as we're still on this topic of, you know, revenue generation, product market fit, right? Like the hyperlquids of the world are eating everyone's lunch, right? they came out and just like basically blew all the other value propositions out of the water by saying cold hard cash on the table. What do you have to show? Right? And all of our pockets are empty basically. Um and so when it comes to like consumer

applications uh when it comes to sort of you know uh the these sort of next killer apps right that can target the mobile users that can go beyond web 3 uh what are those? um my personal take and and it's not really industry specific right if we if we go about outside of DeFi I don't think it's industry specific but rather workflow specific I personally think that in order to bring in those you know additional users that just simply won't be touching this stuff otherwise I think you have to start off with centralized you have to start off with centralized applications that just create a really good user experience that can prove that it can generate

revenue and then um from there you know once you have that community around it and that revenue generation around it you retroactively start adding in elements of blockchain and I think those elements of blockchain that need to be added in should at first be optional right because again like I we've tried many many times as an industry to force feed blockchain and wallet adoption and memorizing your seed phrases down people's throats. We know that doesn't work. So, so I think we got to change the game there. Okay. So, so, so start some from something like maybe just like a mobile app. Yeah. Um, with little to no blockchain or crypto rail, build the funnel, build the distribution, build

the, you know, get the get the validation from the market and then start to slowly introduce these, you know, the these advantages or product benefits that could come with using crypto. Exactly. Rails. Yeah. Like I I think you we could probably look in the app store right now. Yeah. And you know, within five minutes, brainstorm like two, three ideas for each of the top 20 apps on how they could use crypto. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And so, but it's it's that type of thinking, right? It's not like you're thinking from like the top down almost if if you want to call it that way, whereas like we've been thinking about it in the space from like, oh, let's start with the infrastructure and then like let's let's go up. But it's like no, we should we should just start with like the user, start with with the

idea and the product and then like figure out the infrastructure kind of like as we go, right? And you know Yeah. You know, doesn't have to be super decentralized. Exactly. Yeah. Developers don't say like I'm going to build on AWS now. What can I do from here? Right. They say I want to build this to solve this problem. And after they build it, they can deploy it on AWS. they can deploy it wherever they want and users don't say, "Oh, this isn't deployed on Microsoft Azure. I'm not going to use it." Right? They're just like, "Oh my god, this solves my problem. Now I can learn a second language. Let me use it."

Okay. Well, then let me let me throw something at you then. Is in in this lens of thought, do you think that it would be easier for Robin Hood to build Salana or Salana or an L2 to build Robin Hood? who would eat whose lunch first in this in this kind of like it's kind of like a tangential like question but you know you've got these large consumer customer data you know just massive trading apps and then you've got these like super performant L2s and L1's that are like distributed hard to build you know had to raise a lot of money had to do a lot of things and so like like who is going to like who would eat whose

lunch first Salon or Robin Hood Oh my gosh. I think ultimately the answer is it depends because like there's so many factors going into it. But if I were to be able to choose between starting from Robin Hood to build versus starting from, you know, uh something purely in the web 3 to build, I'd say probably Robin Hood. Yeah. Because they've got the active users, they've got the community. And you know these types of these types of levels of adoption are not about it's not a technological question. It's a user workflow question, right? How do you how do you inject you know aspects of blockchain in a way that are extremely

subtle that can continue to sort of maintain your user adoption or at least not you know drop it off a cliff uh and then kind of grow it from there. And the advantage of Robin Hood is that, you know, Robin Hood has way more users than probably the entire crypto space right now. Yeah. Uh so like they've got that to start with. Yeah. Um so I think that's extremely powerful in terms of adoption. Yeah. Okay. So coming back to the kind of way that we're thinking about building applications in the space with this kind of product first uh mindset when you're looking at forms of distribution and the way that you know you mentioned builders thinking about revenue in a specific way previously versus now how do you think the tides are shifting with regards to the way

that builders either are or should be thinking about distribution and like finding customers and finding users. Um I do feel like we've had a lot of reliance on you know number go up technology also just kind of like build it they will come type of energy per se. Um I think it's shifting bigly like in in in a big way now. Just curious like what you're seeing or how you're thinking about it or how other builders should be thinking about it. If you have some advice. Yeah. Um I mean I you know I'm very cautious about giving out advice. Um you know I'll I'll tell you what I'm thinking. Um and you know there's there's a few different ways of doing it. I think one of the most common ways um that builders are think especially infrastructure projects are

thinking about this now is let's build projects. Let's just do it in house right and that's something we're experimenting with as well. But I think like you know those are definitely shots in the dark. Um, and that's because, you know, like these are teams that have not built out massively scalable, you know, products that have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users before. And so, uh, you know, I think like confidence is necessary, but there there has to be a level of caution as well. And so for us, you know, we're thinking a lot about, okay, like what products do we think would be interesting? How do we get them to market very quickly? and how do we test to measure and decide which ones are interesting actually so that we can double down and you know continue down

that path that's that's that's one way it's very common um and it's basically I think replacing the um the grant model where you know it kind of fell apart with like grant farming and stuff um I think another opportunity is to look for existing applications and sources of revenue that have customer bases and you know, maybe this is a little too edgy right now, but throw your treasury at it. Yeah, that's what I was thinking like like are we going to see some like acquisitions of something like like obviously not Robin Hood scale but like a you know a small app, right? Like you just buy it. Yeah. I mean like it's it I don't I don't even know if buying the app is necessary, right? Like you know

some of the thoughts that go through my mind for example is like okay this um this company is raising right? What if you know we throw some money in as investors and then uh they guarantee some percentage of their revenue um for our treasury and then we can use that revenue for token buybacks or something and then that would be the start of it and then we can figure out ways to integrate you know our blockchain technology and stuff over time. Um, and that's that's basically going back to the Robin Hood example that you're that we were talking about, right? Because now you've got this user base and you can subtly transa you can subtly transition certain elements of the workflow into blockchain. Um, so I think

that's a huge advantage. And on top of that, right, if it's already a revenue generating business, um, then you can capture market share, you can generate revenue very quickly. So I think like that's a really good opportunity also. And straight up acquisition is always a thing too. Um, you know, I I think like acquisition is just a little bit more of a heavy lift because now the company itself gets consumed into your own operations. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. May affect how it works, right? But yeah. So from this lens of thought then, why do you think Coinbase's base L2 has done so well, but Krakens Inc. has kind of struggled to get traction? Do you think it's a brand problem? Is it distribution? Is it like, you know, I'm not going to ask you to say anything

negative about like Inc., but like there's a clear They're both not Manta, so whatever. Right. Base is clearly doing well and and Inc.'s not, but they're both like very large centralized exchanges with like huge user bases. Yeah, they are very large centralized exchanges with huge user bases. But at the end of the day, you know, if you were to ask any project, any user, I guess not any but most, right, who would they bet their lives on? Yeah. I feel like most people would still say Coinbase. And so I think that gives you an answer right there in terms of like, you know, why there's that different. Um I I mean, like, you know, no offense to Kraken, they definitely wouldn't say Manta, right? They'd say base before Manta,

you know? I I I feel you there, Kraken. But yeah, but I think I mean I I just that was going on in my mind as you're explaining these different types of ways to think about distribution because this these centralized exchanges are just massive distribution engines for those chains. Just trying to think like like like like what could be Mant's version of like a centralized exchange huge user base or like a like a like a a company that just consistently brings users and traffic and like like we got to find Manta's like you know what I mean like like what what is it you know I think that's a really good question you know and once you find that answer let me know. Yeah. Yeah.

Like it's like it could be a company it could be an app. It could be a I think it it's got to be an industry. an industry. Yeah. Like I I mean like I think abstract is taking over the content creator industry really well. Okay. And that kind of stuff. Yeah. Because once you once you find your industry, there's so many channels that you can take advantage of, right? Like let's say for example um let's say all of a sudden our industry was now media, right? What do we do? Next thing I do is I probably go out to all the top sort of news article agencies, maybe starting with crypto, see which ones need fundraising, which ones need grants, which ones need whatever, find how to make these deals with them so that we

can get their massive, you know, hundreds of millions of views per month and start injecting, you know, mant influence into that, right? And for better or for worse, right? I'm not saying manipulate media, but you know, like at the same time, right? I think like you once you once you find an industry to double down on there's so many channels in existence that can help you with you know that that sort of user penetration. So is that where you think the space is kind of headed from the L2 or even like L1 landscape as a whole where we start to have like industry specific companies basically? I think so. I think so because um I think ultimately every industry inside and

outside of web 3 experiences consolidation right so like whether it's the Bitcoin forks or the Ethereum forks or now the Salana forks or the move forks or the L2s right and I think it's very naive or head in the sand of us as a space to say oh you know there's enough space for all of us and we're all going to kumbaya because history shows us that's not what happens. And so, you know, like will there be will it be likely that there's going to be, you know, 20 different media chains that are holding hands and thriving together or is it going to be one media chain that eats the big pie and everyone else gets crumbs or they do other things? Yeah. I think it's definitely going to be the

latter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't see the general purpose L1, L2 like there's like I mean there's going to be a couple, right? And we kind of seen them already. It's like you mean you got Ethereum, you got Salana, got a couple L2s, couple L1s that are getting some traffic still. But yeah, I I I think like going niche specific or like target market specific, trying to figure out who your exact like who's exactly like the niche, the region, like you got to dial it down somehow. Yeah. Like it it can be regional, it can be cultural, it can be um you know, gender, race, sex, I don't you know, like you just got to start dialing down. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I And you know what's funny about that is the irony is in the web two space that's the first thing you do as a company. You find your

target audience, right? Like riches are in the are in the niches or whatever. Like you know what I mean? Yeah. And everyone in crypto is like our target audience is 8 billion people. Yeah. We just I mean like we just threw up these cities without like attractions. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like you wouldn't go to a city if there wasn't like something to do. Like you come to New York, you see the Statue of Liberty, you go to Central Park, it's like okay, there's things to do here. You know, as you're saying, there's a very like copy copy pasta like you know, uh, ecosystems across the board. And you, you know, you mentioned abstract. We'll see others. I think that like like those who start to f like move in that direction, kind of swim swim against the current, we'll will reap the the rewards, I think, from

the from the market much quicker. And that's like the next stage. I mean, it's just clear like like Yeah. Innovating finance global institutional and onchain deep liquidity to drive capital efficiency. Now maximize yields on institutionalgrade liquid staking with me. Unlock trillion dollars of capital via Fitcoin. All of this secured by Mantle's treasury of billions in stables and ETH capital pools. This entire ecosystem is coordinated by a vast network of seasoned VCs that are aiming to create the next generation of banking and

financial technology. This is Mantle. I think all the momentum is heading that way and it and it's kind of reminiscent of um maybe like two three years ago when there were so many applications and so many application forks and then VCs were begging for infrastructure and then like it became all infrastructure and now VCs are begging for revenue generation. So I think it's going to start heading in that path as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, do you have any thoughts then on on the trajectory for the focus of Manta then with regards to kind of niching down or like builder strategy or Yeah. Like like where do you take Manta from here throughout the rest of the year? Yeah, that's it's a really good complicated question, right? And I wish

I wish I had a very succinct answer that could just instill confidence, but the reality is like, you know, we're going back into experimental mode, right? And that's something that I think Mant's always been good at, right? I don't know if you know, but we started as a Polka Dot L1. Yeah. And uh you know uh once we realized that that wasn't gaining user traction and we needed to uh evolve out of that, we went into experimental mode, launched the L2. Um which was great at that time because, you know, there were five of them. Um and now, you know, there's too many and we're we're going back into experimental mode. And so I don't have an exact clear answer right now. Um, but I do know that the team that we have is capable of finding that answer. And I think that, you know,

we're honest with ourselves enough um that we could probably solve most problems without kind of burying our heads in the sand and pretending everything's okay because it's not it's not for most L2s right now. Um but yeah so product direction I think naturally going back to the beginning of the conversation you know DeFi is a really strong fit and I think there's so much opportunity to find um you know exploits in the traditional financial world um by democratizing you know certain value propositions to you know the the the DeFi space um you know like um the air right now right like he's working on the like I I think like

that's a very interesting opportunity because it's a it's a proven multi-billion dollar business in Tradfi, but that proven multi-billion dollar business is only accessible to like Goldman and Jane Street and stuff. And so what happens when you try to open it up so that everyone has access to it and I think that's the I think that's the golden standard for blockchain at least like you know in Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper, right? like how do you democratize finance in the sense that you know like now oh yeah like one of the most recent pieces of news I think it was Kraken who now allows you to buy tokenized shares of Apple and stuff right like for us sitting here in our

you know New York City studio it's we we take it for granted because we could just open Robin Hood and you know do that but like no one in Indonesia is going to be able to open Robin Hood and buy Apple shares right and so and so now they can through Kraken that's amazing Um and so this this idea of democratizing finance, I think that has a lot of legs. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think the stable coin yield part is is really interesting as well. Access to dollars globally and then access to dollarbased yields globally. It's also like like I I just think like that general trend you're spot on like the further democratization of these basically financial tools that have been you know kind of with the western world but then also within like the western world corporations. Yeah. Um, you know, we we

don't really see it here as you say, but you go to Brazil, you go to Turkey, you go to these places, Indonesia, and you see it still. Yeah. And also like, you know, a really simple idea that I'm surprised doesn't have much traction right now. Uh, because you mentioned yield, right? And like, you know, US Treasury yield is like the gold standard of risk-free rate. But now we're also seeing macroeconomically the US dollar is not as strong as it used to be. And there are other contenders. Um, and you know, something like bricks, something like CNY, right? Like why aren't there stable versions of that on chain? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, there are. They just haven't got much traction. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Huh. There's like euros and Yeah, definitely euros. Yeah. Um, there may be CNY or like a there's like small ones. Yeah. But you have to like find LPS like who's going to provide liquidity to that. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I'm I'm surprised because like this model has proven to be so fruitful and profitable for for Yeah. for USDT. It's like what if we do that? It's it's like everyone is now saying what if we do micro strategy but for Salana? What if we do micro strategy but for Ethereum? Right. Yeah. There's like a lot there's a bit of a lack of creative thought there. Sure. But at the same time it's like why don't we do stable

coins but for this other currency? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kenny the the the USD bear here. No comment. I mean, you know, just hedging right? Um, all right. Bit of a curveball question for you. Yeah. Um, so Hyperl hit what 89 billion dollars of open interest. Uh, I think yesterday, two days ago, if you were CZ watching this happen right now, what would you do? I think you I think you tweeted that, right? I did. I didn't.

Um, oh boy. And you were just on a panel with CZ or something in Dubai, weren't you? Or you guys were You guys were I mean, yeah, I was I was in the area with him. Got I don't know if he knows I exist. I know he exists. CZ. Hi. Uh oh boy. If I was CZ in that situation. Or even perhaps like how do you potentially see this battle between like as like the core theme that again that Hyperl's pushing and that unis swap has pushed is just DEX dominance like DEX dominance is just skyrocketing in terms of spot and now because Hyperlid in terms of per uh versus centralized exchanges. So like you know how do you see this playing out per you know you

know maybe that's a better way to ask the question instead of like you know you're gonna go tell the regulators you know North on the door. Yeah. But perhaps you know like so Dex dominance keeps rising this happens like do we get price discovery on chain do do we surpass centralized exchanges like how do you see this playing out maybe like two three year time horizon? Yeah, I I think time horizon definitely matters here because like in the short term, right, like one to two years, um I would say it's probably not something to worry about because like you know, if you simply look at the market share of onchain users versus the market share of centralized exchange traders, right?

Like it's onchain users is like a drop in the bucket, right? Because everyone can use a sex, but not everyone's going to want to do their own wallet and all that stuff, right? Um but then you know two to three years down the line when you're thinking more about abstraction and bringing on users right like it's not a it's not a permanent sort of bottleneck it's just a little hurdle that you have to go through and I I think in that case right we're going to see a lot more proliferation of onchain activity because from a security perspective it just makes a lot more sense like if I'm a user and I can fully self-custody my funds because we have a history of exchanges, you know, doing funky things with our funds. Um, that's great. And

then we have a history of exchanges being hacked. And when a centralized exchange is hacked, every single user's funds Yeah. gone, right? But do you really think that's good enough reason though? Like, wouldn't the reason more be like, you know, or another potential reason be there's just really good products on chain? Um, I mean, I think the product question is different because you know on a if you're if you're looking for um trading activity, right? Like you don't I don't think most traders care about the product. I think traders care about how much money they can make from the token. And so as long as the revenue or the the token profitability potential is there um then right like I think um it's going to be it's going to be much more uh interesting for people to go on chain

and especially I mean we see this trend now right like projects they start off just launching on dexes and then they go into centralized exchanges because centralized exchanges right now it it's a process right like um and for better or for worse right because the process also requires a lot of due diligence um which you know hopefully most of the time means that you know sketchy things get weeded out. Um but at the same time right like it means the process is long. It means the process is expensive and so you know like for smaller projects that have good community good traction uh would it be easier for them to just straight up launch on a DEX first? I think it would be. Yeah. So like I think naturally in the future right like if given the option to launch now and launch free uh versus you know extended

periods of time more regulation and all that other stuff right you'll probably see more of the supply the token opportunities appear on dexes before sexes and so that supply depending on you know how much opportunity that presents to the users the demand side then I think you'll see more of a flow of demand and right now the demand is bottlenecked by the simple atrocity of web shitcoins Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, I mean, but that that that you know, jar of worms has been opened like you know, we've had onchain runners to a bill. We've had uh you know, airdrops like all all that stuff has has happened. Yeah. Just like what's the next iteration that just like pushes

more people off. I think it's a UX problem. I mean you said security right in terms of like being a benefit for being on shame but that also comes with just like you know you're right you're right because security is a it's a retroactive response right like people are not coming on most people are not coming on day one be like what's the security like right they're just saying what can I trade and then when it happens they're like my security exactly yeah yeah it matters till it does like it doesn't matter until it does type of thing so but I for for exchanges, right? I think like exchanges are recognizing this and I think they're also building a lot of stop gaps to, you know, hedge against it as well, right? Like Binance

has got Binance has got Pancake and they've got B&B Chain, both of which I think are doing really well. Um, and Coinbase has got Bass which is doing really well. And Kraken, good luck. Um, I'm sure you love you. Just kidding. Um but yeah, so I I mean like every exchange is doing it, right? By bits got Mantle. Um uh BitGat's got Morph. Uh yeah, so like I think like these exchanges are definitely aware and putting in like some backup plans. Um kind of coming to a wrap here, Kenny.

What's any crazy predictions for this year or any have you been spending much time doing like using AI tools or like Oh yeah. Okay. Tell us about that. Just AI tools in general. Yeah. Okay. So our entire team is switching over to AI like we're getting team subscriptions for every single member and uh you know not just chat GPT we're getting everyone into vibe coding and because like we want people to start thinking more from like a product perspective because that's our number one initiative right like we need product market fit um and so you know everyone from our BD team to our marketing team to our engineers right like everyone's going into vibe coding and like surprisingly It's it's pretty easy uh once you get the hang of

it and there's like tools for all different levels of people. Um so yeah, we we've definitely been getting into AI and using that to sort of streamline our process because at the end of the day, we don't know what products are going to work and so our thesis is we got to try out everything and do it as quickly as we can from zero to MVP, from idea to MVP. And the fastest way to do that right now is VI coding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've tried it a bit, but I need to spend more time on it as well. But I I've been I use LM daily now. It's pretty it's pretty sweet. Yeah, it's crazy. It's like I I don't know if you use like local LLMs, but like I've been I've been just downloading those on my computer and I swear I have a team of people with

me when I'm on the on an airplane or something without Wi-Fi and like I'm just like, "Okay, I need a new HR process in place for, you know, when someone is offboarding or onboarding or something." And I just ask the AI and they just give it to me in seconds, right? It's like probably 90 to 95% of the quality you would get from like the latest model of chat or claude. Um and I think it's going to really blow up when um when these local LLMs can run on your phones. Yeah. That's going to be a game changer. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz like then it's 247 access everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. T Thanks for coming out, man. It's been a great conversation. Thanks for having me. It's always great. Yeah. Thanks, Andy. It's been a year and a half since our last one. We'll try to try to do

another one in a shorter time period. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, you know, we'll we'll talk about the how Mant has evolved since then. That's right. Yeah. All righty, man. Thank you. Cool. Cheers guys.